Nature Nurture

I realize that the nature/nurture debate has been hammered out in so many formats, so many scientific and psychological journals, to the point which I doubt I can shed any further light on the subject.  I suspect that if I were to read more thoroughly of the aforementioned pieces I could find further answers to my endless stream of queries regarding my efforts at child rearing and my influence on the outcome.


For a total layman I think I have a pretty good grasp on how things work...a child is born with a certain set of traits, assets and liabilities.  His environment, particularly if is is extreme in any way, has the potential to activate some genes (which then effect emotional and intellectual health) and to enhance or diminish genes that are actively relevant.  This supposition leaves me with the question: How much does it matter how I parent?  My inclination to keep my kids safe, clean, healthily fed and educated is a given.  Beyond that, how much affection, focused attention, exposure to nature, culture, spirituality, boundaries, rules, discipline etc is the correct amount?


Is there something that I could be doing right now with my children that will enable them to have grand dreams and then actually manifest them?  Is there something I am doing right now that is in fact squelching a part of them that would otherwise have them become a Doctors without Borders physician, the next great philanthropist, the inventor of the first entirely solar car made of 100% post-consumer waste?  Or, perhaps even a grander dream, a child who grows into an adult who finds love, is engaged with the world and is relatively happy?  Someone who is self supporting, generous, kind, perhaps?


As an aside, have you noticed that great men and women of history, those that made radical changes politically, socially, artistically and scientifically are, in their personal lives, pretty screwed up?  Why can't the JFK's and the MLK's of the world also be faithful to their wives?  And why can't the Sylvia Plath's and the Virginia Wolfe's be at all contented?  Speaking of which, what type of adult would I prefer my child to be?  The miserable genius or the happy every-man?


Because I do have four children I am in a special position to see, in actuality, how little I, or my husband may have to do with the personalities and achievements of our kids.  Much remains to be revealed, as they are still young, but I am guessing that although much in their teen and adult life will be attributed to how we raised them - sad and funny anecdotes will be told, blame and credit will be assigned - they will turn out differently than each other and they will remain the people they were always going to be - even if they had been raised in entirely different families.


So then, the question remains, why do I, like most parents, worry so much about how I am handling, addressing and responding to my kid's needs, personalities and problems?  Why do I expend so much effort adjusting my responses and reactions to their foibles and their victories?  And most curious, why do I worry so much how the world perceives me in relation to them and their behavior?  Is it just self-centered fear?  Do I (we) suffer from extreme egocentricity?  Or is it biologically driven?  A built in impulse intended to assure the best possible outcome for our offspring (living long enough to reproduce) that has, with the advent of gunpowder and antibiotics, spun into a neurotic habit?  I hate it when it all comes down to evolutionary biological imperatives so I hope there is more to it - something else that explains that parental drive to do it right, to do it better or as well as our parents did or didn't. 


Of course it is highly likely that my suppositions about the effects we have on our children are infinitely simplified - that in fact the nature/nurture dance is far more complex than I have made it out to be.  Regardless, I do so hope to get it right even as I watch myself doing so much of it wrong.  Perhaps it is in the quest for right-behavior that we are being the best kind of parent we can be - purely by seeking, we shape our children positively.  Because we care, because we question ourselves, our motivations, we shed the selfishness that allows us to be more open, more effective, in our parenting.  If that is even in part a truth, then I may have, through my infinite desire to know more, a chance at being a good mother.