Throughout infinite time people have been debating whether life or things in life; are nature or nurture. How about both? Nature and nurture can go together as one in many different aspects of life from birth until death.
“We walk before we talk, speak one word before two words, grow rapidly in infancy and less so in early childhood, experience a rush of sex hormones in puberty, reach the peak of our physical strength in late adolescence and early adulthood, then decline physically… However, they believe that basic growth tendencies are genetically programmed into humans.” (Johnson, 2017; Starr, Evers, & Starr, 2018).
As stated above, the things we do daily are because of nature. We evolve over time with genetics and hereditary traits passed on from parents and grandparents. All of the steps from infancy throughout adulthood and all the way until death, are on the nature side of the debate. For example, it is not our environment that causes us to grow or talk or even walk. It is all in our genetics and DNA. If our environments (nurture) abled us too walk or talk, some people would be adults and elderly who didn’t walk or talk because their environments would be different, and that’s not the case. Nature is a proven part of life-span and how we grow biologically.
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Nurture is also a proven part of our lifespan and a huge part of how we grow mentally and emotionally. Nurture can also be used as an example of us walking or talking because if we had never experienced it environmentally, if our parents never attempted to teach us these necessities, it is possible we would have never learned these things or learned them later in life.
McLeod (2017) in ‘Nature Vs. Nurture in psychology’ talks about that there are too many facts on both sides of the nature and nurture debate and instead mentions that maybe the question should be, how much does each side, effect development? Nature and nurture both make a huge impact on development and effect everyone in different ways. Each side, whether nature or nurture, could change who we are as adults. If one child was raised by a parent who did everything biologically correct, and the other parent raised their child more so with environmental factors, both of those children would be deficient in what they need in life as an adult. It takes an equal amount of nature and nurture to raise a child up until adulthood.
Cohen (n.d.) in his Ted talk, talks about how Alzheimer’s isn’t part of the normal aging process, it is a disease, and can be cured. This can be nature and nurture. It can be nature because it can be passed on with genes from your parents. This could be nurture because people who don’t believe in medicine, or vaccinations to help cure them or prevent the diseases, are more likely to get not only Alzheimer’s but also other preventable diseases.
All diseases can be nature and nurture. As stated in the above paragraph, adults who vaccinate their kids and themselves, are less likely to get a disease that is curable or preventable, but if it is passed on in heredity, its nature and most likely cannot be avoided, but could be treated with medicine, if that person were a believer in medicine.
Nature and nurture are the most important in the infancy stage because the babies are just not starting life and learning every day. “At this stage brain connections are just beginning to form, meaning the infants’ brain activity reflects the brain’s initial organization rather than connections strengthened by learning” (Yuhas 2013) This quote explains nature and states that the brain is responsible initially before learning. Yuhas (2013) also states that the language we use as adults are formed from early stages of development. This is also nature because it isn’t learned but instead hardwired in our brains from the beginning.
In early childhood, the learning to talk and form sentences would be both nature and nurture but sway more on the nurture side. “Researchers discovered that social talk—one-on-one, back-and-forth conversation between adults and their children—was linked with better language development. The more time babies and toddlers were included in adult conversations, the more quickly their language skills improved.” (“The effects of television” n.d.) This quote explains that in early childhood, one on one conversations(nurture) help improve the language of children.
Adolescence is mostly on the nature side of the debate because of puberty and hormones. “So adolescence is defined as the period of life that starts with the biological, hormonal, physical changes of puberty and ends at the age at which an individual attains a stable, independent role in society.” (Blakemore 2016)
Middle adulthood and late adulthood are where most people experience the grieving process. Though the grieving process isn’t limited to these two areas of the lifespan. In the grieving process people will experience denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance. Not everyone will experience the stages of grief in this order or one by one. Some people can experience two or more different stages at once. These stages are for small to large griefs and losses.
In conclusion, not everyone experiences nature and nurture the same and it can’t be said that one is more than the other because they both are vital contributors to everyday life and throughout life until death.
