Do Parents Shape Kids' Personalities?

Last week, while my youngest had a mild flu, my friends learned that their youngest had stomach cancer. I keep thinking about their little girl and what they must be going through. Whereas many of our ancestors would have attributed such a tragic misfortune to God’s punishment of parental misdeeds, today most of us would think it crazy and cruel to blame cancer’s curse on the victims’ parents. 

And yet, parents encounter a similar form of blame all the time. Though based on psychology rather than religion, it, too, can be taken to an extreme, and it, too, helps us feel a false sense of control. A century after Freud, we still blame mom.

Those without kids often have the strongest opinions on how much control parents have over kids’ personalities and what ought to be done to exert that control. Parents, especially of more than one, usually see that an individual’s temperament is present at birth. Kids are who they are. Parenting is about keeping them loved, safe, and morally responsible.

When preparing to adopt, one South Pas parent I admire expressed the fear that her child might have unexpected negative qualities. The grandma-to-be, in her wisdom, said that’s how it is whether you’re adopting or not.

A mellow parent may produce a child with a fiery temper. A shy parent may have an outgoing kid. A strict mom is just as likely to bear a child who is rebellious as one who is pliable—because children are not blank slates. And the children who grew to be parents weren’t blank slates either. We are not born as dough to be molded.  

The Elementary Education students at SPHS sport cute T-shirts with a Play-Doh graphic and a slogan about “molding” futures. Teachers can give kids tools and skills; strengths can be developed and weaknesses improved upon. But parents don’t cause those strengths and weaknesses to be there.

I’m old enough to have seen a few kids grow from baby to young adult.  Their looks morph into grown-up versions of their early physical features; similarly, their personalities become more mature manifestations of their inborn traits.

Of course, circumstances, environment and experience affect people. I am the first to admit that life’s challenges have changed me. My personality, however, is the same—and probably influenced how I handled those challenges. Though I am not the same as I used to be, I am the same person I’ve always been.

Before divorce was common, it was common to blame the “broken home” for whatever challenges befell it. If not blaming the divorce itself, we blame the other parent. When parents split, it becomes all-too-easy to blame negative attributes in the offspring on the other person’s parenting.

My oldest child endured her parents’ destructive divorce when she was three. Is she who she is because of that? In spite of it? Or would she have been the same person regardless? If her life now, at age 20, was a mess instead of fine, would we be more apt to look to a tumultuous childhood for explanation? 

And then there’s her sister. She has problems for which first-trimester stress is an oft-cited culprit. Did the stress I felt during that stressful time harm my second child in utero? Or would she have been the same way either way?

I used to teach attachment parenting with a woman who had raised quadruplets. (She could attest to how different each kid was despite having the same upbringing!) She pointed out that no parenting style guaranteed “good” kids. Bad things would happen and bad choices would be made. 

Parenting is about building a strong relationship, so that you have the tools to overcome the challenges when they come.