Flinging apples far from the tree?

August 5, 2005 10:03 AM

What leads to a child/young adult picking up a parent's behavior (good or bad), rather than rebelling against it?

This question is of both practical and academic interest to me so I'm interested in actual psychological/sociological studies as well as personal hypotheses.

As an example, my parents are not the neatest of people. I've largely picked that up. But I know many children of less than neat parents who rebel by aggressively keeping house. The other more serious example (not from my life, thankfully) is the tendency of abused children to abuse or reject abusing.

I'm guessing that contributions from friends, school, other adults matter but what manner of contributions? Or is contribution from outsiders minor compared to other factors? Are there particular life profiles that tend to emulate their parents more than others?

If I want to reinforce certain behaviors in my children that I am not very good at, what has a realistic chance of working?

posted by ontic to human relations (13 comments total)

My parents tend to not keep a very neat house. I do. I think the reason is that I was always picking up after them, so I learned to put stuff away before it grew and became a big job. The same is probably true of other behaviors - if a parent is a heavy drinker and you have to clean up after them or make excuses on their behalf (and overall feel shameful of their behavior), you are probably less likely to have a drinking problem. Seeing the negative consequences (or positive if it is a trait you want to encourage) and learning from them is the biggest motivator for behavioral modification. Others may have other experiences that contradict this though...YMMV
posted by blackkar at 10:19 AM on August 5, 2005

Read some family role theory. I'm afraid the books I read are all many years old, so I can't remember specifics, but that should get you started.

The idea is that there are specific roles to fill in a family--the rebel, the peacemaker, etc. Each member of the family slides into a role, and those characteristics are part of it.
posted by frykitty at 10:36 AM on August 5, 2005

If you want a child to pick up a good behavior, it's much better to MODEL it than to DRILL it. For instance, it is much better to set an example by being sober yourself than it is to lecture a child on the virtues of sobriety. And the worst thing you can do is set up a contradiction between drilling and modelling (do as I say, not as I do). There's no point in lecturing sobriety if you're clearly a drunk. Kids have good bullshit meters and hypocrisy matters to them.

Many parents THINK that they are modeling, but they are subtly drilling. They set an example of sobriety, but they also call attention to it via boasting: "SEE how sober I am? SEE how sober Uncle Max is. YOU should be like that." That's drilling. Don't do it.

If you want your kids to become literary, read a lot -- so that they see you value reading (and DON'T lecture them about reading or suggest that they read instead of playing video games). Also, read TO them.

Most of the things we do, we do for social reasons, and when we're young, much of our social life involves our parents. So if you're reading to your kids, you're DOING something with them. They will associate reading with attention from a loved one. Again, DON'T make it into a lecture (We can spend time together, but only if it's doing something wholesome, like reading). And DON'T use it as a reward (or punishment): if you're very good, I'll read to you. Just do it because it's fun. (If it's not fun for you, you're in trouble, because your kids will probably pick up on that, even if you try to hide it.)

Model and interact. Don't drill, lecture, punish and reward.

My parents never forced me to do anything (unless safety or another person's happiness was involved). And they never sneered at any of my passions. If I wanted to read a comic book instead of a Great Work of Literature, they let me do so without judgement (they even went out of their way to buy me comic books when that was what I wanted). The message they sent me was "follow your passion."

But they also filled the house with classic novels, art books, great movies, etc. These weren't pushed on me. They were just available. Eventually I got bored with "Howard the Duck" and turned to "King Lear." I was stunned to discover, years later, how many of my friends HATED "King Lear," because they were forced to read it in school.

For most of us, school is a complete violation of the philosophy I outlined, above. It's all about drilling and lectures. Which is why school is, in general, damaging more than it is helpful.
posted by grumblebee at 11:06 AM on August 5, 2005

There have been studies of twins raised separately that seem to show that temperament and behavior is much more genetic (or at least inborn) than you'd expect. I recall reading about one set of twins who both kept very neat houses. When they were asked to explain how they both came to be so tidy, the first said, "Well, my mother is a real neat freak, how could I help but pick that up?" The second said, "Well, my mother is a real slob, how could I help but rebel against that?" My take is that there may not be any real way you can change preferences of this sort any more than you could stop a kid who likes baseball from liking baseball. At least not without cruel and unusual trauma.
posted by kindall at 11:09 AM on August 5, 2005

In graduate school, our child development professor emphasized that situations experienced in childhood being able to reliably predict future behavior as an adult are very rare. (I remember that "death of a parent during a child's early years" was one of these situations.) Situations experienced in early childhood affect different children differently. Some will emulate, some will rebel. And there are too many competing factors with parental behavior (i.e., culture, extended family, schooling, peer group, child's own personality, etc.) to be able to measure these things with much accuracy.

Bottom line, it appears to be easier to hypothesize backwards ("Jane behaves this way now because of what happened to her back then") than it would be to predict forwards.

I wish I could remember the specific citations and they might be out of date. This was in 1992.
posted by jeanmari at 11:10 AM on August 5, 2005

Rebellion does tend to be a "phase" unless you really make a serious effort at it. On the other hand, it's important to remember that everyone has two parents, and the one who is dominant in the relationship might not be the one who influenced you the most.

For example (and I know someone like this): let's say your mother is a very messy person, and as a result you grow up in an extremely messy environment. But your father, who you take after and emulate, has always been a very clean and organized person, he just never had the time and energy to actually work against your mother in keeping the house up to his standards. When you're on your own, you "rebel" against your former living standard, but you're really emulating a parent.
posted by dagnyscott at 11:20 AM on August 5, 2005

I think there's a strong generational nurturing element that slides through grandparents, parents, etc. Who knows, there might even be some kind of weird genetic correlate about tolerance for messiness, etc. There's certainly a complex interaction between the parents, the kids, and the environment.

In my personal and professional experience, I believe that kids have proclivities (temperments) that lead parents to treat them in particular ways. Some kids might be more fussy, or more curious, or more active, etc. Parents also have fantasies about what they want from a particular kid that lead them to treat kids in a particular way. Eric Ericson, the psychoanalyst said in a seminar once that over 90% of parenting is unconscious, and now that I've had kids, I believe it.

I think the motor of chid development is attachement, and a parent-child attachment/bond can be just as intense whether the bond centers about positive or negative affect -- nagging or praise. I think the parent and the child both sort of discover each other as they form an attachment.

You also need to consider the presence of siblings. My sense is that the new child has to find a way to fit in and claim a parent's attention in ways that are different from the ways any other sibs have.
posted by jasper411 at 11:25 AM on August 5, 2005

er, i sincerely hope this does not sound glib, but this is one of those questions that is insufferable hard to answer in such a format. There are whole courses and perhaps whole programs that deal with such issues. developmental psychology, environmental anthropology, eg.
good luck in your quest
posted by edgeways at 12:16 PM on August 5, 2005

i think it might have something to do with their own free will
posted by Satapher at 1:42 PM on August 5, 2005

i think this is definately a grey area that has both to do with how the child was nurtured as well as certain genetic aspects of the child's personality. and i agree with edgeway - too simplify it would be silly. there just is too much room for theories that could reason out why a child is more inclined to foster certain traits of their parents or to rebel against them. it definately is an interesting question though.
posted by rabbitmoon at 2:12 PM on August 5, 2005

Both my children are adopted, so this is an interesting question to me. Since there are no genetic connections - why does one of my kids have my sense of humor and another has my fastidiousness? I think it has nothing to do with me and everything to do with who they are. I believe they came as entire completed personalities and my influence is actually quite small. I did not believe this before I was a parent, but now I think I could be an ax murderer and my kids would just be who they are...nice people.
posted by trii at 3:53 PM on August 5, 2005

I think it may also have something to do with how you feel about your parents and how your relationship is like with them.

If there is a parent you don't get along with (for whatever reason), you'd be more likely to rebel against them, to not be like them. If you had a great relationship with one of your parents, you'd try to emulate them, try to make them proud.

The way you rebel and the issue of contention between you and your parents may or may not be related (for instance, you may rebel against your mother's neat-freakness by being messy but your biggest problem with her is her guilt-tripping).
posted by divabat at 5:45 PM on August 5, 2005

You might want to take a look at this ridiculously comprehensive website of Judith Rich Harris's work. She studies parent influence on child personality.

Scientists have shown, for example, that parents have little or no ability (other than by passing on their genes) to make their children into churchgoers, though they can influence which church they will go to, if they do go to one. Parents can try to produce bilingual children by using a foreign language at home, but unless the children have a chance to use that language outside the home, they will usually fail. Children end up with the language and accent of their peers, not of their parents. Parents can influence some things but not others. The effects of parenting, and of the environment more generally, do not have to remain a mystery or a dogma -- they can be investigated empirically. The results, however, may dismay those who have their own personal vision of how the human mind ought to work.
posted by painquale at 10:11 PM on August 5, 2005