"Are traits transmitted from parents to children physical only or can they be cultural as well?" Explain

Essay by hills08 August 2004

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Many aspects of human behavior are inherited, these traits can be either physical or cultural: simple features like eye color, and complex processes such as language, temperament, and aggression. Heredity and environment interact in complex ways.

We may be genetically predisposed to learn from the environment in certain ways. That is, the ability to learn is inherited, but our environment determines what is learned.

Ethnicity is a powerful determinant in the development of identity. Since ethnic identity serves basic psychological needs, such as the sense of belongingness and of historical continuity, its importance in personal development should not be underestimated. Parent's values are manifested in specific ideas regarding appropriate child- rearing practices. Parents raise their children in response to their own cultural values. Different cultures result in different parental practices and attitudes.

Ethnicity is a powerful determinant in the development of identity. Since ethnic identity serves basic psychological needs, such as the sense of belongingness and of historical continuity, its importance in personal development should not be underestimated (McGoldrick & Giordano, 1996).

Ethnic identity development in childhood is highly dependent upon how and to what extent the culture's own norms and values are transmitted

from one generation to the next. The development of an individual personality, including its specific cultural traits, is molded on the close parent-child relationship in early childhood and later through the various psychological phases of childhood and adolescence. For children of ethnic minorities, the cultural struggle to survive, and the constant threat presented by the majority culture to traditional values, language, and epistemology, may complicate the socialization process. In such a predicament, it would be important to identify which values and traditions are so closely linked to the minority's own identity that they should be kept and nourished in contemporary child rearing, and which values have...