Assignment:
The Childhood Development Nature vs. Nurture Debate Continues
Nature versus nurture has been debated for hundreds of years. It is interesting to note that not only has the debate been a long one, the positions have shifted over the years as new research seems to shed additional light on the topic.
Essentially the issue is the same however. One camp claims that the greatest impact on child development is nature. We are essentially preprogrammed with most of our basic information at conception. Our height, weight, IQ, likes and dislikes, fears and joys, susceptibility to certain diseases, our eyesight and sexual orientation are all predetermined and basically set. After we are born our environment (nurture) takes these preset and nearly fixed predispositions and molds them to a small degree.