Nature vs nurture debate

For over a century there’s been a debate about the extent to which genetics or external influences, such as nutrition and comfort, influence a child’s growth and development. This is the so called nature versus nurture debate.

As an example, the nature argument might suggest that the ability to understand language is innate regardless of the environment a child finds themself growing up in, whereas the nurture argument would suggest that language ability is fully determined by the environment and all children could develop the same language abilities given the same circumstances.

A contemporary view of child development and behaviour now encompasses both aspects of this debate. It’s widely recognised that the complex and unique genetic makeup that each child has will predispose their development, abilities, health and behaviour in all areas of their life, but that this only provides a framework and is heavily modified by the physical and social environment of the child.

So in our language example, some children will be genetically predisposed to have better language abilities than others, but how these abilities develop and which children actually end up with better language abilities is largely down to the environment that a child grows up in.