Memory Lane
Some old pre-Blogspot.com posts, recycled.
A cute prequel to this article:
It was only when Mom said "here, take this fifty and take your brother outta the house and get him lunch and whatever else he wants while we get his surprise birthday party ready" that I realised I probably wasn't the favourite twin...
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Our Parents, Our Genes, My Ass...
First, a little disclaimer. I haven't read Mr. James' book "They F*** You Up: how to survive family life" but I have listened to him speaking about his book and I feel that even before I read the book, I have issues with his claims.
Heard on Hack, a Triple J current affairs show: an interview with an author (Oliver James) who wrote that book, and he seemed to claim in the interview that family is the major (no, the only, judging from his words on air) thing which shapes how you develop and what you become. He claims studies of twins separated at birth which showed that they developed remarkably coincindent lives despite being raised in different family environments, are flawed and wrong, that genes are irrelevant.
His claim is that the coincidences are just that - coincidences - and that it's down to the fact that societies the world over are very similar that such coincidences happen, and that in fact any two people will be able to find a similar "remarkable" string of coincidences. To that, I say "bullshit." Sorry, but there are rules for claiming things like that mate and you are onto something, but it's not rigorous proof... Have you actually TESTED any groups of "any two" people to prove your claim?
He also claims that parents treat identical twins differently to differentiate them, and that non-identical (i.e. male/female) twins are treated more similarly than identical twins. He claims that primacy in the family (i.e. birth order) sets a lot of the character traits of a person, and to that I also say "bullshit." I mean, there are some roles that are thrust on a person by reason of primacy but I know as many families where the second or third or youngest child becomes the carer, or the firstborn the attention-seeker. It's what you are, and that comes only partly from how you're treated and much more from what you are to start with.
As to treating identical twins differently to differentiate them, or non-identical twins more identically to normalise them... I have met only a few sets of identical twins, and of all of those, both could finish each other's sentences, and in fact acted like twins. So even if the parents did treat them differently, it didn't alter their development all that much. I mean, maybe if they'd named one child Angel and the other one Shithead, then *maybe* that might make a difference - but so far Oliver is scoring very poorly... And those non-identical twins, despite the parents dressing them the same and feeding them the same - hey they still grew up as a brother and sister and the parents didn't manage to change the sex or gender of either child, and one still developed breasts and the other a deep voice and body hair... So yeah, "bullshit" is still the word...
Another great thing to claim on air was that a "rather neat study" proved that we are more likely to take a mate who is similar to our opposite gender parent, and he quotes studies on families where a child of black and white mixed marriages is more likely to do as predicted, even at the second marriage. That is, the sons of a family where Mum was black were more likely to marry a black woman, even second time around. He says that it's because we are treated differently by the parents and this breeds more sympathy in one relationship than the other, so we tend to be attracted to the person who is representative of our opposite sex, more attractive, parent. Again I have to say "bullshit" - only this time with even more emphasis.
How about emulating the parent you have most empathy with instead? I happen to know that while I, like any small boy, loved my mum very much, I also knew all along that she was an alcoholic and always felt more empathy for my father, who went through rather a lot for we children. By the criterion of this super social hacker then, I should therefore be married to another guy. But even if mum had been my number one soulmate ideal stereotype, I'd now be living with a small, brunette, slightly neurotic Germanic woman. In fact I live with a more buxom and fuller figured woman who is of english extraction. And my last partner before that was a buxom redhead, while the partner before that was a slightly-built blonde. So "bullshit" mate, "bullshit..."
Hell, just gay people in general put paid to THAT little claim, right there. If Oliver James' claims hold true then how come there are people who are gay? According to his theory that parenting (being so *terribly* unbalanced and abnormal compared to the "gool old days" of parenting, whatever they might be) is responsible for these predispositions, there should be a change in the population one way or the other, yet homosexuality has been around for a long long time...
Also, it has now been observed there's an actual brain difference in homosexual sheep, and reasons to believe that the same holds true for human brains as well. Apparently the difference is something the sheep are born with, i.e. it's in their genetic makeup. So is James in fact claiming that the way you bring up your kids will alter the makeup of their brains, and their genetic material too? Can modern sheep be "worse parents" than sheep a few hundred years ago, or can we just accept that homosexuality is a part of the normal spectrum of behaviours and some individuals can be born predisposed by genetic traits to be so? Again, I have to let out a resounding "BULLSHIT" to Mr James' claims.
I'd like to see Mr James' tests and results for claiming that "there are as many coincidences in non-twin people's lives as there are in twins' lives" or however he phrased that, not just his derision of the tests done on separated identical twins. Provide some substantiation of your claims.
I'd also like to see some controlled tests that prove that genetics does not predispose one to certain illnesses, defects, and personality traits. I'd also like to see the proof that parenting overcomes all those predispositions - that parents of a teenage child who has suicided due to having been born with a predisposition to depression can comfort themselves with the thought that they are entirely to blame, and if only they'd loved their child more and parented it more "properly" then somehow that genetic trait would have magically fixed itself.
Shame James, shame... There are equal portions of biology and sociology that go to make up what one is, and it borders on zealotism to claim otherwise...
These are random blog posts I recently rescued from a text dump of my earliest recorded blog posts from Ye Good Ole Days of writing stuff in Notepad and using some weird software that basically uploaded your entire blog every time you added a new article or edited an old one.
I'm shamelessly adding that little mini-banner graphic with links for you to donate, check my newsletter site, and generally get more entangled in my weird world.
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