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In considering “Nature versus Nurture” and adoption, we find a GENEALOGY PARADOX. From the perspective of an adoptee I have found that NATURE outweighs NURTURE by some degree! The paradox comes in the fact that while our adoptive parents raise us, our biological ancestry does play a significant and inescapable role in who we are. Let’s explore that concept.
Who Are Your Parents?
There’s an old saying that says: “you can choose your friends, but family is in the stars!” What it means is that while we can choose who we associate with on a relationship level (relationships come and go), you have NO control over who your parents are and what lies beneath your family history!
But when I said “parents,” who did I mean? Your adoptive parents or your biological parents?
While an adoptee can choose neither his or her adoptive or biological parents, one inevitably gets a sense growing up that we are somehow different. I experienced that at a very young age. Adoptees often become acute observers of humanity because of growing up within this paradox. For us it’s not a scientific debate to opine over, it’s our reality.
A-Parents Versus B-Parents
When an adoptee realizes that we have both adoptive parents (A-Parents) and biological parents (B-Parents), it kinda messes with your head, to be honest. While there are many ways to define PARENTS, both inclusively and exclusively, when it comes to acknowledging which has contributed more to who you are as a person, it can be a very emotional, and even irrational, conversation for some.
Let’s try and make that a bit more logical and discursive. We can do that by establishing a few definitions. Adoptive Parents = NURTURE. Biological Parents = NATURE. To me, Biological Parents also equal GENEALOGY – although it is your choice to either agree or disagree with that statement. So, within the nature versus nurture and genealogy paradox, we can:
- Acknowledge BOTH A-Parents and B-Parents
- Acknowledge ONLY A-Parents
- Acknowledge ONLY B-Parents
- Acknowledge NONE
My position is that we cannot escape from our ancestral past! It’s not just a part of us, it is equal to who we are. The truth is that we all occupy a different position when it comes to our own family history. Some children don’t care to know where they come from while others have an unstoppable drive to research and find out where all of their ancestors came from and the stories that connect us to our past.
The “Nature versus Nurture” Debate
What a wonderfully powerful dichotomy! It has point and counterpoint, has science, it has humanism, it even has alliteration! NATURE VERSUS NURTURE. According to this Darwinian question: “which is a more powerful factor in the outcome of a child’s personality, nature or nurture?” Actually, it was Francis Galton who first coined the term in his publication “The English Men of Science” in 1874 (AbeBooks link).
NATURE represents our genetics, our ancestry, our family history and all of the inherited traits that we supposedly accumulate over time and generations. NURTURE represents the environment in which we are raised.
However, when it comes to nature versus nurture and adoption, which is stronger? Which has a more powerful pull on our personalities and predilections toward the things we like, dislike, and how we act towards others? Well I definitely have something to say about that.
Why Nature is Stronger than Nurture in Genealogy
As an adopted child, raised over 4,000 miles away from where my birth family is from, my life is the classic tome of nature versus nurture and adoption! If I were able to contribute to this scientific discussion in any meaningful way, I would say that NATURE is definitely stronger than NURTURE.
I never realized why I do half the things I do until I found my birth parents and started researching my family history.
The power of family history to change your life comes in the deeper understanding of yourself in relation to those that came before you. By meeting your ancestors through research, you are allowed to travel in a time capsule and embrace the family history that they created for you.
My ancestors were farmers from fairly remote places. They migrated, built farms, prospered, raised large families and participated in the history of our Nation. The more I get to know them, the more I learn about myself.
I had always carried around a frenetic sense of self before I found my birth family. The nature I was born with was usually at odds with the nurture that I had received growing up. That’s not to say I had a bad upbringing, I didn’t; I have a wonderful adoptive family.
However, I never saw eye-to-eye with them on a lot of things. They love the city, I love the country. They’re not much into joking around, I’m always horsing around. They aren’t into books, I’m virtually obsessed by them. They could give a hoot about the UK, I’ve been a lifelong Anglophile.
It finally put all the pieces together for me in terms of why there was so much conflict in my life with regards to the “nature versus nurture and adoption” existential question. Now that I know where my family history comes from, it’s transformed me in ways that many long to be transformed.
Knowing my family history has transformed my life because it has answered all of the questions for me and confirmed within me the identity I always knew I had. The answer to all my questions of who I am and why I like and dislike the things I do came from NATURE, that is, my GENEALOGY!
There have been countless times in my research where I’ve laughed to myself saying, “that’s where I get that from!” or “now I know why I’m like that!” It’s such an amazing thing to understand and to share with the next generations of our family. Meeting my biological family has also reinforced those feelings because they’ve turned feelings into facts.
Genealogy is the Key to Answering the Nature Versus Nurture and Adoption Question
Getting to know your genealogy will naturally come with both the good and bad, the positive and the negative. The important part is to realize that our place is not to judge or transpose our values on the values of our ancestors’ time, but to simply accept things as they were.
That’s the only caveat to doing genealogy research: finding out things you may not have wanted to find. However, you’ll come to realize that eventually those things will not be as dramatic as you first experienced. For instance, I remember finding out that my great grandmother came from Alabama and settled in Texas and I thought: “wow, I know nothing about Alabama!” I eventually came to realize that my Alabama line really has contributed a lot to the person I am, even that far back in time.
There were other way more shocking moments in my research; however, this example is neat because the more I dug into my Alabama roots, the more I was amazed by the fact that my family were among the first to claim land patents in Fayette County, fought in the War of 1812, fought in the Civil War, and even founded their own town. How cool is that? I’m super proud of my Bama roots.
Family history, via the Nature versus Nurture and adoption question, has the power to change your life in so many ways, the best ways are the ones you haven’t discovered yet.
Get out and start researching, digging, asking questions of elders that are still alive, join online communities that can help and encourage you in your quest. The search for knowledge and reverence for the past is in our DNA. We are extremely fortunate to be living in this day and age where genealogical knowledge is readily available and cost effective; our family history is just waiting for us to reconnect with it.
We need to preserve our stories for the next generation. We need to bring alive the history part of “family history” and instill in our children who they are and where they come from. Our great American and European histories are about values, and values are what we should want future family historians to know about us.
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Loved this article & warms my heart the journey you’ve been on!! I particularly identify with your statement “The important part is to realize that our place is not to judge or transpose our values on the values of our ancestors’ time, but to simply accept things as they were.” While not an adoptee, I wrestled many times with the “why” of knowing so very little of my family history on both sides. Why as a child was I such a short distance from many 2nd cousins I knew nothing about? Were we the “black sheep” of the family? Why didn’t I know I was related to most of the families in our small farming community? Why did no family member take me to visit the graves of those most precious who’d gone before us? Especially the ones buried right under my nose in our little town! I wondered for years why I love certain music genres, where those funny expressions came from that were often used by my parents & grandparents. Why I yearned to be outdoors digging in the earth…..the list goes on. As my family tree branched out over the years & DNA testing came along, the NATURE of myself has also been revealed, answering some of my questions.
Thank you so much for your kind words! I’m glad that even in the larger context of genealogy, certain questions inevitably get answered. I guess one could replace “adoptee” with “person who does not know their genealogy” and the point of the article still make sense! Thank you for reminding me of that 🙂