“He is a doctor his kid will surely be a doctor!” Why have we adopted this stereotype in our lifestyles? What do you suggest nature or nurture? Let’s have a look on modern genetics which questions us that whether a child’s education totally depends upon its genetics makeup or is it environmentally influenced?
As we all know, parents and children share, most of their physiological as well as genetic makeup in order to find out variations in multiple genetic variants. We use this leading edge these days named PGS which is also called genetic risk score.
In order to check PGS we use weights which are set by Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) which assigned, weight to a set of Single Neuclotide Polymorphism Set (SNP’s) on the sample and then the side effects are studied on the trait of interest which are caused by markers and in 2016 PGS was performed to check educational attainment in children using data from 293,000 people.
According to a research to predict offspring’s years of education in a sample of 2517 twins and parents, it was found that within families the dizygotic twin with higher PGS is more likely to attain higher education. It was concluded that the parental genotype affects the child’s genotype yet it is independent of it’s own. For example if your educational attainment turns out to be 9.3 and then it gets affected by it’s parental genotype it therefore grows to 11.1.
Alas what an achievement! But hold on; parents genotype had an influence on child’s genetics makeup, but their own genotype is enhanced impototened by environment or nature in which they live. It is stated that parental Socio-Economic System (SES) linked to their Personal Response System (SESPRS) is higher, than SES of children will also be higher.
SES is measured by parents educational level, occupational prestiege and family property or poverty. Education is the lifeline for fuel efficient and stout of human society. It helps us to groom our personality making us confident, proficient and knowledgeable individuals.
Parents with high SES naturally have more exposure as well as resources which nurture and foster their status socially, financially, economically and optimistically. On the other hand those who are deficit and experience shortage of such things, they negatively affect family decisions concerning their children learning and development. So the impact of SESPRS of the parents affect the child exactly as much as their PGS for example the genetic makeup.
What is more authoritative Nature or Nurture? In a certain person plays a vital role in developing a person’s personality, it has always been a hot topic among scientists.
But a decode genetic team researched that the untransmitted alleles of the parents also affects the child in such a way that it can either become more authoritative or the environment provided gets influenced, it can turn either way, it varies from child to child and parent to parent.
It is a surprising fact that your genes may get affected or gets hidden by your environmental conditions or vice versa but as discussed earlier that socio-economic status of parents does play a great role in child’s years of education.
In another investigation, a data from 21,000 individuals was collected in which one of the parents were genotyped to find out the control of untransmitted genes on educational attainment and the results were shocking as those alleles had 30% affect out-turns, as the transmitted one’s did. So these analysis concluded that nature and nurture go hand by hand, and their surely exists a genetic basis for nurture.
These studies not only focused on educational attainment but also gives information about other traits like height e.t.c. It was also used to figure out about the maternal and paternal genetic scores have approximately equal effect on educational accomplishment but maternal polygenic score had greater effect on nutritional or health traits.
Well another test was conducted which speaks that the parent-child co-relation in education may reflect 1/6 genetic transmission and 5/6 social inheritance, so in order to measure offspring genotype there are two associations (1) genetic inheritance (2) social inheritance. We have already discussed a lot about parental genotype effecting child’s educational attainment and career and with all those results we have figured out that Nature( environment) also plays a very significant role.
In today’s world of technology each child is surrounded by various types of gadgets which distract them from studies.
Due to excess use of these devices our frontal cortex; a part of our brain releases a hormone called dopamine which is known for causing boredom and then as a result the child is no more interested in anything else no matter what your genetic score (PGS) is, depending on your interest as well.
For example, as mentioned above as well, a son of a doctor can be more interested towards sports rather than in medicine so our personal liking and disliking plays a major role in such situations. It’s true that we can find out PGS score with the help of parents genotype but the surroundings in which he/she is brought up along with his/her interests in their respective fields is the base for their educational career.
The nature of each child varies from other and as discussed earlier that SES plays a major part in it. An investigation states that children with lower SES have an average of 6; IQ at an age of 2 years than a child with higher SES backgrounds and at the age of 16 this difference almost tripled and this information was gained from observing 15000 children in UK, so we can say that home has a greater affect in comparison to school.
Yet we can conclude that better surroundings should be provided in order to take out the best from the genetics of the children, by providing them better heritability, better teachers so that it turns out to be an acceptable outcome.