TA Snippets - No 4 - The Influence of Parents

The nature/nurture debate has been an ongoing consideration for professionals working with individuals psychological problems. For the majority of counsellors and psychotherapists the emphasis is upon people's past and therefore they tend to focus on the nurture side of the debate. And now, with recent advances in neuroscience there is an increasing body of support for the importance of nurture in influencing children's mental development.

In one sense we can never get away from the influence of nature, it is through our evolution and genetics that we have the physical and perceptual systems through which we meet the world. On the other hand, recent studies have shown that it is the parental (or care-giving) environment that help shape a child's brain structures, how they learn to manage stress, and emotion, which goes to influence their behaviour.

Good books on this subject are "Why Love Matters? by Sue Gerhardt" and "What Every Parent Needs to Know by Margot Sunderland".  

Mark Head   

March 2011