Do childhood experiences determine our adult personalities?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: Do childhood experiences determine our adult personalities?
Position1 of 2›: Yes, childhood experiences shape our personalities
Argument1 of 2›: Forced gender roles

How we are treated as children, in regards to our gender assigned at birth, shapes our personality and how we view the world.

The argument

The environment is everything that affects the individual aside from genes. There are many potential environmental influences that help shape our personality. These include the place we live and the people around us. Our experiences in our day to day life, as well as the people whom we associated with such as our family, friends, people in the school, in the church and the community as a whole, all influence our personality. People physically born male and female are socialized differently to some extent in all societies. They receive different messages from their parents and other adults as to what is appropriate for them to do in life. The social construct of gender determines how they are treated during childhood and well into adulthood. They are encouraged to prepare for their future in jobs fitting their gender. Males are typically allowed more freedom to experiment and participate in physically risky activities. Females are encouraged to learn how to do domestic tasks and to participate in child rearing by baby-sitting. If children do not follow these traditional paths, they are often labeled as marginal or even deviant. Females may be called “tomboys” and males may be ridiculed for not being sufficiently masculine.

Premises

[P1]Personality is shaped by environmental influences such as family, peers, and community expectations encountered in childhood. [P2] From childhood, societies socialize males and females differently, assigning distinct roles, freedoms, and expectations enforced through praise or ridicule. [P3] Children internalize these gendered messages as they develop, carrying them into adult behavior and identity. [C] Therefore, childhood experiences—particularly gender socialization—shape our adult personalities.

Counter-arguments

Gender socialisation shows childhood *influences* personality, but 'determine' claims far more than the evidence supports. Behavioural-genetic research consistently finds that a large share of adult personality variation is heritable, and — strikingly — that the shared family environment, the very socialisation the argument describes, explains rather little of why adult siblings differ. People also revise the gender expectations they were raised with as adults. Childhood experience is one important input among several, not the determining cause; influence is not determination.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting C] Evidence that heredity and non-shared factors weigh heavily in adult personality shows childhood socialisation shapes but does not determine who we become.