Good Parents And Bad Seeds

A sobering article from yesterday's NY Times, "Accepting That Good Parents May Plant Bad Seeds." From a parents' point of view, it's something of a counter-balance to yesterday's Warren Buffett video - if you heard that one as Gospel, this will be Law - and vice versa. The last couple lines, taken slightly out of context, strike me as containing a note of (gospel) freedom:

Our bent is to see misbehavior as psychopathology that needs treatment; there is no such thing as a bad person, just a sick one. But maybe this young man was just not a nice person.

For years, mental health professionals were trained to see children as mere products of their environment who were intrinsically good until influenced otherwise; where there is chronic bad behavior, there must be a bad parent behind it. But while I do not mean to let bad parents off the hook — sadly, there are all too many of them, from malignant to merely apathetic — the fact remains that perfectly decent parents can produce toxic children.

We marvel at the resilient child who survives the most toxic parents and home environment and goes on to a life of success. Yet the converse — the notion that some children might be the bad seeds of more or less decent parents — is hard to take.

It goes against the grain not just because it seems like such a grim and pessimistic judgment, but because it violates a prevailing social belief that people have a nearly limitless potential for change and self-improvement.

For better or worse, parents have limited power to influence their children. That is why they should not be so fast to take all the blame — or credit — for everything that their children become.