So, approximately 5% of adult personality is dependent on parenting style in current populations in the developed world. That’s pretty close to zero.
I think glennonymous is taking that result too far, though: parental abuse is pretty uncommon, and so you can’t expect the 5% number also applies to parental abuse- abuse, as it is atypical, should have an effect different from the population mean, whereas non-abuse, as it is typical, should be hard to distinguish from the population mean.
A better way to put it is that the difference between great parenting and mediocre parenting appears small, especially compared to the difference between great genes and mediocre genes and the difference between great peers and mediocre peers.
As other commenters have pointed out, that 5% figure seems like it could be adequately explained by modern developed-world kids having close to 95% of their time locked up in school, ‘extracurricular activities,’ or sleep, none of which involve parental interaction.
5% of non-sleep time is 48 minutes a day. Do you think that’s a good estimate of the amount of time children spend around their parents? It also seems likely that parents would have a disproportionately large impact compared to their share of the time- among other things, their personalities will be mostly constant whereas a rapidly changing set of peers or teachers would have a wide range of personalities.
(About 50% is heredity, and so if we assume all of the rest is effects by other people, we could go up to 10%- 96 minutes- but I think the best explanation is low variation among parenting styles masking the impact that parenting style has on children. That doesn’t have to mean there’s much room for benefit above a mediocre style, that there’s room for detriment below mediocre would be enough).
So, approximately 5% of adult personality is dependent on parenting style in current populations in the developed world. That’s pretty close to zero.
I think glennonymous is taking that result too far, though: parental abuse is pretty uncommon, and so you can’t expect the 5% number also applies to parental abuse- abuse, as it is atypical, should have an effect different from the population mean, whereas non-abuse, as it is typical, should be hard to distinguish from the population mean.
A better way to put it is that the difference between great parenting and mediocre parenting appears small, especially compared to the difference between great genes and mediocre genes and the difference between great peers and mediocre peers.
As other commenters have pointed out, that 5% figure seems like it could be adequately explained by modern developed-world kids having close to 95% of their time locked up in school, ‘extracurricular activities,’ or sleep, none of which involve parental interaction.
5% of non-sleep time is 48 minutes a day. Do you think that’s a good estimate of the amount of time children spend around their parents? It also seems likely that parents would have a disproportionately large impact compared to their share of the time- among other things, their personalities will be mostly constant whereas a rapidly changing set of peers or teachers would have a wide range of personalities.
(About 50% is heredity, and so if we assume all of the rest is effects by other people, we could go up to 10%- 96 minutes- but I think the best explanation is low variation among parenting styles masking the impact that parenting style has on children. That doesn’t have to mean there’s much room for benefit above a mediocre style, that there’s room for detriment below mediocre would be enough).
Low variation among parenting styles is a better way to phrase what I meant by extracurriculars.