Treat Your Children Well - Nevada City CA

Learn about a new study about genes and the environment. This information may be useful for Nevada City CA parents.

A new study demonstrates the interesting relationship between genes and environment. The study looked at genetic makeup in adolescent boys who hung out with "delinquent" peers. The idea was that "Being antisocial, using drugs, and criminal behavior is known to be linked to having delinquent peers. And belonging to a delinquent peer group is one of the strongest predictors of criminal behavior."

The study did indeed find a fairly consistent genetic variant in boys who hung out with "the wrong sort" (my words) from a "high-risk family environment". In other words, if a boy had the genetic variant and came from a high-risk family, he was more likely to have high-risk peers than a boy from a similar background without the genetic variant. If however, the boy grew up in a loving, nurturing environment with "high maternal engagement and warmth", the boy was not more likely to hang out with bums even if he had the genetic variant.

Conclusions in Nevada City CA

What this means for us is simple; we never know what genes our children come in with. We do know that if we make our children a priority, and by extension make our families and relationships a priority, we can often trump genes!