Nature vs Nurture

It’s the age old question right up there with the chicken and the egg, are our behaviors determined more by our natural side, or from the nurturing of others?

I first encountered this question in a college philosophy class, long before learning I was adopted. I believed even then that it had to be nature, others couldn’t influence your core self.

Growing up, my mother and I could not have been two more different people. Her life revolved around being a wife and taking care of her home. Our house was always spotless, you’d never know two smokers, a kid and a dog lived there. My mother prided herself on dusting her walls once a week.

By the age of 10 I knew this was not the life for me. I still wanted to be female and wanted to have children but I wanted to work and have an important job. My husband would stay home and raise the kids and do the laundry, etc. This was pretty radical thinking for a 10 year old in 1972!

I’ve been pretty lucky that I met a special guy almost 20 years ago and he fulfilled my dream (while often also working nights!).

I’ve had several careers, paralegal, involved in real estate, teacher, etc., but I always loved my real estate jobs.

A few years ago I got lucky enough to track down my birth family and after talking to my sisters and cousins some amazing things jumped out at me.

My birth mother and I led amazingly similar lives. We both married at 17 to get out of our parents homes. We both had our first child a year later. She killed her first husband, I so should have killed mine 😉 Despite remarrying she worked all the time. And she loved real estate….

I got to talk to my next oldest sister Judi. She’s two years older than me and we have different fathers. In the first ten minutes of talking we were remarking on how alike we are, in an hour we were finishing each other’s sentences.

My adoptive mother has known me my whole life and never is even on the same page as I am, much less sentence.

In my book there is no question, it’s nature all the way 😉