Video Transcript

Emily: They’re the reason we’re alive. They taught us most of what we know about life. They play a big role in forming the people we are today. We all know parents are important. But just how impactful are they?

Parents, or primary caregivers, aren’t just there for their contributions to our biology and genetics, but they also shape us in so many other ways. Our parents are the only relationship we experience on earth where someone both loves us as their own child and has direct authority over and responsibility for us. This relationship really changes us. But how deeply?

One answer comes from a theory that is one of the most well-documented psychological studies of all time. Developed by John Bowlby and later extended by Mary Ainsworth, Attachment Theory is one of the most reliable relational theories in psychology. And this theory has everything to do with how our parents influence our development— consciously or unconsciously—within the first few years of our lives.  

One of the strongest ideas from Attachment Theory is the idea that the early experiences of children with their parents influence future behavior in other relationships. Parent-child relationships tend to follow key patterns that Bowlby coined as “attachment styles.” The research conducted on Attachment Theory has offered strong evidence that the way parents interact with their child within the first few years of his or her life can have life-long consequences on how this child naturally and unconsciously responds to relationship dynamics, even physiologically, later in life..An adult’s “attachment styles” could be predicted based on an individual’s experience of his or her parents early on in life.

So parent-child relationships are different from all other relationships we experience. And this makes sense, because our parents are there for the period where our brains develop faster than any other time in our lives – from in utero to age five. 

Parents can influence a child’s self-identity and self-esteem long into their teenage and adult years. Because kids aren’t just learning about their world around them, but also the world within them. Children who have faced adversity but had supportive parents often demonstrate higher levels of resilience. And evidence suggests that strong parent-child relationship can act as a buffer against life’s challenges. Long-term studies tracking individuals from childhood to adulthood consistently find correlation between positive parent-child relationships and various positive life outcomes.

The long debated nature vs. nurture argument among scientists, academics, and philosophers underscores the complex influences of genetics AND environment in human development. While our nature, or genetic factors, provides a foundation, the role of parents significantly shapes a person’s emotional, cognitive, and social development. And the “nurture” we receive as a child affects our biology by changing the way our brains grow. So it’s almost impossible to separate nature from nurture; but either way, nurture plays a key role. 

Nothing replaces the parent-child relationship and its influences on how we develop and grow into adults. If you’re setting out to change the world, instead of focusing on things far from home, why not look at this relationship within your own family: that with your parents?

Which raises an important question: if this relationship does so much to form the adult persons we become, how can we honor and invest in this relationship throughout our lives?