Should parents be accountable for their children's choices?

What role does genetics play in a child’s personality? And is their behaviour symptomatic to their parents’ traits? The psychology of behaviour encompasses two main traits: NATURE AND NURTURE’. 

NATURE:

Nature is the traits we directly inherit from our parents; our physical features like our eye and skin colour, our height, etc.: these are predisposed in our DNA. Then there are our innate features like our personalities and talents, which, arguably, also originates from our parents. These may explain why certain traits are predominately witnessed in one particular family and not the other. Have you realised for instance, that there is a family where almost every member has a talent for singing? Similarly, there are also families that are full of actors, businessmen, drunks, kind-heartedness, thieves, etc. 

It is important to differentiate PERSONALITIES / TALENTS from GENETICS / DNA. Whiles DNA is associated with our genes, personalities/talents may be copied, inherited or passed on.

For example,

? If a parent always sends their child to buy cigarettes for them, the child may one day try smoking one to see how it feels; then bingo, s/he’s become a smoker.

? If a parent is promiscuous, their child may think that is cool and may grow up to follow suit. 

These are behaviours COPIED and not INHERITED.

It’s evidently clear that children do ‘copy what they see’ and mostly mirror their parents. My 16-year-old son (who is very close to me) for example, is my twinnie: we have almost the same personality, whilst my 18-year-old daughter (very close to her dad) is just like her father: very reserved, and yet, very principled. Similar characteristics by virtue of association.

NURTURE:

Unlike birds who are programmed to sing, human beings must be taught to speak. They must be taught everything they know. The environment a child grows in also have a massive impact on them; in the way, they choose to speak, dress and behave. Of course, a child can grow up with the Pope at the Vatican and still become, for example, an armed robber. Whilst another child growing up in a slum neighbourhood can turn out to become a priest.

 “We can give our children all the training in the world, but what they grow up to become is in their own hands: they find their own path”.

Notwithstanding, the possibility of, for example, a millionaire’s son, growing up to become an armed-robber is arguably slim compared to a child from a disadvantaged background struggling to survive. 

The environment which a child grows in, in terms of their circle of friends, the influence of peer pressure, the exposure to anti-social behaviour, single-parenting household, permissive culture, deprived neighbourhood, etc, can impact massively on a child’s behaviour. 

So, this brings us back to our topic: "should parents be held accountable for their child/ren’s behaviour?"

I do not subscribe to the Biblical assertion that “our ancestors have sinned and are no more, and we bear their punishment” Lamentations 5:7. I believe we must all be accountable for our own deeds. It is unfair to judge children based on their parent’s choices, and vice versa. 

But having said that, parents must strive to become the example they want their children to be; because the moral ramification of our children’s choices affect us: whether we accept it or not. Children also, in addition, suffer the stigmatization/repercussions, and/or the praise that comes from the kindness, generosity or wickedness of their parents. And vice versa. 

If Mother Teresa was to have had children, society may never view her children and the children of Adolf Hitler with the same lens.