Well?

yeah, i think there's some truth to that.
it isn't neccessarily a bad thing, if you had good parents.

quote:

Originally posted by ms. conception:
yeah, i think there's some truth to that.
it isn't neccessarily a bad thing, if you had good parents.

Yea it's not anything I'm too worried about but it still makes me wonder if people are born to repeat the same psychological patterns generation after generation because of the precedent set by their parents.

I've noticed how in other people they exhibit the same sort of flaws or negatives that their parents have and I sort of wonder if my best friends will all end up marrying and divorcing because that's how their parents ended up or something like that.

yeah, you have to make a pretty conscious effort to defeat those patterns. our parents are pretty much our only role models until we are at least school age and even beyond, i would think, until just before puberty. the kinds of examples they set are super important.

quote:

Originally posted by ms. conception:
yeah, you have to make a pretty conscious effort to defeat those patterns. our parents are pretty much our only role models until we are at least school age and even beyond, i would think, until just before puberty. the kinds of examples they set are super important.

That and there's generally one parent people model over much more than the other parent. I'm more like my dad while my sister is more like my mother.

It kind of creeps me out that people will actively seek out partners based on similar psychological traits in their parents. With my last girl friend I couldn't help but see some parallels between my relationship with her and my parent's relationship with each other.

I don't think it's a law of nature

quote:

Originally posted by ping kong:
I don't think it's a law of nature

Depends.

A lot of psychological traits are embedded in you through genetics. Scientists found evidence of this with two identical twins born at the same time that we're raised in different environments and had not met each other for the first time until adulthood and still had many personality traits that were too particular and too similar to point towards anything else.

I definitely think that environmental roles (who you're raised by, the types of friends you have, the place where you live) are a key factor in shaping the certain personality traits that become more dominant in a person but I think that everyone is born with a sort of set boundary of the type of person they're going to become.

That doesn't mean you'll become more like your parents

quote:

Originally posted by ping kong:
That doesn't mean you'll become more like your parents

It does mean that, as you mature and develop into an adult, you're likely to base your own patterns off of what you know, ie, how your parents acted when you were a kid. Your biological predisposition towards similar personality traits compared to one or both of your parents will only make it more likely that you will fall into their roles.

I think about this all the time. I'm not really there yet; at 21 I still have a ways to go before I'm the age my parents were when they had me. I think that's kind of the age most people naturally think of as "adulthood" because it's the age they remember the first adults in their lives as being. But I agree with ms c that I think it takes a lot of conscious effort to move your life along a different path than your parents took. Granted that I over-think just about everything, I'm always paying attention to the ways in which I think and act like my parents, and when I think that's okay, and when it presents itself as a red flag.

Environment shapes everybody, but consider that your most formative years are when you're very young and your parents probably have almost complete control over your environment. Think of it as learning a language; the first one comes naturally, but later on, you really have to work to learn the way languages require It's the same with developing certain traits and ingrained beliefs, and like it or not, if you don't study and work hard, you'll grow up pretty similar to mom and pop.

No

In the past few years, I've noticed it, and friends my age have noticed it for themselves as well.

Sometimes I don't mind that I'm becoming more like my parents, but at times its depressing. My parents have some issues that I'd like to avoid. I know its not necessarily set in stone, so we'll see about that.

quote:

Originally posted by Ingmar Bearman's Magic Lantern:
No

Always naysaying!

I'd say the clue to answering this question is in the word 'reproduction.' When we have kids, we're, well, reproducing ourselves, more or less. I get the impression most parents pretty much want their kids to imitate them, grow up like them, be them...

i find myself singing all the time. my cousin keeps telling me i'm turning into my mother. her mother used to sing all the time too. and it's a unique singing.. it's like...in the kitchen being an opera singer kinda thing.

but i'm ok with that.

I actually think that the older I've gotten the less like my mother I become. Her and I are so, so different. I'm assuming once I raise a child many of my mother's traits will show strongly in me. She was a mostly good mom to my brother and I, so I hope I do have similar parental techniques.

It's true for me, thank god. I can only hope I eventually get their sense of responsibility.

The only thing I don't want is their marriage.

yeah it happens. sometimes it just creeps up on you & you don't even see it coming & then one day you realize how much like your mother/father you really are. sometimes it can be a most unpleasant experience discovering this.

Yes, I'm turning into my mum. I have a vagina now.

I really hope not

Since they are both dead I believe that yes I will eventually become more like them.