A Review of David Cohen's "Where did That Child Come From!"

[James Brody]

A Review of David Cohen's Where Did THAT Child Come From!

Out of the Blue: Depression and Human Nature (1994) described depression as a function of biological and evolutionary variables. Cohen's Stranger in the Nest: Do Parents Really Determine a Child's Personality, Intelligence, or Character? (1999) argued, first, that genetic and other biological influences are more powerful than most have imagined; second, that parental influence is much less powerful; and third, that the influence of nature and nurture can lead to surprising, unpredictable, psychological developments. Where Did THAT Child Come From! is a miniature of "Stranger" and "Blue" and pitches their argument to a mothers who buy books: most of children's development springs from inner sources.

Cohen argues for less parental guilt about children's outcomes. He is, however, short on specifics about what parents actually accomplish. That is, he builds on a foundation that a few scientists recognize but doesn't put up much of a structure for wanderers to occupy. This is a loss: genes probably contribute to an openness to genetic thinking just as has been demonstrated for religiosity and if so, then we can expect one-third of the readers to hate the concepts, one third to love them, and the remaining third to believe whatever is believed next door.
It's easy enough, however, to borrow an edifice and a little grandeur for Cohen's ideas from evo-devo writings: human phylogeny and ontogeny are closely parallel, both are exploratory systems that rest on duplication, variation, and bidirectional swaps between creatures and their physical and social conditions (Raff, 1996; Gerhart & Kirschner, 1998; Odling-Smee et al, 2003; Richerson & Boyd, 2005). Calluses, muscles, neurons, immune systems, angiogenesis, cardiac fitness, and skeletal density all change in response to demand. So do skills that we discover or adopt whether as individuals or societies and whether in science or in the general culture. Disuse and illness, on the other hand, fuel apoptosis, atrophy, osteoporosis, and, possibly, suicide. Parents are an exploratory system, an extended nest, a wealthy pair of gorillas who respond to smiles and frowns from their child, who defend their decorticate invader from critics while also trying to change his nest in ways that suit him. The alien first takes over mother's glucose and blood pressure and next, her car keys and life savings!

Whether pendulums, runners, or teens, clumps of similar things sync together! (See Strogatz, 2003.) Clusters of similar events allow specialization and attention to detail. Even humans make clusters that respond very sensitively to local conditions and have the same functions as the clusters made by neurons, termites, and other members of emergent systems. Given the 50% genetic identity of parents and children, parents (themselves a 50-50 tiled edifice) will first offer their own satisfiers and punishments and, at least half the time, their choices work. For example, an adolescent male whom I know complained of boredom. His father remembered collecting old bottles from a local stream and selling them. The youngster immediately adopted his father's past hobby but the kid amplified both dad's zeal and earnings when he joined eBay. Cohen (1999, p. 99) offers a similar story in "Linda," who at age 40, met her natural father. They both liked trails and museums, painted similar scenes, arranged their fireplace mantels in a similar manner, had pets named "Winston," and hated peanuts or chocolate but loved Snickers bars. Thus, the phenomena so well documented for identical twins also characterize singletons of different generations.

Cohen, however, is correct that we cannot yet predict at birth the trajectory of an infant and our current understanding allows explanation more than prediction, explanations that may be little more than stories. But every infant also becomes an exploratory system when he announces his preferences or responds to our exposing him to one set of experiences but not another. For example, my passive father was a hunter, my mother nagged him into taking me along. We sat on stumps in a Georgia swamp from 3 am until 7 am. He waited motionless for a deer but I squirmed and waited for some heat, a place to pee, and something to do. He never had to take me again but he and my mother bought me lots of paper, crayons, and books that still keep me busy. For the time being, these first declarations are easier to extrapolate than the squiggles on a DNA scan. Again: respond, repeat, vary, and amplify (See Roberts and Sherratt, 1998.)

Bottom Lines

Children train parents and have done so for millions of years before there were psychologists. Know the behavioral history of your parents and grandparents. And experiment with new settings for talents that might have been and that might still be. Three generations of horse-thieves warn against stable jobs but might encourage that of a jockey who can be watched by 30,000 people when he rides fast! Genes and army career for a Missouri farm boy led him to a desk in the Adjutant General (personnel) for 25 of his 30 years and editorships for many military publications. That package from Missouri eventually produced a former state employee psychologist who now sketches his fantasies on Behavior.net. I do merely what my father did but with more choices.

Meanwhile, Cohen has the talent and concepts to become a tipping point. He applies to children the truths that also apply to adults and might have more success if he addressed adults less obliquely. Each of us, adult or child, is a surprise most in our future tense but less so in present or past. And Cohen would probably agree that most actions that we take, most choices that we make, were anticipated by one of our parents or grandparents. Each of us is an experiment in which the things that already worked are repeated but with small variations. Each of us explores, matching what we have and where we find ourselves, each of us spins a web but in ways more constrained* than arbitrary, each of us is one of selection's children...
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*Gould (2002) used "constrained" as a creative variable, one that encouraged not only limits but also goals. Not sure that his usage will ever catch on.

References:

Bouchard, T. J., Lykken, D.T., McGue, M., Segal, N.L., & Tellegen, A. (1990) Sources of human psychological differences: The Minnesota study of twins reared apart. Science, 250: 223-228.
Bouchard, T. J., Lykken, D., Tellegen, A., & McGue, M. (1996) Genes, Drives, Environment, and Experience. Chapter 1 in C.P. Benbow & D. Lubinski (Eds.) Intellectual Talent: Psychometric and Social Issues. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, pp. 5-43.
Cohen, D. (1994) Out of the Blue: Depression and Human Nature. NY: Norton.
Cohen, D. (1999) Stranger in the Nest: Do Parents Really Shape Their Child's Personality, Intelligence, or Character? NY: Wiley.
Cohen, D. (2003) Where Did THAT Child Come From? Springfield, IL: Octavo Press.
Gerhart, John & Kirschner, Marc (1997) Cells, Embryos, and Evolution. Malden, MA: Blackwell. (Difficult but has good material on exploratory systems.)
Gould, S. (2002) The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Belknap.
Jacob, F. (1973) The Logic of Life: A History of Heredity. NY: Pantheon.
Jacob, F. (1998) Of Flies, Mice, and Men. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (a delightful set of essays on the impact of modular thinking on biology)
Kirschner, M. & Gerhart, J. (1998) Perspective: Evolvability. Proceedings National Academy of Science. 95(15), 8420-8427. (A good continuation of their text.)
Lykken, D. (1998) The genetics of genius. In A. Steptoe (Ed.) Genius and the Mind: Studies of Creativity and Temperament. NY: Oxford, pp. 15-38.
Lykken, DT, McGue, M, Tellegen, A, & Bouchard, TJ (1992) Emergenesis: Genetic traits that may not run in families. American Psychologist, 47(12) 1565-1577.
Odling-Smee F.J., Laland, K.N., & Feldman, M.W. (2003) Niche Construction. The Neglected Process in Evolution. Monographs in Population Biology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Raff, Rudolf (1996) The Shape of Life. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. (Raff describes strategies for hox genes that apply to parents! A wonderful collage of stories and data.)
Richerson, Peter, & Boyd, Robert (2005) Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Roberts, G. & Sherratt, T. (1998) Development of cooperative relationships through increasing investment. Nature, 394, 175-179. (A strategy often superior to tit-for-tat: if you win, raise your ante!)
Strogatz, S. (2003) Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order. NY: Hyperion.
Weiner, J. (1999) Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior. NY: Knopf (Tells similar anecdotes as Cohen but in the context of work done in fly labs!)
West-Eberhard, M. (1998) Evolution in the light of developmental and cell biology, and vice versa. Proceedings National Academy of Science. 95: 8417-8419.

Copyright, 2005, James Brody, all rights reserved