Impact of Nature versus Nurture in the Development of a Child’s Personality

Psychologists argue if it is a child’s inborn characteristics or the way he is raised that makes the most impact on his personality. There are two cases of interest presented in this novel, both of which speak to the fact that children raised by the same parents can grow up to be completely different individuals. Both the Blair children and the Vincent children show that even when children are raised by the same parents in the same environment, they can exhibit different personalities.

James, who is the most temperamentally different from his siblings, also looks different from his brothers and sister. Bill noticed early on that James was the first of his four offspring that a person looking at him could tell decisively that he was a boy, even when James was an...