Why Children Turn Out the Way They do?

One evening my husband came home from work with this book "The Nurture Assumption" in his hand. He told me this is a wonderful book with arguments based on researches which overturn a general concept: a child's personality is shaped or modified by the child's parents. Even though he is a fast reader, I don't think he has gone that far to the paragraphs about how the child's personality is shaped. In parenting he believes in genetics and least effort, yet I believe in education. Here I have to clarify; least effort is not equal to respect and education doesn't mean control. Therefore, I decide to finish this book on the top of the pile of my parenting book collection to find out where I am. Later I will finish more and post them.

First, I am very touched by a poetry quoted from Gibran, because it is exactly my belief in parenthood:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

-Kahlil Gibran