Mary Lenz

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Mom and Dad can install all the behavioral software they want in a child's apparently receptive little brain. But from personality traits to career path, outcomes depend much more than most people believe on the hardware the child arrives with from the factory.

That is the message from Dr. David B. Cohen, a professor at the UT Austin department of psychology.

"Parents need to lighten up," Cohen said. "Parent blaming is mostly baloney."

Cohen's latest book, Stranger in the Nest: Do Parents Really Shape Their Child's Personality, Intelligence or Character? is based on an extensive review of recent research on two biological influences -- genes and the events of pregnancy. Cohen has been a UT Austin faculty member since 1969. He earned his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan.

"The scientific evidence is clear. A child's personality, intelligence and character are rooted in the genes and what happens during prenatal development," Cohen said. "Inborn potentials can trump parental influence by manifesting themselves in such unexpected ways that your child may seem like a perfect stranger."

Still, the TV talk shows regularly feature psychiatrists explaining why mass murderers, drug abusers or neurotics can lay the blame at Mommy's door.

Cohen said the problem with this view is that it cannot explain "the juvenile delinquent from a troubled family who settles down to a married life, becoming a responsible parent and employee. And, how do we explain the child of law-abiding parents who winds up stealing cars?

"To remedy self-destructive parent-blaming, we parents must come to appreciate the limits of our influence."

Cohen said parents -- and the finger-pointing talk show gurus -- need to face the fact that a child simply is not a miniature version of Mom or Dad to be molded like so much Play-Doh. Instead, a kid is a unique combination of 50 percent of the genes of each parent, mixed at random and steeped in a prenatal stew of hormones and events that make each pregnancy different.

"Each kid comes into the world with his own agenda and that's good, because you have yours as well," Cohen said. "If our children really could be anything we wanted them to be, we, too, could be anything our parents wanted. That's a notion we typically reject as offensive and false."

Cohen finds especially intriguing evidence on the side of heredity in research on twins growing up in both biological and adoptive families.

The real-life stories of twins separated at birth are startling. When it comes to some traits and talents, identical twins turn out to be just as similar whether they are reared apart or reared in the same household.

Extensive research on twins described in the book indicates that biology influences everything from right or left-handedness to hobbies, choices in names of pets, compulsions, obsessions, addiction to smoking, pre-disposition to mental illness and the ability to demonstrate resourcefulness in threatening or otherwise stressful circumstances.

Identical twins can display striking similarities in IQ, personality, aggression,

shyness, the ability to hit home runs or carry a tune, Cohen said.

In contrast, unrelated children who are reared together will show no such "family resemblance." Unrelated adopted siblings turn out to be very different despite sharing the same parents, home life, friends, neighborhoods and schools.

Cohen cautions that his conclusions apply to individuals, not to social, sexual or racial groups. Also, the research primarily involves children from relatively normal families, not instances of severe abuse or neglect. But, even in cases of abuse, some children will emerge with less long-term damage than others.

"Because of their biology, some kids are amazingly resilient," Cohen said, adding that most abused children don't grow up to be parents who abuse.

Twin research also demonstrates the strong part played by prenatal conditions. During fetal development, identical twins with different placentas have different experiences before birth, which can leave a different mark on their later development.

Thus, one identical twin may escape a mental or physical flaw that plagues the other.

Cohen said that good parenting is still crucial. It's just that good outcomes are not guaranteed.

"We parents are still responsible for doing our best. But blaming ourselves for our 'failures' or crediting ourselves for our 'triumphs' denies the child's individuality, self-determination and accountability," Cohen said.

"Children can feel pressure to conform to a parent's hopes and expectations. They may identify with them, at least for awhile. Eventually, however, they will go their separate ways -- regardless of what parents try to do."

Cohen said accepting this reality helps parents avoid

"saying things that are futile and doing things that are alienating. Parenting is all about doing your best to inhibit the bad stuff and encourage the good.

"Just get out of the way of the really bright, mature kids. In any case, parenting is kind of a crap shoot. Most of the time you luck out with a wonderful kid, but again, there are no guarantees."

Stranger in the Nest, published by John Wily and Sons, will be in the bookstores in February. Cohen also is the author of Out of the Blue: Depression and Human Nature (Norton, 1994) and Psychopathology , a textbook written with Lee Willerman (McGraw Hill, 1990.)

In Cohen's view, parents need to provide nurture, discipline, protection, educational opportunities and encouragement of a child's natural abilities. Then they need to step back and let go of the results. Here are Cohen's seven rules for parenting:

1. Good parents respect -- they don't just love -- their children. Love and respect for the child's own personality, talents and achievements are critical. Parents should celebrate a child's success, refrain from living vicariously through the child and back off when a cherished parental talent fails to show in the second generation.

2. Good parents help a child become civilized and self-actualized. Parent should provide an environment that encourages good behavior, academic achievement, personal responsibility and the opportunity to fulfill inborn potential.

3. Good parents recognize that each child is unique psychologically. Children must, and will, follow their own, sometimes surprisingly different, paths.

4. Parents have limited ability to predict their child's development. Good parents can provide opportunities for growth but there is no way a parent can predict the outcome. Extraordinary parents have turned out average kids and average parents have produced geniuses.

5. Parents have limited ability to control their child's development. Mental illness, cognitive problems or emotional difficulties can derail the best parenting. And, fortunately, a child's natural resilience can overcome poor parenting.

6. Parents have limited moral responsibility for how a child turns out. Taking credit for a child's achievements or accepting blame for how a child turns out is unrealistic. Scientific research shows specific kind of parenting have a rather limited effect on the specific directions children may take.

7. The idea that we can be anything we want -- and therefore that our children can be anything we want -- is a dangerous myth. A parent cannot transform a child's personality. There are natural limits. That may be just as well. If our children can be anything we want them to be, then we could have been anything our parents wanted us to be.