"Nature Or Nurture"

A few days ago I was talking with a friend of mine who lives in South Carolina. I asked him how his family was doing and there was a pause. Then my friend asked if I really wanted to know. I assured him that I did, and he began to tell me a lengthy story of family woes.

My friend, who I will call Gus, is in his middle forties. He got married right out of college and he and his wife had three sons. After the third one was born Gus' wife went off the deep end. She got involved with drugs and left Gus and his boys and moved to California. A few years later Gus married again. This time it was to a woman who shared his values.

Kate, Gus' wife, has been the only mother his boys have ever known. She has loved them and cared for them like they were naturally born to her. She and Gus have raised them in the church and have set good examples of what clean living, hard-working people should be. Gus is with the forestry service and makes good if not great money. He and his family have lived comfortably.

Their oldest son finished college and got a job in Oklahoma. He and his wife and family live out there and are doing fine. The middle son joined the Army out of high school and was killed in a helicopter crash a few months after he entered service. The third son, well he has been a problem for years.

David, the youngest son, always expected more and more from Gus and Kate. He was never satisfied. If they bought him a car, he wanted a different one. If they joined the country club so he could play golf, he wanted to belong to a better one. Nothing was good enough for David, and then he got involved with drugs.

Gus said he was stupid and didn't see it coming. He knew David was always out of money but he thought he was just wasting it. Then he noticed that he wasn't hanging around with his old friends. And then there was the night he got the call from the police. David had been arrested for drug possession.

David of course had a perfectly good excuse for why he had the drugs. They weren't his, and he had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gus hired a good but costly lawyer who got the charges reduced. Gus said he told David over and over how lucky he was.

Things went from bad to worse after this. It ended when Gus found out David had stolen his ATM card and almost emptied his bank account. When he confronted him he denied doing it. For a smart man David seemed to have little knowledge about surveillance cameras and how they showed him at the ATM machine getting the money.

When Gus called the police to file charges against David they told him he didn't need to. There were outstanding warrants against him in other counties. This time the charges weren't reduced and now David is in a "gated " community and wears an orange uniform.

Gus and Kate are distraught. They don't know how he could have turned out this way. They honestly tried to do everything right - and it worked with the other two boys. But maybe David inherited a weakness for drugs from his mother. Maybe it was totally genetic. 

Gus asked me what I thought and I absolutely don't know the answer. I have seen good people have messed up kids and I have seen messed up parents have exceptional children. I told Gus that you just have to do the best you can and pray it all works out.

Nature versus nurture? Who knows. It is all the toss of the coin. There are no guarantees in life. My wife and I worked hard to raise our kids the "right way" and I think it paid off. But it could have had another outcome. Hearing Gus' story made me realize just how fortunate we are.
 

 

 

 

 

©2007 Jackie K. Cooper

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