Does your personality affect your parenting?

Well, obviously it does. Few things in life so profoundly express your world-view and values as the way you raise your children. But are your parenting choices shaped by characteristics of which you are not consciously aware?

A recently published study argues that they are. The study, published by Truity, uses the Myers-Briggs test, which assesses people based on four opposing pairs of personality traits: introversion/ extroversion, intuition/ perception, thinking/ feeling, and perception/ judging. Based on your preferred behaviour, you are categorized as one of sixteen personality types, represented by a four letter code. (The image above illustrates this using characters from Harry Potter. Other pop culture examples are available.) The Myers-Briggs test is popular in the business world, although its scientific validity is hotly disputed. This study claims to be the first serious application of the theory to family life.

I know my Myers-Briggs type in much the same way I know my star sign, and my Chinese birth year, without giving too much credence to any of them. I am an INTP: introverted, intuitive, analytical and inclined to abstraction. (Hermione Granger, apparently. Or Yoda.) You can see immediately how we might be more or less inclined to believe this description depending on how flattering we find it. I identify strongly and proudly as an introvert, despite society’s preference for extroversion. Being “intuitive” sounds nice, but does that mean I’m unobservant? And “analytical” makes me sound cold, robotic. Human beings are suspicious of too much rationality.

According to the study, I’m supposed to be a reluctant parent. This does not chime with me at all. I love the company of children, their humor, spontaneity and lack of cynicism, and much of my professional life has been spent working with families. However, INTPs who have kids are more likely to be stay-at-home parents. In my case, this has come about largely because I work from home, and as a freelancer I can organize my time around the children. But it’s a situation I’m very happy with, and would be reluctant to change.

It’s noticeable that the study focuses more on lifestyle choices than those difficult parenting decisions: are you strict or indulgent? Organized or spontaneous? Friend or authority figure? I found one statement by an INTP parent resonated more strongly with me than any statistical analysis:

“I think being an INTP parent there is a willingness to let the children be themselves, as far as their personalities; a letting go of trying to make them what I want them to be; a respect for them as individuals to make their own life choices.”

If there is one thing I feel certain of based on twenty years of parenting and working with parents, it’s that we don’t shape our children as much we like to imagine. We must keep them safe, healthy and stimulated, so they grow strong, and teach them values so that they can find their place in society. But if we try to mould them, we will only stunt and damage them. The best we can do for them is to help them become who they truly are.

Or maybe I just think that because I’m a Scorpio.

Image: makani.deviantart.com

Speaking a language like a native isn’t solely to do with whether you get the right tone, the right grammar, the right sentence structure and so on. I have discovered that the older my child gets, the more he changes not only his speech, but also his personality, depending on which language he is speaking.

Not long after we moved to this apartment, we had a small children’s gathering in my courtyard, a public one which is great because there are dozens of steep, uneven stairways, broken bikes and other hidden dangers to play around to one’s heart’s content.

Most of the children who came were my son’s Chinese classmates. They were all playing quite nicely and we mothers were enjoying a couple of Yanjings and some hairy beans with half an eye on which child was throwing stones at which bikes, when suddenly I heard this whining banshee that screamed in pitch until I’m sure a few windows started cracking.

The voice was demanding something from another child, and the Beijing hua issuing forth was relentless, painful, excruciating. Swinging around to try and stem this eardrum blasting, I realised with horror that the voice belonged to none other than my very own child.

In English, I demanded an explanation for this tirade. He immediately switched to sweet, pure English and explained in a very soft tone that one of his friends had thrown his Ben 10 doll down one of the stairwells and into a pile of rotting cat food.

Chinese playground hollering transformed into English parent-child communication: a case of adapting to circumstances.

Me, on the other hand, no matter what situation I find myself in, I just stick with the English phrasing, the English politeness, the English reserve and the English inability to be understood. I will never be able to switch character according to language, no matter how much it would help everyone else’s comprehension.

For the rest of the afternoon I listened and realized he has a completely different personality in Chinese. By the way, it’s not a pretty one either.

Petulant, ordering, overreacting to everything, getting moody. Astonishing. He does not behave like that with his Western playmates – and if he did, I’m sure he would have none left. 

But it’s not just him – it seems to be the way Chinese children have to play – perhaps because there are so many of them in the class, at the park, in the playground, on the bus, in the toy shop – they simply have to whine to get what they want.

And at the end of it all, when it’s time to go home and everyone has moaned and shrieked and squabbled for three hours, everyone agrees they had a wonderful time. All that had gone before was clearly just normal behaviour.

It’s all fascinating to observe, and will continue to be so until we leave in August. I just hope when we do, we take the right personality with us.

Photo by mdanys via Flickr

 

Forty years ago, the personalities of 2,400 elementary school children were recorded. Today, the personalities of over a hundred of these current adults were examined to be compared to their previous selves. The study showed that they remained “recognizably the same person.”

 Picture by vlorush of Flickr.