Everyone is raised differently. Some people are born in a wealthy house, and some are born into poverty. Many children are cared for and have a loving family, some are faced with a family that doesn’t love them and they’re not cared for. Through all of these factors it can truly change the mind of a child and completely change their future. The way a child is affected by these factors can determine the way they will think through life and change completely where they could end up in life.
The strongest ways a child is affected can easily be their parents, through different parental monitoring, psychological control, and several negative aspects such as rejection. These few things account for nearly 11% of variance in delinquency in children (PMC), very few aspects show for quite a large amount of the problem in child delinquency. It also shown that parents affect children in different ways, the way the children are treated by a parent will affect the way that child views people of the same gender. For example, if a “If the mother was emotionally distant, unavailable or failed to display affection for the child then he might grow up feeling unloved even if other people loved him”(KnowMyself).
The income that a family makes can affect a child and make them more likely to make more or less in their future themselves. According to Professor Mayer compared to more affluent families, children in poverty, score lower on cognitive tests, have more behavioral problems at school, more likely to drop out of school, more likely to have children at a young age, and are more likely to be in poverty themselves as adults (IRP Mayer). All of this seems unlikely and doesn’t seem as if that income would affect a child too much in life, but sadly it does. This shows greatly that even the smaller factors such as income can greatly affect a child as they are being raised, it’s even shown that increase of only $1,000 a year in a family's income can increase a child's cognitive tests scores by 6% if using standard percentiles (Mayer). All of this shows how a child can be affected even by just income.
Discipline as a child can greatly change the child’s future and how they act and behave on a normal basis. It’s shown that when a child is faced with corporal punishment for issues the child will tend to do the exact opposite of what is trying to be solved. It is often shown that “More frequent use of physical discipline was less strongly associated with child aggression and anxiety”(Physical Discipline Makes Children Anxious and Aggressive). As shown in the quote physical discipline greatly affects the child, it will make them show more anxiety in the future and be more aggressive towards others.
Many people will try and push the fact that children will be who they are no matter what and genetics play a much greater role than the parenting styles. There have been many studies on this and it is actually shown that “Genetic influences account for a little less than half of the variation in personality within a given population” (Why Parent’s (Still) Don’t Matter) This quote shows that it’s mainly in the environment that these kids are raised in that affect their lives, it is partially just who they are but more than half of it is how these parents treat their children and raise them.
Children are greatly affected by they way their parents discipline them, treat them and even just by how much money their family makes. Children’s minds can be changed extremely easily and be made to completely change their future, the more someone is affected in the childhood the harder it will be for them to change in adulthood if they even ever do. The majority of the time a person grows is at a very young age so of course it would be seen as a prime time to be able to change how a child thinks and be able to affect their future.