Formative Years

While raising a child should be done with love and care, we need not think a few bad “formative years” dooms someone to a dysfunctional or psychologically tormented life. “The lack of trust that most psychologists believe stems from unstable nurturance can also be thought of, in evolutionary perspective, as an adaptive response to a situation that is at best unpredictable. The adaptation may even include maturing and initiating sexual activity earlier. That needn’t constrain us to accept such harsh environments as inevitable, much less to condone the conditions that give rise to them. But since they do exist, we should adopt a more positive view of childhood adaptation in less-than-favorable circumstances.”