NATURE, NURTURE, and RESILIENCE

My eyes have been glued to Netflix too much these past few weeks. It's such a guilty pleasure to binge-watch a newly popular Korean drama and neglect the weekly readings I'm supposed to read. Despite all that, I learn many things from the series; which I will relate to our class readings.

The title of the series is Start-Up. Start-up means a "company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable economic model" (Wikipedia, 2020). The series tells the story of a girl named Dal-Mi competing with her sister to grow a Start-up successfully. Even though they were siblings, they didn't grow up in the same household. Their parents got divorced when they were young. Dal-Mi lived with her father, who was struggling financially. In-Jae, the older sister, chose to live with her mother, who eventually remarried a wealthy businessman.

I am intrigued by the development of these two sisters, Dalmi & Injae, who were born from the same parents and grew up into two very different people. It reminds me of the first basic development principles: genetic inheritance and experience are intertwined (Bowman,2009). Even though they were born from the same parents (nature), their experience growing up in a different situation (nurture) influenced their outcomes.  

To understand more deeply how their experiences influenced them, we need to look in various contexts. Bronfenbrenner believes that a child's development is affected by everything that surrounds him/her.

There are four environmental systems that contribute to a child's development.  They are:

• The Microsystem 

The microsystem is the setting where individuals live; it includes family, peers, school, and neighborhood. Dalmi grew up with her father and her grandmother in a modest house. Injae grew up with her mom and her stepdad, who live in a mansion. Dalmi studied in South Korea. Injae studied in the USA with her new family. 

• The Mesosystem 

The mesosystem is the relationship between microsystems or connections between contexts—for example, Dalmi & Injae family's experiences to their school experiences. However, the movie didn't tell much about this.

• The Exosystem 

The exosystem is where individuals do not play active roles but are affected by it. Dalmi's father struggled to start a new business; he needed a lot of capital and was depicted in the movie as inexperienced. In contrast, Injae's stepfather was a successful businessman who trained her to be her successor. Both fathers' performance in their jobs indirectly affected Dalmi & Injae. 

• The Macrosystem

The macrosystem is the overall societal culture individuals live. Dalmi grew up in South Korea, while Injae had the experience of studying abroad in the USA. 

Assuming from the four contexts, we would expect Injae to grow up as a successful woman while Dalmi is failing. But there's more to Bronfenbrenner's theory; it has been criticized by Paquette & Ryan (2001) that the theory does not see the individual conditions (nature). Another dimension that is missing in Bronfenbrenner's theory is resilience. Engler (2007) argues that resilience is the answer to why some individuals are succeeding in spite of the negative environment they were in.

As the movie progresses, Dalmi shows resilience in fighting to prove to her sister that she didn't make the wrong choice by staying with her father. Dalmi decided to make a bet that she would outdo her sister's success in three years. 

During the process, Dalmi had some friends who supported her and worked with her in growing her start-up. Menakem believes that resilience manifests both individually and collectively. It means that resilience wasn't just inside of an individual but also came from people's words and actions around that individual. (Menakem, 2017). In the movie, Dalmi showed resilience from within herself; she would walk for hours just to do a three-minute elevator speech with an investor. There were also times when Dalmi almost gave up, but her friends and family encouraged her. Clearly, this required resilience.

In conclusion, both nature & nurture are important to reflect on when we look at a child's development. Neither is more important than the other. Everything in the universe is affecting something else or is being affected by something else. (Sameroff, 2010) The development of Dalmi & Injae is a result of continuous dynamic interactions between themselves and their experiences. Even if they went through different experiences in life, their genes and hereditary factors play a part in their outcomes. Injae & her step-brother who grow up in the same environment turn out to be very different; this is because genes play an equal part in someone's outcome too. Two children with the same experiences can have different outcomes and two children with quite different experiences can have the same outcome. 

Reference

Sameroff, A .(2010). A unified theory of development: A dialectic integration of nature and nurture. Child Development, 81, 6-22.

Bowman, B. (2009). Children, development and culture: There's no such thing as developmental competence outside of cultural context. In V. Casper & R. Theilheimer (Eds). Early childhood education: Learning together. NY: McGraw-Hill. Ch. 6.

Menakem, R. (2017) My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Central Recovery Press, 50-52.