Nature Plus Nurture Equals Inhibition: Stress Genes Combine with the Environment to Make Kids Shy

The February issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science contained a study by Nathan Fox (pictured) that found that kids who are consistently shy while growing up are especially likely to be raised by stressed parents and to possess a gene associated with stress sensitivity. According to an article on PsychCentral, this means that the genetic factor that causes parents to be stressed can be passed down to their children, and the behavior of the parents combines with the gene to make the children more socially withdrawn. Fox says that, "Moms who report being stressed are likely to act differently toward their children than moms who report little stress." The American Institute of Stress reports that the many effects of stress include forgetfulness, increased irritability, overreaction to petty annoyances, and excessive suspiciousness. These are all behaviors that would have a significant impact on a child by making the child feel afraid to aggravate the stressed parent. If the parent is too overwhelmed to be supportive of the child, social development will be significantly impaired. This conclusion is supported by Diana Baumrind's parenting dimensions and styles. Baumrind theorized that there are two dimensions of parenting: demandingness and responsiveness. The four types of parenting are authoritative, authoritarian, permissive/ indulgent, and indifferent. The authoritative parenting style has been found to be the best style of parenting across cultures because it is high in both responsiveness and demandingness, which means that parents have high expectations but also give their children a high level of support. Children who have been raised by authoritative parents tend to be responsible, self- assured, creative, and successful in school. The behaviors discussed above that go along with stress seem to fit the authoritarian parenting style, which is low in responsiveness but high in demandingness. The combination of high expectations with low levels of support cause children to become passive, dependent, and lacking of self- assurance, intellectual curiosity, and social skills. This personality profile fits that of someone categorized as shy. In summary, a parent who reports being stressed is most likely to take on an authoritarian parenting style and therefore cause his or her child to become shy.

Of course, those risks are just the ones that exist before genes are thrown into the mix. While the authoritarian parenting style associated with stress can definitely put a child at risk for becoming shy, Fox found that among children exposed to a mother's stress, it was only those who had inherited the short forms of the genetic alleles who showed some forms of stress sensitivity. Fox said, "If you are raised in a stressful environment, and you inherit the short form of the gene, there is a higher likelihood that you will be fearful, anxious, or depressed. Another fact that makes the genetic component of stress and shyness so important is that all parents of adolescents are somewhat stressed. Parents with adolescents report less satisfaction with their marriages and relatively high levels of personal stress, and parents with adolescents who challenge them report lower levels of life satisfaction. The truth is that conflict within the family is a very normal part of adolescent development. As adolescents become more cognitively skilled and independent, clashes with parents over mundane issues such as school and lifestyle are inevitable. Also, most parents of adolescents are close to forty years old, which means that many of them are going through significant developmental changes of their own. Rosalind Gould concluded that, for adolescents, this phase in the family life cycle is a time of boundless horizons, but for parents it is a time of coming to terms with choices made when they were younger. The bottom line here is that all families are marked by conflict and stress during adolescence, but not all children turn out to be shy. Children who become shy over development most likely do so through a combination of these everyday stresses and genes.