It runs in the family: hereditary, genetics, environment, fate, and free will all have a part to play.

• Author: Puterbaugh, Dolores T.
• Position: Psychology

ALL SORTS of problems, behaviors, and talents run in families. Athletic ability, intelligence, temperament, and various ailments all carry a sizable slice of heritability. The 2012 Summer Olympics featured 11 sibling pairs in the various swim events; IQ is significantly correlated to parents' intelligence. Temperament, with its large biological component, tends to be similar among family members, with outliers suffering the consequence of poorness of fit with the pack. Mental and physical disorders of various stripes tend to recur across generations, too.

"[Emotional diagnosis of choice] runs in the family," a client will explain to me, as if I were simple-minded and lacked the knowledge of genetics needed to grasp this simple factoid. This statement sometimes is supposed to be a blanket pass, a "get out of jail free" card against any personal responsibility to make things better. At other times, it is a plea for help: the implicit cry is, "Please, tell me I'm wrong--that I won't be schizophrenic/bipolar/'crazy' like my room/dad/sibling." Indeed, many emotional struggles and unfortunate behavioral tendencies can, and do, "run in families," but the relationship between this and some sort of genetic, fateful doom is an occasional and sometimes tenuous one.

It is helpful to be certain that we agree on definitions. In my business of mental health, one thing that is painfully clear is that people throw psychiatric terms around with abandon, believing we all mean the same thing. A client complains of being "depressed" and is surprised that this one word does not tell me precisely what the client's lived experience may be. "Depressed" can be a euphemism for "furious and resentful," or it may mean that the person is dysthymic: a human Eeyore the Donkey. A depressed person may be suicidal. He or she simply may feel flattened, or weep for hours a day, or be in a state of mental agitation. I need more information than "depressed." The fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders takes more than 30 pages to go through the various criteria for numerous flavors of depression.

Similarly, when we assert that some trait, talent, or trouble "runs in the family," we ought to be clear. Like "depression," everyone who uses the term "running in families" is absolutely certain that they, and their listeners, know precisely what it means. Of course, everyone does not. Something that runs in the family may be due to any singular, or amalgamation, of factors, including deliberately learned behaviors; unconsciously introjected attitudes, beliefs, and patterns of thinking; the externals of culture; genetics; and numerous physical aspects of the environment.

From our earliest moments on Earth, we are learning. Before birth, children can recognize their mother's voice; they share the adrenaline rush and racing heart rate she experiences in moments of distress. After being born, a tremendous amount of learning begins, with the properly fed and nurtured infant building millions of neural connections on an upward slope that gradually will level off in preschool and the early school years, when the first major pruning of unneeded connections begins.

Children are acquiring new information constantly. Eager sponges, they imitate gestures, expressions, and sounds. They mimic adult behaviors; the family full of readers, who read to the infant, and are seen sitting around reading for entertainment, will have a toddler very likely to consider books as friends, and something one takes along, with a toy, for spare moments. Conversely, I have spoken to educators who share heartbreaking stories of kindergarten students, handed a book, who look befuddled. They never have held one before; they do not know what it may be. These are not Third World children; they are living in homes that have televisions but no books. Their ignorance about books does, indeed, "run in the family."

Children also learn to...