Ancestry Dot Bomb

You wrote about a 58-year-old woman dating a 23-year-old guy. What's the big deal with that? My daughter moved in with a 58-year-old creep when she was 18. He gave his own daughter heroin when she was 18. Bad guy. He and my daughter just had a baby, and now she's pregnant again.

--Distraught Dad

First-time parents live in terror that they're getting it wrong (like that they aren't spending enough time reading "Hooked on Phonics" to their kid in the womb), when they could really just leave their kid in the woods and say, "Come back when you're 20." Okay, so the woods thing is a bit of an exaggeration. However, psychologist and twins researcher Nancy Segal explains that while "most parents believe they significantly shape their children's behaviors ... we now know that genetic effects are pervasive." In fact, "Most behaviors have a 50% genetic influence." The power of genes in shaping our personality and choices is especially apparent in identical twins who were separated at birth and raised apart. Segal studied two of these identical twins: Oskar, who grew up Catholic in Nazi Germany and was an enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth, and his brother, Jack, who was raised as a Jew in the Caribbean and spent time on an Israeli kibbutz. When Segal and her colleagues brought them together as adults, each showed up at the Minneapolis airport in a white sports jacket over a two-pocket blue shirt with epaulets and had wire-rimmed glasses and a mustache. Among their many shared quirks, each read magazines from back to front, wrapped tape around pens for a better grip, kept rubber bands around their wrists, and -- because each is germophobic -- flushed toilets before use as well as after. As Segal emphasizes, a child's "environment," including parenting, "contributes only modestly" to the sort of person they become. Focusing on this might help. Perhaps if you remove any "shoulda, coulda" blame you place on yourself, you can set aside some of your anger, show compassion for your daughter, and be loving and supportive despite your dismay at her choices. It's possible your grandkids have a chance. If you come at this more lovingly than adversarially, they just might end up spending more time with Grandpa than the bad dad you probably suspect is a few infant crying jags away from putting grain alcohol in the sippy cup. ... For pages and pages of "science-help" from me, buy my latest book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence." It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.