I have been listening to the audiobook Identical Strangers. The book is a first hand account of twin 35 year old women who were both adopted into seperate families. A well known, well respected, and now defunct adoption agency in NYC, decided to seperate twins and place them into different adoptive homes to study the nature vs nurture question. This study was backed by the CDC and has been written about in many medical/psychological journals and books. It provides a great deal of information regarding the inherited traits of schizophrenia along with other mental disorders. It was long thought that the most comprehensive and valid findings on behavior could be observed only through twins raised in different environments. I guess it was too much to resist for the scientific community.
Although this study is highly unethical and would be illegal today, it is still considered to be one of the most comprehensive studies of this sort. There have been many accounts of twins and even triplets who were unknowingly included in this study who are just now finding out they were seperated from their siblings and have gone on to findtheir siblings and realize that even though they were raised in different environments, they were remarkably similar and suffered from the same mental disorders.
I can't tell you how this book has impacted me as an adoptive mom. It has taught me more about my difficult child than anything else I have read or heard about in the past sixteen years. After listening to the accounts of these seperated twins it is so apparent that environment had very little to do with what my difficult child has had to struggle with all these years.
I recommend this book to anyone who who has ever struggled with the nature/nurture issue.
Nancy
Although this study is highly unethical and would be illegal today, it is still considered to be one of the most comprehensive studies of this sort. There have been many accounts of twins and even triplets who were unknowingly included in this study who are just now finding out they were seperated from their siblings and have gone on to findtheir siblings and realize that even though they were raised in different environments, they were remarkably similar and suffered from the same mental disorders.
I can't tell you how this book has impacted me as an adoptive mom. It has taught me more about my difficult child than anything else I have read or heard about in the past sixteen years. After listening to the accounts of these seperated twins it is so apparent that environment had very little to do with what my difficult child has had to struggle with all these years.
I recommend this book to anyone who who has ever struggled with the nature/nurture issue.
Nancy