in response to siaru's review and your response
you assume that in the nature v nurture argument that it's all nurture while i'm of the firm belief that its a mix of both some people just have an inherent goodness to them that prevents them from going down the dark path though there are also some who just have an inherent darkness in them that even the best childhood could not redeem but by and large most children will be lost or saved by the environment that they grow up in like talent and training some learn a skill easier than others but for most even if a skill doesn't come easy you can work hard and learn it anyways
Author's response
The problem with nature -v- nurture, is that it’s not cut and dried, and I agree there are aspects of both. I have to disagree. People are not tomatoes. They do not just ‘go bad. They are taught that they will never have to take responsibility of their actions, whish is what makes them ‘go bad’. It is not the environment, they grow up in, but the people they interact with. Most especially their parents or mentors. IMHO, everyone has both goodness and darkness in them. It is the parent’s responsibility to ensure the path their children follow will be as peaceful as possible by teaching their children the consequences of their actions. Love and nurture combined with discipline and responsibility.
A case in point. When my daughter was a little girl, she had a friend named Charlie. Charlie’s mother Janice, refused to punish him for anything. She’d explain it away, or invent an excuse for him. She disagreed strongly with my spanking my daughter, claiming it was abuse. Fortunately for me, Child Protection disagreed. In the end, two years ago, Charlie was killed in a gang fight in San Diego. He was fourteen. He had more than a thousand dollars worth of crack on him and about three hundred dollars in cash from selling it.
Janice claimed the police had planted both drug and money on him. She has a younger child, William, and she is raising him exactly the same way she raised his brother.
In canon, both Dudley and Draco had been raised all their formative years to ignore any consequences of their actions. In my case, after a rather savage beating, I made a conscious decision that my children would never fear me like I feared my father. That decision, even after my wife died, led to my daughter being happy, healthy and well-rounded. She’s nearly eighteen now and is preparing for college.
Alorkin