Why do we do what our parents do?

I'm a career smartass. So is my dad...but I don't rememeber him ever being a smartass when I was young. I also catch myself doing physical things he does...like while driving I'll rest my right hand under my thigh. When eating I always look like I'm scowling and looking at something off to one side.

ANd of course...like my Dad with I...I have no desire listen to him! HAHA...father son joke there.

SO what do you figure? Are small things like that picked up, or is it just geneticaly implanted?

You know what I mean...am I a smartass just because of chemical make-up? DO I sit on my hand because bone structure makes it more comfy? etc...

My parents emotionally abused me from the time I entered high school until they forced me out of college. I want to be everything my parents weren't.

edit: not directing my ire at you. Honestly. I'm just... touchy about it.

Where's that beer I was drinking....

I mean...subliminally (sp?)

Unless it's the fact that I smoke (I started when I was 16 after breathing cig smoke from both parents my whole life- it was basically a given), well... I don't know. My dad was an electrical engineer, and a good one; he wired our whole house himself including the circuit breakers and everything involved... I build my own PCs, so I guess there could be a connection there. He was well read, as is my mom; I had college-level reading comprehension by the time I was in third grade. The one thing I had that neither of them had (I'm adopted, BTW) is musical talent; I (can) play piano, oboe, all kinds of percussion, voice, and although it's been a long time since I've played any of those formally, I still compose almost daily.

I guess perhaps inborn talents such as athletics, music, or performance art are more genetic in nature, while classical artwork (painting, sculpture, animation) are more learned. My musical talent is inborn, my prediliction for cigarette smoking is learned.

Something like that, anyway. :)

from my father. But when I saw him after not for many, many years, I discovered that yes, we did have many of the same physical mannerisms, and that started me thinking and discovering that I shared many of the traits I'd hated so much. Well awareness is a start...

I was raised by wolves before they found me. After I left home, they actually got white furniture. I wasn't allowed any further than the kitchen for visits after that.

Then you needn't clean the kitchen

We were real close when I was a kid, then during my teen years EVERYTHING he did PISSED ME OFF. Especially when he was drunk; he wasn't an angry drunkard, he was just one of those goddamn depressing guys who talked about the nazis and how America was going to erect concentration camps..
Really pissed me off.
My mom said to me that because my dad and I are so alike mentally (read: stubborn assholes sometimes), she knew when I was developing my adult mentality that it was going to be a big problem to live with both me and my dad....
Then I went away from college, and now we're close again :)
Sometimes, people who are alike need their space..

No sympathy needed. I am not dead, and my grandparents who have raised me since age 2 are (M) conservative and (F) moderate democrat.

I am very liberal, so I don't follow suit on my guardians, politicallly.

Socially: My Mom loved candy and especially chocolate (she had a 'chocolate doll'), while I deplore candy and I cannot eat chocolate (tastes like what it looks like, i say). My dad was a heroine addict and a securit guard. He got fired from a University for kicking the shit out of kids. I am extremely tamed and have only got in one fight in my life (I am 19), so I don't think I take after him.

Maybe it is all in how you were raised. Maybe I cannot relate.

I meant the little things...like the way you.....drink a glass of water...or something.

sry

the D.N.A.

I used to think it was so weird when I was a kid and my parents used to have there friends over and they would all sit around in the living room playing their instuments, just jamming out all night, but now I do the same every sunday with my peeps.
This summer I was working out in SF and I spent a lot of time with one of my parents oldest friends, and almost every time I would do something she would start craking up and tell me that is just like something mom/dad would do.
Ok it is thursday and I'm drunk and I got two test in the morning so while I could probaly write a 2 page paper on this I will spare you.

and have probaly spent less than a year with him spread out over 32 years...so...

Things like perfect pitch, musicality, nearsightedness (or better than 20/20 vision, go figger), diabetes, etc run in my family. It's no big mystery where they come from. Genetics.

Humor, predilication for the color blue, voting for the weakest Rpub in primaries and voting against him in the general, a taste for ginger, those sort of things may be genetic as well, but it's harder to see than with more obvious stuff, like eye color. I'm a lot like my maternal grandmother in some ways that aren't hair and eye color (she was brown/blue; I'm black/hazel) but odd things, like a nervous habit. Kind of unnerving, 'cause I loathed that bitch!

We are a big mix of genes and learned skills.

Some children have the same habits as parents that they saw very little of. In those cases, it has to be genetics. On the otherhand, I have seen others and myself pick up some mannerisms of SOs and close friends. That is environmental.

We move our hands anad faces and bodies the same way when we talk. People who meet her before they meet my dad always think I look like her. I don't really. It's just that we move the same.

I certainly find myself quoting all my parents sayings from when I was a kid. :-)

We have ALL the same mannerisms. We even look the same.

The only instance we differ on is that he LOVES Chinese food and I absolutely hate it.

Oh, that and I'm a faster typer than he is. But I'm a faster typer than most people.