Nature vs. Nuture

Our new unit in Sociology is Socialization. Our teacher started with the "growing man" metaphor. When you are a baby you are entirely controlled by nature. Nature consists of your emotions, instincts, biology and genes. As you grow into a full grown adult you are influenced by so many other outside forces; this is known as nurture. The nurture is our language, and social interactions with others. Today, we watched an episode of Oprah about Isolated Children. These children were isolated from all human contact pretty much since birth. When they are rescued, the children cannot speak, walk, or eat solid food. These are all learned actions that need human interactions for. When they finally are adopted (the family of the adopted child was interviewed on the show) they long to be held. The adoptive mother said Danielle always wanted to be help and comforted because she never got that as a young child and she didn't care if she looked weird holding a nine year old girl, she was going to do it anyway. My mother told me when I was young that after a certain point, I didn't like to be held. I wanted to run around and be independent. What I wonder is at what point do most children feel like they want to be independent from their parents? This obviously depends on how much attention they got when they were younger.