Do Parents Matter?

How would Gladwell respond to the identity question from August 27th? How would Levitt and Dubner respond? Do you agree with their argument? Why or why not?

Gladwell would respond to the identity question from August 27th, by saying that, we are partly our parents, because we recieve their genes, but that we are more our peers, much more than parents. "Whom do they want to please? Are they wearing the kind of clothing that other kids are wearing or the kind that their parents are wearing?" Gladwell would say that our peers affect us much more, in the way we dress, speak, act, make decisions, etc. "Whatever our parents do to us is overshadowed, in the long run, by what our peers do to us...From the very moment that children first meet other children, they take their cues from them."
Levitt and Dubner would respond the August 27th identity question that yes we are our parents, but by our genes, not by the way they parent us. "So it isn't that parents don't matter. Clearly, they matter an awful lot. It's just that by the time most parents pick up a book on parenting technique, it's too late." Who theyare, what kind of education they recieved, when they decided to have children factors in to what kind of person their child will be. "...it's not so much you do as a parent, it's who you are."
In my opinion, both of these argumets are correct. You recieve your genes from your parents, and how they treat/teach you is a part of who you are, but another part of who you are is how you were treated/taught by your peers. For a long time, I was a shy, introverted person because I moved a lot (my dad was in the Air Force), and I was teased by my peers, especially for having red hair, and being bookish, which were both traits I recieved from my parents. However, as I've grown older, I've become more extroverted, particularly after I came to Sturgis, where all the students were new to each other, most everyone, accepted most everyone else. I share some of the same qualities as my peers, whether it's speaking out in class, or reading a book at lunchtime. But they way my parents act around me and the way they teach me still makes up a large part of who I am. I love children, because my mother loves children, although some of my peers and friends don't. I'm more interested in history than most people my age are, because my father has a love of history, that he has shared with me verbally, and genetically. So in the end, I think we are both our parents and are peers, a mix of the two, and other factors, but how evenly these parts are mixed, is based solely on the indivdual in question.