The old debate about nature vs nurture - which influences a child's life more - has always interested me. Science has changed from one to the other over the last 100 years and I think it now recognizes that both play an equal part. So, when I heard about the book "Identical Strangers" I immediately put it on my Christmas list.
It is an amazing story about two women from New York who discovered in their late 30's that they had an identical twin, and that after being put up for adoption as newborns they had been deliberately separated and adopted by different families so their lives and development could be studied. If this were fiction I might read it and think it doesn't seem plausible - but this is far from fiction!
The book is a really interesting read, made especially so by the frankness of the two women regarding the emotions they experience as they discover their "other self", and the radical twist their lives take as their twin enters their world. Both women knew that they had been adopted, but only one of them wanted to find out about her birth-mother, and started the search which ultimately led her to the discovery of her twin sister and the sinister study which had separated them.
Back to the nature and nurture question ... as identical twins they share 100% of the same DNA, and as they compare their lives the women find that both are very intelligent, both suffer from bouts of depression and paranoia, both are very analytical, and both studied film in University and made it their area of career choice. One twin had a happier family life than the other, and she appears to now be the more settled of the two. The book contains much information from other twin studies ... and interestingly, it's been found that identical twins who are raised apart (for one reason or another) turn out to be characteristically more alike than those who are raised together. Twins raised together in a regular family setting often tend to develop traits that the other twin does not have as a way of creating their own identity.
The morality of separating them obsesses the women, and they try to discover answers from the adoption agency and doctors who had conducted the study .... 13 children in the late 60's were involved, and 3 sets of twins and a set of triplets have already found each other. The other 4 subjects in the study still do not know that they have an identical twin. As Paula muses to her twin, "If I had been adopted by your parents, would I now be you?"
Much food for thought ...
Until next time - bye!
