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More than forty years ago the psychoanalytical field of mental health was puzzled as to what has more impact upon human behavior: nature or nurture. The battle continues to this day — but with a difference.

We now understand that our genes, our biological cellular code, are what we're all about. This can be a discouraging fact if we believe that our genes are our destiny and nothing can change that. But let's take a look at the other side of the story.

Anyone who has looked into a hospital nursery knows for certain that some of us are born with pleasant dispositions while others are sourpusses from the moment of birth. Genes may be the basis for our behavior, but now science is putting together a new method that can encourage even the most dour infant a chance at happiness with his parents.

The expression "pulling my chain" comes into play here. For instance, when we see an infant and coo to it and it smiles and grins back at us we smile and grin right back, reinforcing the child's behavior. We're saying the world loves you, so you can be happy.

Unfortunately, we, as humans, tend to react negatively to people who don't smile and look pleasant. Even parents of unsmiling babies can be caught up in this clash of personalities. We all want to love our babies. We see them as so vulnerable and needy. But when our infant is a darkly moody child, we do what comes naturally: we get upset and hurt. Babies are supposed to be cute and lovable. When they're not, our responses can feed into the child's negative personality and reinforce it.

What scientists have found is that if we still behave in a happy, positive manner around a child who is not naturally light of spirit, the child eventually can respond in kind. The baby's parents have countered the child's innate behavior. They are changing their baby's disposition. We can learn new behavior despite our genetic predisposition. That's an encouraging bit of research.

But it's not an easy thing to do, being nice when someone, even an infant, is unresponsive and unhappy for no seeming good reason. It can cause a negative reaction in the caretaker. Parents may even get angry enough to hurt their child. The parents' reaction to the child's unfriendly behavior can become irrational as well as dangerous. We all have read and heard the awful stories of children brutalized.

"The baby wouldn't stop crying," is a typical explanation when a child is beaten to death. Sadly, too many children are born into families that would have been better not to have had a child. The family environment does count for a child's behavior. Even a genetically happy child can be made sad by bad parenting.

We learn parenting from our own parents. We carry not only their genes but their technique for child-rearing with us into our adult lives. I've heard "I don't want to be like my mother, but I can't help myself," more times than I care to count. But we can change if we can see ourselves critically and not just emotionally. Children need to be loved to be happy and fulfilled, and so do their parents. It's a two-way street, but the parent has to lay down the paving.

Children need the security of rational parenting to learn what it takes to be satisfied with themselves when they reach adulthood. Parents without patience, or without the experience and foresight to reinforce socially acceptable behavior in their child early on, are priming the gun to go off when the child grows into adulthood. The world does smile back when we have sunny dispositions. We may not all be born with joy in our hearts, but loving parents can help to put it there.