Influence of parents on functions

[Dimensional Transition]

My parents are both feelers, my mother is an extrovert, and my dad is a bit 50/50 on extroverted- and introvertedness. I like to think I have a pretty well developed Fe for an INTP because of this.

Spoiler

On the other hand, my mother is S, and my father is, again, a bit 50/50 it seems. (He has a pretty bright fantasy but is also very handy with tools and such). I'm not that in-the-moment at all, and I'm definitely more clumsy than handy.

Could this be true?(I'm talking about the first part, without the spoiler.) What types are your parents? Do you believe they have influenced how you developed your functions?

Feel free to correct any errors I've made with typing and my knowledge how functions work, I'm pretty bad at the whole MBTI thing as of now.

 

[Trebuchet]

What your parents believe and do will certainly affect you. I grew up with INTP and INFP parents who believed I was good with tools and let me get involved with home and car repairs. So I think of myself as handy even if there are a lot of things I don't know how to do. I am convinced I can learn them and willing to try.

I don't know about the functions themselves. I'm not too knowledgable about that. But skills, like public speaking, problem solving, and being handy, come from practice and the belief that it is possible to be good at it. The cognitive functions clearly affect how good a person can become - I expect there haven't been very many INTPs who were the top telemarketer at their company - but any type can get to average competence at anything and even excel outside their normal strengths. If the parents provide opportunity and encouragement, I the kids have a good chance of developing any strength.

 

[samjonathan]

my mother is an ESFJ and my father is an ISTJ
i grew up mainly with my mother around and i can hardly relate with how she sees things, we are almost exact opposites, and i'd say i'm more like my father but really i am completely different to both of them
i don't really get on well with either of them at all really on any level, but if anything i knew to learn from my mother's mistakes and not be anything like her
i suppose i get on with them better than my brother does though (ENTP) but only because i can keep quiet when people argue at me

 

[Dimensional Transition]

Yeah, my mother and I also feel like complete opposites. I love her as a mother, but I'm usually pretty annoyed when she's around. When she enters the room, she immediately spreads this nervous/organization vibe to me. And the way she tells jokes and stories, explains things and such often makes me cringe. But she has good intentions. It's a bit of a love/hate relationship.
I can relate very well with my dad, but he's so much more practical and emotional. He sometimes can't (to me) give good arguments for his standpoints when he's in an emotional mood. For example, when the nuclear disaster in Japan happened, he couldn't sleep for days, and he would keep creeping me out with this end-of-the-world talk of him. I wish I was more practical like him though, I can tell he's often disappointed I don't give a damn about messing around with motorbikes and stuff.

 

[Bird]

Of course parental factors are a variable in personality.
They did care for you during your developmental phase.


I am not sure the function order of your parents necessarily
plays a role in your function order and your development
functionally. You may get good use out of your Fe but is it
really from your mother?

 

[Dimensional Transition]

I am not sure the function order of your parents necessarily
plays a role in your function order and your development
functionally. You may get good use out of your Fe but is it
really from your mother?

I'm not really sure, but my parents are both really empathic. I used to be very mean to insects as a kid(As experiments though, not just to torture... Okay maybe a little). I also threw my cat off the stairs once to check if she would really land on her legs. She did, actually.
I feel quite empathic these days, especially for an INTP. I think I can account that to my parents. Otherwise I would've been way colder.

 

[Jordan~]

Isn't this basically a question of "will your parents affect your personality"? I'm pretty sure the answer is a universal "yes" from the whole of psychology.

 

[samjonathan]

so i don't know if it's some kind of unwritten rule not to ressurect an old thread but i'd like to clarify what i said in my previous post and further explain in relation to the functions...
i think (maybe) that because my mother was my primary carer when i was younger i developed her four functions first Fe, Si, Ne Ti, but not necessarily in that order
i have two theories as to why i developed them in the opposite order...

1. i have read that your temperament is something unchangable from birth (or very soon after birth) and so as an NT these functions could only because a legitamate type if i were an INTP or an ENTP, and because my mum is an extravert i think i may have compensated for that by becoming an introvert, as to why my brother is an extravert i think my brother was exposed to and help cared for by a much larger number of people when he was younger than i was, but going on the fact that my mother would have been his primary carer he would also had to have been an INTP and an ENTP

2. when i grew up a bit my dad was around more and i saw his IxTx tendencies as good in comparison to my mother's very irrational Fe ways and so repressed my Fe to become an IxTx, the only option with those given functions being INTP

that is all

 

[Jennywocky]

My parents are both feelers, my mother is an extrovert, and my dad is a bit 50/50 on extroverted- and introvertedness. I like to think I have a pretty well developed Fe for an INTP because of this.

Could this be true?(I'm talking about the first part, without the spoiler.) What types are your parents? Do you believe they have influenced how you developed your functions?

it certainly can and does influence type development. We are born with core preferences, it seems (and that was my experience with my children, they had preferences even from birth); and then environment either allows us to follow our preferences or it forces us to develop other non-preference coping mechanisms. Parents are one of the largest environment forces acting upon a child and actually contribute to keeping a child alive, so any behavior from a parent that jeopardizes that survival will awaken the child's survival instinct, resulting in a warping/layering-over of natural type inclination.

My situation is similar. My mother is very very ISFJ (very strong Fe, ingrained Si, and very little development in the T and N spheres), and my ESTP father is a chronic alcoholic, which really resulted in a distortion/alteration of developed type for me. My parents did support some aspects of my INTP-ness (even if they didn't know it as such) -- primarily immersing me in books, allowing me to explore art and science, encouraging me to get good grades.

However, my father did not respect thinking that differed from his and is very extroverted, so he was overbearing and loud and ran over me roughshod; meanwhile, my mother had a set view in her head of how people should act, and she also could not imagine/understand things outside her own worldview (she's also very religious), and so I smothered some of who I was INTP-wise around them to avoid trouble and I also developed an understanding of social expectation and rules... and I also became very hypervigilant in learning to read people without needing to talk to them, and trying to figure out what they "really meant" by things, since my parents were masters at speaking and acting one way while meaning something else entirely. That experience of growing up in that house greatly changed/distorted who I naturally was.

I've worked through a lot of it now in the last number of years, but I haven't lost the things that I developed during that time; it's more that now I can just choose when and where I enter that mindframe rather than doing it automatically as a safety precaution.

I'm not really sure, but my parents are both really empathic. I used to be very mean to insects as a kid(As experiments though, not just to torture... Okay maybe a little). I also threw my cat off the stairs once to check if she would really land on her legs. She did, actually.

I have aspects of that to my own personality, it's the scientific mindset. I would have never done something like that to people, but I was really curious as to how things would respond if I did such-and-such to them. I never purposely caused permanent harm to higher-level life forms (reptiles and mammals, etc.) and have been appalled with others who do actually hurt animals (let alone people), but I know I did things that mushy-gushy types would have been like, "Aww, you're so mean!" I was more just curious, though.

I feel quite empathic these days, especially for an INTP. I think I can account that to my parents. Otherwise I would've been way colder.

I think I'm the same way. I dunno if "cold" is right, but still more detached. I'm also ultra-responsible and feel a burden to help others, which I think was developed in part by being the eldest in my family, being the child of my mom, and being raised in Christian orthodoxy; for a long time, I'd feel guilt over missing opportunities to help others even if it didn't rationally make sense.

 

[Vrecknidj]

I test about 55% N and 45% S and I attribute this to my ISFJ father whose presence was overwhelming in my family of origin. He was an okay guy, ultimately, and he mellowed a lot as he aged (and was headed in a good direction before he died young at 56). But, yes, I definitely think one's parents have a huge impact.

 

[Question Authority]

I'm terrible at typing other people (with one major exception, which I can only tell, as he is exactly what I would be, if I were more extroverted), but as far as I can tell, my Mother's a ESTJ and my father's an ISTP (I think, it's difficult to type him, since he's so reserved, the only thing I know for sure is the I and the T). I'm really surprised I managed to become such an N. I really test pretty weakly as T, so I also don't see that coming from a family of Ts.

 

[tepellian]

My INTP father was a mental refuge, to me, from my (most likely) ISFJ mother. I liked (and still like) talking to him and doing things with him.

However, he was pretty uninvolved with the practical aspects of my life, which went on non-stop. My mother would rule over me to do what she wanted me to do much of the time, with what seemed like an iron fist. This was anything from watching over me while I studied, to publicly criticizing me for behaviors she thought were unacceptable, to getting force-fed by her when I didn't want to eat the food on my plate. He did not always know it was happening, or offer objection. I had the worst time trying to communicate with her, often, because were on two totally different levels of thinking, and I tried to understand why this was throughout my childhood. I kind of wish I'd happened upon this line of thinking, and a site like this, back then, it might really have helped. Instead I was quite alone and sometimes miserable when I got older (middle, high school), trying to make sense out of why I was chained to schoolwork at home.

I would attribute much of my resistence to Fe to this. I know I have Fe, it shows up when I have feelings or think about them. But I actually don't like to use it.

Side note: Now that I'm grown up sufficiently and independently functional, she's begun to recognize that there's nothing to be done about who I am. There is a lot less tension in our relationship. I still can't talk to her about my thoughts and expect much understanding, though I can give her -practical- information and advice which she appreciates, but what am I to expect?

Second side note: It is probably thanks to her that I have any outward discipline at all. While I didn't appreciate some of her ways of doing things at the time, she was very consistent in how she raised me.

Third side note: She loves my father for the fact of his mental capabilities. She always loved me the same way, even if we do not relate very well. This would lead to some interesting dynamics, where I'd be reading in the car (she always tried to have me study when I was with her), and she'd hate it when I just looked up and thought about stuff, but she loved it when I started to explain some of the stuff I was thinking about. I'm positive she was not usually following, but it at least gave me an outlet for mental exercise.