Warring parents yield creative kids: study

The most highly creative people come from homes where parentsare constantly at each other's throats, according to new researchthat turns theories about the origins of genius on their head.

For years, psychologists have said creativity is a delicateflower most likely to emerge among those raised by warm and lovingparents. No longer: Now it seems that there is nothing like seeingyour parents scream blue murder at each other to kindle the creativespirit.

The finding, by a research team at McGill University inMontreal, has surprised experts. It has emerged from the firstlong-term study of the origins of creativity among ordinary people.Psychologists have tried sifting through the background ofhighly creative people, looking for anything in their upbringing thatcould explain their gifts. But in the 1950s, U.S. researchers set upa study of more than 300 children and their parents aimed atrevealing the effects of different child-rearing practices.Recently, a team of psychologists compared the home life of thosechildren - now adults in their 40s - with measures of theircreativity to see what links exist between the two.To their surprise, the researchers could find no link with howwarm and loving parents were, or how much freedom they gave theirchildren - flatly contradicting previous studies.Instead, only one significant link emerged: The most creativepeople came from homes where the parents were at war with each other."Our results showed a reliable positive association betweenparental conflict and later creativity," said Richard Koestner, theleader of the research team."Individuals who experienced a preschool family environmentthat was filled with parental conflict were found as adults topossess a greater number of creative personality attributes."Creativity turned out to be unrelated to how warm parents weretoward their children or how restrictive they were.The team admitted that the findings are a blow to currenttheories of the origins of creativity in children, which focus on theneed for "psychological safety" and freedom."Parental conflict would be expected to severely underminechildren's experience of psychological safety," Koestner said.Searching for explanations, Koestner and his colleagues suggestthat children brought up by warring parents may give up looking forpraise from authority figures and decide to plow their own furrow - ahallmark of creativity.The results of the study, published in the current issue of theJournal of Research in Personality, have left other experts stunned.Anthony Storr, Britain's leading expert on the origins ofcreativity, said: "This is an interesting finding, and one can seethat if you were brought up in a home where the parents arequarreling, there would be a need for a person to be creative toescape from that."Storr added, however, that he believes that human creativity isso complex that no single influence is likely to dominate."There are so many factors involved, like IQ, personality andinterests, as well as personal circumstances," he said."This is one more to put in the melting pot."Koestner and his colleagues stressed that recent researchinvolving identical twins has pointed to a powerful genetic influenceon creativity.Parents thinking of staging mock battles with their spouse inan attempt to spawn the next Einstein are unlikely to succeed, saidKoestner, who pointed out that the new findings apply strictly toverbal and artistic creativity."There is good evidence to suggest that scientific creativityis distinct from artistic creativity," he said.