The Intentional Gardener: Helping Your Children Navigate the Hidden Laws of Behavioral Genetics

Parenting often feels overwhelming. We want the best for our children, yet we constantly worry about the uncertainties of a complex world. Self-doubt often creeps in as we wonder if our choices provide enough of a foundation for their future.

As a behavioral economist, I often tell my students and clients life resembles a game of poker more than a game of chess. Chess displays every piece and every move clearly. Poker—and life—deals a hand you did not choose, requiring high-stakes decisions based on incomplete information and hidden variables. For decades, the "nature vs. nurture" debate acted as the ultimate hidden variable, appearing as a mysterious tug-of-war between biology and upbringing.

Integrating Eric Turkheimer’s Laws of Behavioral Genetics with the Scarr-McCartney Model transforms the "black box" of human development into a manageable decision-making framework. As a choice architect, I view these scientific observations as foundational constraints and opportunities rather than deterministic cages. Understanding how genes (The First Law) interact with family resources (The Second Law) and unique life experiences (The Third Law) empowers parents to find a healthy outlet for raising children in a loving, information-rich way.

This framework aligns with the structured decision-making process found in Making Choices, Making Money (Hulett, 2nd Ed, 2025), which positions life's starting points as the baseline for all subsequent wealth and career trajectories.

Jeff Hulett is a behavioral economist, decision-making advocate, and author of Making Choices, Making Money. He is the curator of The Curiosity Vine, where he explores the intersection of human behavior, economics, and the pursuit of a meaningful life.

The Hand We’re Dealt: Turkheimer’s First and Second Laws

A high-quality decision process begins with an honest assessment of our starting point. Turkheimer’s First Law—all human behavioral traits are heritable—serves as our "base rate." Whether considering cognitive ability, risk tolerance, or the propensity for delayed gratification, our genetic blueprint provides the range of possible outcomes. It represents the "hand" dealt at the table.

The Second Law—the effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of genes—presents a challenge for many parents. It suggests "Shared Environment"—the specific parenting style or household rules—yields a lower direct ROI than many imagine. One cannot simply "input" a personality into a child as if they were a blank spreadsheet.

However, the Scarr-McCartney Model provides a critical bridge. While the direct effect of the shared family environment may seem statistically smaller, its indirect effect serves as the primary lever for a successful life. Parents act as "Environment Orchestrators" rather than biological programmers.

The Launchpad: Passive and Evocative Correlation

Scarr and McCartney’s model describes how genes and environment dance together through three correlations.

Passive Correlation occurs in early years when parents provide both genes and infrastructure. My wife and I approached this architecture purposefully by choosing to live in Fairfax County, Virginia. This decision exposed our children to world-class public schools and provided lower-cost access to quality state universities. This strategy "stacked the deck" so their natural talents found the highest possible floor. Our "Virginia public education strategy" was no accident. It was an intentional choice. We weighted "educational opportunity" above all other criteria for deciding where to raise our children. Please see the appendix for a "Post Game Analysis" on our elementary and secondary education choice. For our family, it turns out 1) public education was better than private education and 2) there are many good public options. Do not get too hung up on the "best" school.

As children grow, Evocative Correlation creates a feedback loop. Their unique natures (The First Law) pull specific responses from the world. We observed this on the athletic field. We did not just seek trophies; we encouraged them to encounter "micro-environments" requiring teamwork, goal setting, and the grit needed to navigate a strenuous challenge.

One child might have thrived on the competitive heat of the field, while another found rhythm in the strategy of the game. A child’s nature dictates the lesson; our presence provides the classroom. This augmentation of human potential through environmental design reflects the core philosophy of the Definitive Choice smartphone decision tool, which encourages users to structure their environments to favor better outcomes.

The Pivot: The Third Law and Three Loving Principles

The most mysterious of Turkheimer’s rules remains the Third Law: a substantial portion of variation in complex human behavioral traits remains unaccounted for by genes or families. This "Non-Shared Environment" encompasses the random teacher, the specific peer group, or the first job opportunity. The Third Law seems to suggest parenting is not as important as originally thought. However, integrating the Scarr-McCartney model suggests that parents play a critical, though indirect, role in orchestrating the environment within Turkheimer's Third Law.

To an economist, the Third Law represents uncertainty. To a parent, it represents the moment a child steps off the launchpad and enters the realm of Active Correlation. This third stage of the Scarr-McCartney model describes individuals seeking, selecting, and even creating environments fitting their genetic predispositions—a process often called "niche-picking."

While we cannot control randomness, we can influence how children react to these opportunities. In my article The Quiet Wealth of Enough (Hulett, 2025), I argue reaching a state of "enough" serves as a prerequisite for making high-quality decisions. We identified three pillars helping children navigate the "random" world of the Third Law and master their own Active Correlation:

• Intentional Presence: Stability provides the emotional security necessary for a child to take the "Non-Shared" risks leading to growth. Presence acts as the ultimate hedge against the volatility of the Third Law.

• Seeking What Not to Seek: We taught our children to filter noise. In a world obsessed with status, identifying items failing to provide fulfillment ensures they avoid negative random influences.

• Becoming Self-Learners: This fuels Active Correlation—the third part of the Scarr-McCartney model—where individuals seek their own niche. By teaching children to be self-learners, we ensured they could "pick their own orchard" long after leaving ours.

This transition from being a recipient of an environment to an active creator of one mirrors the journey of a Definitive Choice user. Just as the app empowers users to weight their own criteria and select the best path, Active Correlation allows a child to weight their own natural talents against the world's opportunities.

At Personal Finance Reimagined, we help entrepreneurs create scalable ventures via our Founder’s Copilot. Our system promotes "Serendipity Seeking," a strategy where entrepreneurs expose themselves to high-opportunity environments without a known outcome. While the specific nature of the resulting success remains uncertain, the act of exposure increases the probability of favorable results. We find entrepreneurs with onboard Active Correlation mindsets are significantly more successful in finding serendipitous success.

Conclusion: The Behavioral Economist’s Parenting Portfolio

Combining these theories provides a healthier outlet for the innate motivation to raise children in a meaningful way. We move from a mindset of control to a mindset of curation and presence.

1. Acknowledge the First Law: Respect your child’s genetic "set point" and honor the person they already are.

2. Leverage the Second Law: Focus on providing Social and Economic Capital. Your greatest influence lies in the "launchpad" of opportunities—the neighborhoods and schools—giving potential room to breathe.

3. Equip for the Third Law: Use Intentional Presence to build security and teach Self-Learning for enabling agency. Orechestrate intentional environments encouraging positive encounters for your children.

We act as architects of the orchard, not designers of the trees. We cannot make an apple tree produce oranges, but we can ensure the soil remains rich. By understanding the interaction between Turkheimer’s constraints and Scarr-McCartney’s correlations, we find a parenting path both scientifically grounded and deeply rooted in love.

Appendix: A Post Game Analysis - Our elementary and secondary education choice

My wife and I intentionally chose the "Langley Public High School Pyramid" for our children. They all attended Colvin Run Elementary School, Cooper Middle School, and Langley High School. They are wonderful schools and Langley was frequently mentioned in lists of "Top Public High Schools."

A couple of observations:

I believe a good public school experience is superior to a private school experience.

This observation starts with the idea, you cannot outsource education. Education is anchored at home. School is only a part of that education. There are good teachers and bad teachers. But the best teacher comes from within. Our children were expected to be self-learners.

While the public school instruction was good, our children had to learn to "deal" in a more unforgiving environment. Classes were larger. There were bully boys and mean girls. There were no concierges. They learned to be resilient. We were there to pick them up when they fell. Today, we see the gift of resilience playing out in their lives as young adults. It turns out building resilience when they are young is the perfect primer for dealing with life as an adult. College educators see a growing challenge; more college students than ever come to college as a "fragile teacup." Our children started college as well-adjusted, resilient, self-learners.

I believe other "not-as-good" public pyramids would have been fine.

Langley was great, but the Herndon and South Lakes pyramids were also close by. While they do not rank as high as Langley on those dubious lists, they are fine school pyramids. The bottom line, as parent environmental orchestrators, we would have filled the gaps, if there were any gaps. Most importantly, 1) our children knew we loved them wholly and completely, and 2) our children were developed as self-learners. Education was anchored in their home environment. The school was only a piece of their education. More important was the expectation to be self-taught, especially when there was the inevitable disconnect between a teacher's style or personality and our children's needs. This was part of our resilience pedagogy.

This approach worked.

Our children went on to complete college at Virginia publics (JMU and CNU). They graduate with honors. They are fully launched, off the payroll, building wealth, launching families, and living happy lives.

Resources for the Curious

• Hulett, Jeff. Making Choices, Making Money. 2nd ed., Personal Finance Reimagined, 2025.

Integrates decision-making frameworks with wealth-building strategies to help individuals navigate life’s financial and personal trade-offs.

• Hulett, Jeff. “The Quiet Wealth of Enough: A Parent’s Guide to Raising Thriving Children.” The Curiosity Vine, 7 Sept. 2025.

Establishes the "presence threshold" and highlights intentional presence as a stabilizing force in child development.

• Plomin, Robert. Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are. MIT Press, 2018.

Argues genetic heritability influences the majority of psychological differences between individuals, emphasizing the "nature" component of development.

• Scarr, Sandra, and Kathleen McCartney. “How People Make Their Own Environments: A Theory of Genotype → Environment Effects.” Child Development, vol. 54, no. 2, 1983, pp. 424-435.

Establishes the three types of gene-environment correlations—passive, evocative, and active—explaining how individuals shape their experiences based on genetic predispositions.

• Turkheimer, Eric. “Three Laws of Behavior Genetics and What They Mean.” Current Directions in Psychological Science, vol. 9, no. 5, 2000, pp. 160-164.

Summarizes the foundational principles of behavioral genetics, highlighting the heritability of traits and the significant role of the non-shared environment.