Infant determinism is a myth

EducationGuardian.co.uk | Research | Helene Guldberg:: "The determinist myth: The idea that the first three years of our lives make us who we are is scientifically unsound, argues Helene Guldberg"

While we're on the subject of determinism, perhaps we should note that the studies on the effects of early esperiences in humans are not as conclusive as we might have thought. Though there are some quite clear 'worst-case' scenarios, they may not tell us much about less extreme cases. One worst-case is this:
It may well be the case that extreme emotional deprivation in the first two years of life can have devastating, irreversible consequences. Gerhardt points out that researchers who studied the brains of young children in Romanian orphanages found a "virtual black hole" where the orbitofrontal cortex - an area of the brain involved in the regulation of emotions - should have been.

But then we should note what is said after that:
However, it is exceptionally rare to see children subjected to the anything like the appalling treatment of the Romanian orphans. Extreme conditions of emotional deprivation may be so exceptional that they tell us absolutely nothing about the situations where there is engagement between adult and child.

The plasticity of the human brain may yet be even more versitile than we thought. This may turn out also to have bearing on debates about things like [homo]sexuality, paedophilia and sociopathology ...