Laws and Mechanism of Heredity in Human Development B.Ed Notes

Back to: Childhood and Growing Up – Unit 2

Introduction

As per the research in the area of heredity, certain laws have been emerged as per the experiments by Mendal. These laws are defined as follows:

Laws and Mechanism of Heredity

These laws are defined as follows:

Law of Like Begets Like

This law refers to the concept that the offspring would be similar to the parents in their physical and mental traits. such, this law believes that beautiful parents would reproduce beautiful children and the same goes with the intellect and IQ level of the parents. However, this law sometimes gets exceptions when a beautiful couple gives birth to a not so esthetically beautiful child and intelligent parents give birth to a mentally retarded child.

Law of Variation

The Law of variation denotes the concept that there can be variations and fluctuations of the genetic traits when it comes to the transmission of traits from the parents. This law means that it is quite possible that a child does not possess similar traits as the parents every time which means that genes can also determine the traits of a person rather than hereditable traits. For example, a child can be ambitious of careless parents.

Law of Regression

Law of Regression is referred to the concept that a child of a highly intelligent parent or athletic parent can be mentally retarded or physically unfit respectively. The regression term means returning to the less developed state, therefore, the law of regression denotes the same meaning from being a highly intellectual parent to less gifted children. It always goes from an upward to downward trend.