Do your genes, your family environment or your life choices determine outcomes? Yes.

From How Genes and Investments Interact in the Formation of Skills by  Tyler Cowen.  That is actually from the title of a new paper, The Nurture of Nature and the Nature of Nurture: How Genes and Investments Interact in the Formation of Skills by Mikkel Aagaard Houmark, Victor Ronda, Michael Rosholm.  From the Abstract of the paper.

This paper studies the interplay between genetics and family investments in the process of skill formation. We model and estimate the joint evolution of skills and parental investments throughout early childhood. We document three genetic mechanisms: the direct effect of child genes on skills, the indirect effect of child genes via parental investments, and family genetic influences captured by parental genes. We show that genetic effects are dynamic, increase over time, and operate via environmental channels. Our paper highlights the value of integrating biological and social perspectives into a single unified framework.

They are getting at the conclusion I reached a number of years ago.  Judith Harris back in the 80s or 90s argued that parents did not matter for child development, it was all about peer effects.  Strict deterministic hereditarians argue that it is all and only about the genes.  

I noted in The id, ego, superego and self-selected (manipulated) feedback mechanisms, 

It also relates to one of the paradoxes posed by Judith Harris.  She posited, and presented good evidence, that the effect of children's peer networks are a greater influence (along with genes) than the direct behavioral influence of parents.

In the early popular formulation, this was represented as "parents don't matter".  In her later writings, she clarified that they do matter but that we need to take into other effects from outside the home.

My speculation has always been that parental behavioral influence (controlling for genes) is even greater than that.  Parents choose the environment in which their children grow, specifically the social networks to which they can avail themselves.  By choosing the churches, the schools, the neighborhoods, etc. in which their children grow, they are indirectly exerting behavioral influence (but not direct control).  

In Henderson's framing, the id, the animal self, the gene driven self is born into a multi-layered environment consisting of family and then multiple social groups, both of which have direct influence.  Family helps form ego and social groups form superego.  

But the individual can exert control on the feedback mechanisms by selecting those groups which are more likely to provide the positive feedback which they crave to justify their id and ego desires.  

You have at least three systems loosely couple with one another tied together by both individuals and affiliative groups.  The genetic system, the family system and the epistemic system - the id, ego and superego.

Genes are indeed determinative in a limited fashion.  You inherit some mix of the genes of your parents and those inherited genes are both limiting and potential.  But no single attribute arising from genetic contribution is determinative of larger outcomes.  

This is part of what is reflected in the developmental model I have been using - Knowledge, Experience, Skills, Values, Behaviors, Motivations, Goals, Capabilities and Personality.  Genes, more or less heritable, affect different aspects of these nine elements.  But not all, and not determinatively.

They are an immensely strong influence, but they fall short of determinism.  And that is where family and then superego come into account in interactive fashions as described above.

My operating assumption is that across the three loosely couple evolving systems, perhaps 50% of outcomes are strongly influenced by genes, 25% by family environment and 25% by individual choices.  But the outcomes are very indirect products of those three systems and highly contingent.