Do you agree with the following statement? Classmates are a more important influence than parents on a child’s success in life.

It is debatable whether a student’s future achievement can be majorly attributed to his classmates’ influence or the regular support provided by his parents. I believe that it varies among cases based on the following factors.

On one side, parents appear to influence a child’s life to a great extent. They are responsible for raising the individual from the day he is born till he reaches adulthood. As a result of spending a considerable amount of his time with his parents, the child eventually learn to appreciate the activities conducted by the latter and the skills required to build a shining career. This may explain why some people end up opting for the same profession as their parents, for instance, George Bush who followed a similar political path as a his father. In short, parents are the best role models that a child can have.

Unfortunately, the above argument holds less true in our modern world whereby parents spend an excessive amount of this time toiling at work. Nowadays, children interact with their classmates both during and outside school hours. While enabling them to build social skills critical to function within society and at the workplace in the future, this may, in some circumstances, take a negative turn. Some students lacking in maturity may fall easy prey to negative peer pressure such as smoking and drinking at a young age, destroying the ideal career path painstakingly drawn by their parents.

To conclude, I believe that a child’s success rests partly on the relative power held by his peers and parents and partly on the amount of time he spends with both groups.