The child is amply influenced, chameleon-like, perhaps, able to leap points of view in a single bound, possessed of a permeable identity. The die is cast. If the child survives, is educated, encounters teachers in books and schools, in streets, on corners, he or she begins to write, becomes an outlaw early on. The giant who first embraced the child may stand back aghast. The writer's first affinity is not to a loyalty, a tradition, a morality, a religion, but to life itself, and to its representation in language.
Nothing is taboo.
The writer is bent. Tortured and Tantalized Ego enters in, but writing is far too hard and solitary to be sustained by ego. The writer is compelled to write. Writers of literature don't write for gain or attention or praise, though they'll take all that when they can get it. There are teaching salaries, but teaching shoots writing in the head.