The genetics-solves-everything crowd is continuing to have an influence on society that threatens to set Americans' notions of equality back decades. I still believe these attitudes are cyclical, but it is always depressing and disturbing to be in the regressive part of the cycle, with no hint of change in sight. The target now of course is public education - always in the sights of extremists, whether it involves adding prayer, subtracting science, or the current fad, teaching kids their gender roles, as if society weren't taking care of all of these things adequately outside the classroom.

Dr. Leonard Sax's website is called "Why Gender Matters". His publications have such objective scholarly titles as "Reclaiming Kindergarten: making kindergarten less harmful to boys" (Psychology of Men and Masculinity, American Psychological Association, 2(1):3-12, 2001), which like his other writings set up an absurd dichotomy between boys and girls as if they are unrelated species. He claims that for boys, but not girls, kindergarten is "a series of alienating failures and humiliations" and implies it is thus the end of their academic careers. Many women competing for professional jobs (requiring extended education) with men would be surprised to hear that all males' spirits were crushed in kindergarten, given that they are still pretty much running society.

The problem with our educational system is not that "no one is teaching them how to be men and women" (from Sax's website) but that we are using blunt instruments, such as standardized testing, which saps what little autonomy teachers had in the classroom before NCLB. This means they are unable to address differences among individual students in development times of different skills. Yes, that variation exists, but using gender as the blunt instrument to guide education reform is even worse than using a standardized test. On top of it being a pointless exercise to assume anyone's academic strengths and weaknesses at a given age can be assessed using their appearance, it also reinforces so many stereotypes that so many of us had finally begun to move past, and furthermore gives them false "scientific" credibility. This type of "science" is no different from attempts a century ago to demonstrate through physical qualities that blacks were less intelligent than whites.

This blog has previously summarized the alarming trend of claiming genetic origin for every trait anyone can think of, and why the papers supporting these ideas tell us absolutely nothing. The problem of the other type of research cherry-picked by Sax to support his agenda is that it studies already-developed human beings. Anyone who has raised a child should understand the intellectual dishonesty of claiming that behavioral traits possessed by a baby or toddler are clearly genetic. Humans are social creatures, programmed from birth to learn from other humans how they should behave. That includes identification with a particular gender, and all the traits associated with it in a particular society. Brain development does not occur in a vacuum, but is affected by experience. Brain-scan differences even in a newborn can not be determined to be genetic, because the newborn's brain started developing nine months before.

Most important though, the differences found are minor and slight - meaning it is unlikely that they are biologically significant. From the Times magazine article:

Sax initially built his argument that girls hear better than boys on two papers published in 1959 and 1963 by a psychologist named John Corso. Mark Liberman, a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has spent a fair amount of energy examining the original research behind Sax's claims. In Corso's 1959 study, for example, Corso didn't look at children; he looked at adults. And he found only between one-quarter and one-half of a standard deviation in male and female hearing thresholds. What this means, Liberman says, is that if you choose a man and a woman at random, the chances are about 6 in 10 that the woman's hearing will be more sensitive and about 4 in 10 that the man's hearing will be more sensitive. Sax uses several other hearing studies to make his case that a teacher who is audible to boys will sound too loud to girls. But Liberman says that if you really look at this research, it shows that girls' and boys' hearing is much more similar than different. What's more, the sample sizes in those studies are far too small to make meaningful conclusions about gender differences in the classroom.

Why is it now acceptable to use "science" to foster people's underlying prejudices about gender, but no longer about race? Apparently there is some sort of hair-splitting going on in the minds of these "scientists" that of course skin color and other associated traits tell you nothing about what is going on in someone's brain, we know that now, so forget about that. But different genitals, now that clearly must be correlated with brain function. Especially the genitals of pre-pubescent humans!

It is especially insidious that the idea being promoted is just a new version of "separate but equal", which as anyone knows who is at all familiar with history, means anything but. Sax's motivation is clear. He has been on a crusade for years to convince people that public education is biased against boys because most of the teachers are women. (Of course, who is responsible for that? Surely not the men who over the ages told women that the only profession they could have was teaching, since obviously it is such an undesirable job. Surely not the principals and superintendents who for some reason are still overwhelmingly male, and oversee overwhelmingly female teaching staffs. But I digress.) He does a clever job of convincing people that he cares about girls too, but this concern is nothing but pandering to get people to buy into his system of segregation.

It's truly a shame, because for completely opposite reasons, single sex classrooms in public schools can be a good idea. For instance, in the context in which many kids are more interested in what the kids of the other gender think of them than the academics going on in class, single-sex classrooms can remove a major distraction. Because it's a good idea for kids to learn to relate to the other gender socially, it seems that the best situation is some, perhaps not all, single-sex classes in coed schools. It also does help remove some teacher biases which have usually been documented to favor boys (not girls, as Dr. Sax claims) in their participation. But if, as Dr. Sax claims, the majority of schools going to single-sex classes are basing their new paradigm on his "genetics" theories, then we are in big trouble, because it will make many of the gender prejudices that have sunk below consciousness openly acceptable again.

Labels: brain, education, gender, genetics, statistics

I have a kid's book, "What Makes a Rainbow," in which a juvenile rabbit asks various creatures what colors make a rainbow. Curiously, every female animal is addressed without an honorific: Little Chick, Bluebird, Ladybug, and Butterfly, while the male animals are addressed as Mr. Fox and Mr. Grasshopper. Is it petty to suspect that this sends the message that men are to be addressed (and perhaps treated) in a more respectful manner than women? Does it matter that the creators of this book were all women?

No doubt there are those, including women, who would answer "yes" to both questions, but to me they are answered with a clear "no." From birth, girls and boys are given many subtle messages that males are more important than females, that clearly outweigh messages of equality. And those messages of equality sometimes feel forced. Why? Because we do not yet assume equality as second nature.

We have dealt with overt discrimination through legislation probably as best as we can. Only in Orwellian or Vonnegutian worlds have attempts been made to deal with the policing of thought, because in a just and free society this is simply not tenable (even if it were possible). But the question remains, why does sexism by both men and women continue to exist, a generation after we thought we had solved the problem?

This is a question beyond the scope of Linley Erin Hall's new book, "Who's Afraid of Marie Curie? The Challenges Facing Women in Science and Technology" (see link on sidebar*), which attempts only to document that discrimination still does exist, even though many people in power (such as the infamous Larry Summers) deny that it does. This book is necessary, because the current fad of using genetics to explain every possible personality and behavioral trait has ushered in a new dominating ideology that there is nothing more we can do to increase women's success in the workplace, because success now only has to do with the choices that women make freely.

Hopefully this book will shatter these ivory-tower illusions, and help usher in a new era in which we start thinking about real institutional change, rather than just having another "sensitivity training" session and forgetting about the problem. Hall very clearly and correctly points out multiple times that a bad professional climate for women is a bad professional climate for men as well, and that the long hours and grant/publication stress required to establish a productive scientific career in the U.S. are psychologically damaging for most people, regardless of gender. But the book focuses on women because, as bad as the long slog through the meat grinder of graduate school, postdocs, job search and promotion is for men, it is significantly more difficult for women for a number of reasons. (Hall does not point out, however, that other countries have shown that scientists can be productive with reasonable hours. Dutch researchers, for example, have been leaders in entomology, while working 40-hour weeks - which I can attest to based on the hours I spent alone doing research in a lab at a major university in Holland.)

One of the root reasons was touched on above: scientists are often viewed as authority figures, and both women and men still tend to assume that women are not authority figures. Hall's examples, both anecdotal and from published studies, are numerous. For example, when men and women work on a project together in an academic or industrial setting, it is usually assumed by their superiors that the men did the bulk of the work while the women merely assisted. Many superiors assign better projects to men in the first place, and then turn around and deny women promotions because their work does not stand out as much.

One of the biggest problems is how women view themselves. Many never get into science or drop out early because they don't have the self-confidence to proceed. I used to blame these women for their decisions, which can be made despite lack of overt sexism. As my career and life has progressed, however, I have reached a better understanding of how many subtle negative signals about a female's scientific ability over time can eat away at that self-confidence, leading one to take the easy way out, rather than continuing to fight for every achievement. The mainstream media call this "opting out," as if men and women are now on equal footing when they make the decision to quit.

On the other hand, men receive the constant signal that quitting their career makes them a failure, because they are brought up to believe that they are supposed to be the bread winners. So, men are much more likely to stick out unpleasant work environments, because "real men" can handle the stress. Is this really the way for science to be efficient and productive? Does it make sense simply to weed out all those who aren't competitive enough in their class work and research, and make a good proportion of the rest miserable with stress? Yet this is the American system.

The solution to problems caused by ingrained attitudes is elusive, but research Hall describes supports actively addressing hostile work climates. For example, science departments with positive leadership that addresses problems of sexism and harassment as they come up were shown to have much higher graduation rates by women than those departments in which complaints are downplayed or ignored. Women's graduation rates were also correlated with strong student-advisor relationships, which of course benefit men as well. Those departments with few successful women projected the attitude that those who do not like the environment need to "adapt to it (or get out)."

There is also no logic to support the current system of grant and paper reviews that are single-blind only - the reviewers are anonymous, but know who they are reviewing (and thus the reviewee's gender). Arguments that reviewers could still often figure out the author of a paper or proposal based on its content are specious; although that may be true, the process still reduces bias overall. Making reviews double-blind would promote fairness and be an easy policy shift for journals - publishers need simply to provide papers to reviewers without a cover sheet.

Grants are more complex because the granting institution wants to be assured that the awardee has the professional experience to complete the work, but it would certainly be possible to reduce even unconscious bias involved, much of which results in women automatically given less benefit of the doubt as to their abilities. Grants could be evaluated first by the panel for the intellectual content, with biographical sketches of the principal investigators removed. It is clear now that many grants are awarded to people, not projects, and those people review each others' grants in a tit-for-tat system that often excludes women, because there are so few women within the ranks of established researchers. A panel could recommend funding based on the research proposal only, and afterwards evaluate the skills of the researcher. Huge granting institutions such as NSF and NIH could have strict guidelines making it difficult to reject a highly rated grant based on a biographical sketch. Frankly, it is rare that anyone submits a well thought-out project proposal that they are then incapable of implementing, and yet this excuse is used on rejections.

It would be naive to suggest that stricter evaluation procedures would remove bias completely, but they certainly would do a lot to level the playing field for women scientists. Then perhaps women will have a better chance of receiving the grant that might allow them to circumvent the glass ceiling that still persists. Read the book if you still believe it's all about genetics.



* Disclaimer: I was one of the subjects interviewed in this book. However, I receive no benefit, financial or otherwise, tied to the success or failure of the book.

Labels: bias, education, gender

Previously, a discussion of the controversy over J. Michael Bailey's book on transgenders, "The Man Who Would be Queen," focused on problems finding the line between science and opinion in research on human biology. It is also interesting to speculate where the feelings come from that spur the decision to become transgendered (even for those of us who are not specialists in this area and have no scientific credibility backing up our positions).

As social animals, humans learn early on the rules to navigate society. Proper understanding and navigation of social norms is essential for humans to live satisfying lives, and in general, to reproduce. Rules governing gender roles, although they may vary from culture to culture, are a large subset of these.

It is clear to anyone watching children develop and begin to navigate the social waters that gender roles are a big area of focus for them. For instance, through observation, small children build a list of rules for identifying a male versus a female, and are very good at this with adults at a young age (<2). The genders of children themselves are much harder to identify, of course, because they lack secondary sex characteristics until puberty, so children and adults use other cues such as hairstyle and clothing to decide whether a child is a girl or a boy. When the signals are mixed, it seems to faze children more. If a girl has short hair and is not wearing girly clothes, another toddler may ask over and over "it's a she?" each time the girl is referred to as one.

A child also understands early in development that he or she is either a boy or girl (based on constant references by family and friends), and tailors his or her behavior to the correct gender, which shows that he or she understands the rules governing gender roles. All the sex-associated behavioral traits that parents insist must be inborn, may not be at all (the scientific jury is still out on most of these). Humans are designed to figure out this crucial part of living in a society at as early an age as possible, so whether or not they are, sex-associated traits can seem to be "genetic."

But what of the children who know they are a certain sex, but are not comfortable mimicking the behavior they see associated with that sex? (Why this happens in genetically unambiguous males and females is not always known and for another discussion.) They may feel caught in a trap. A boy (such as someone that I do currently know) who loves pink and frilly things either learns early on to suppress his own feelings, or is forced to suppress them by his family -- perhaps because they fear it means he is gay. If one stands back for a moment, the condemnation of a preference for a color by one sex that has been arbitrarily designated as being owned by the other sex is ludicrous, but of course occurs. If that boy is continually given the idea that there is something wrong with him because of his aesthetic preferences, then how is he going to feel about himself as he grows up? Society has already decided, at age 4, that there is something wrong with him, so it is likely he will believe it. This could play out any number of ways as the boy grows up, but one way that seems possible is that the boy will decide he really is supposed to be a woman, because he likes things that society tells him only women are allowed to like.

Society forces values and behaviors on us that we either accept, and become assimilated, or reject, and become an outcast or fringe member. Why do some men want to become women? Bailey says it is either because they are gay, and want to attract men, or because they find the thought of themselves as a female sexual object erotic. This either-or is what many transgenders have objected to, because surely people are more complex than the pigeonholers would have. What if a third (of likely several more) reason is that male-to-female transsexuals are just men who want to be able to wear dresses and enjoy pink, which society says they cannot do as men ("cross-dressing" being generally a fringe activity)?

I did find one study which is interesting in light of this theory (Winter S , Udomsak N (2002) Male, Female and Transgender : Stereotypes and Self in Thailand. Int. J. Transgenderism 6,1, http://www.symposion.com/ijt/ijtvo06no01_04.htm). The authors concluded with the following summary:

Participants overall expressed gender-trait stereotypes very similar to those of non-transgenders (both in their own country and internationally), notwithstanding that differences were found on a small number of traits.

Apart from a few traits, participants' actual self-concepts tended (in terms of their own gender-trait stereotypes) to be stereotypically female. Their ideal self-concepts were far less so, with several stereotypically male traits being frequently endorsed, and female traits being rejected.

As a corollary, the traits that participants wished to acquire tended to be broad-ranging, while those that they wished to lose were female-stereotyped.

The "ideal self-concept" and the "actual self-concepts" were not congruent. One might interpret this to mean that in an ideal world, we are all allowed to express our mix of stereotypically "male" and "female" traits, but in fact society has told these male-to-female transgenders that what they have are all the stereotypical "female" traits; therefore, they must be females trapped in male bodies. Why did they wish to lose "female" traits? My guess is that individuals such as these who cannot be neatly pigeonholed into their society's image of one gender or another are demonstrating it.

There are other individuals who are especially harmed by our either-or mentality of men and women. These are people with ambiguous genitalia, often due to recessive mutations. Some of these have an extra chromosome, such as people appearing to be males with an XXY genotype. (In humans, sex-determining chromosomes are labeled X and Y; females have two X chromosomes, and males have one X and one Y. Other species have different sex determination systems.) Others just don't produce enough of certain hormones when genitalia are developing. The latter is the subject of Jeffrey Eugenides's Pulitzer prize-winning novel "Middlesex," a story told from the point of view of a genetic male who is raised as a female for the first 14 years of his life. Behind the engrossing plot and the witty writing is a commentary on what gender really means, and how most of us have a very narrow view of what behavioral and appearance traits are acceptable in our society - and probably most societies.

This narrow view may make some biological sense, because really everything is about reproduction, and in a sexual species that means getting together with the right person in order to be able to reproduce, and in a social species that means learning the rules that tell you how to identify the sex of others, behave in a way that will make you attractive to members of the opposite sex. But as an intelligent and self-aware species it would be nice if we could transcend some biological imperatives to acknowledge the natural variation in gender identidy that does indeed occur (for whatever reason), and accept that full variation as part of the entire human experience.

Labels: gender, humans, sex, sociality

A long term academic controversy boiled up into the New York Times recently. There are dozens of these all the time in every field, but this one, regarding Dr. J. Michael Bailey, who in 2003 published "The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism" obviously made the mainstream press because of its topic.

The portrayal of the controversy is a typical rehash pitting the Nasty Scientist Who Misuses His Credentials To Promote An Unsubstantiated Viewpoint versus the Knee Jerk PC Crowd Who Doesn't Want To Hear The Uncomfortable Truth.

My disclaimer up front is that I have not read the book, just a lot of commentary by both its supporters and detractors. For my purposes this is enough. The existence of the controversy itself brings to mind two separate questions. The first is a question about how we go about conducting science and promoting its results, especially when the research involves human subjects (which by default produce data that are complex and difficult to interpret). The second is a question about the relationship between gender identity issues and society, and will be addressed in the next post.

Any academic discussion of sexual identity will become quickly polarized, because people view statements written in generalities as personal attacks. This is why a book such as this provokes much more emotional responses than controversial books or papers about other health issues. The crux of this controversy is that proponents of the book maintain that any transsexuals who were offended by it just don't want to hear the truth about themselves, while the offended transsexuals are insulted that anyone else would presume to know more than they about their motivations. It is clear from reviews on both sides that Dr. Bailey goes somewhat out on a limb by claiming that there are only two motivations for transsexuals, and every transsexual falls into one of the two groups. It is not surprising that transsexuals who believe they fit one of the categories like the book, and those who do not believe such do not. But what truly matters is whether this book is actually science or merely opinion.

Certainly it is wise to be suspicious of those making sweeping claims about human biology based on their invariably self-selected, self-reporting sample. Such a book, if it purports to be true science, should be absolutely clear in its justification of research methods (e.g. at the minimum, general acceptance of those methods by others in the field), and equally up-front about the assumptions that were made in the analysis of the data. All data analyses, statistical or not (and I have no idea if Bailey used statistics or not), involve assumptions, that if violated, undermine the conclusions the author is drawing.

There is a widespread problem of those with scientific credentials claiming authority in areas such as this that are notorious for requiring many assumptions and inferences that cannot be directly confirmed through observation or experiment. An example of a field outside the realm of human biology is paleontology, in which scientists notoriously cling to their personal theories with a vigor less known in other areas of geology and biology. The reason is that there is a clear limit on what we can ever know about plants and animals that went extinct millions of years ago, no matter how many more fossils are discovered. Thus the field is rife with assumptions and inferences that can never be disproved.

The field of human biology is similar. Our knowledge of how the brain works is growing, and may sometime be sufficient to make well supported generalizations, but the more we learn, the more we discover how little we really know. Every individual is a unique combination of genes and environment, with no way to replicate his or her singular experience (except in the limited case of identical twins-reared apart studies). So even sincere attempts at conducting scientifically rigorous, unbiased research are extremely limited in their real scientific utility. Overlaid on top of this is the problem of distinct personalities conducting the research, with biases (quite strong when the subject is our own species) either blatant or in most cases more subtle and difficult to detect, and the reception of results also by distinct personalities with their own biases. Rigorous scientific methods are a distinct improvement over exhortations from those claiming to converse with a higher being, but even their results are often far from black and white.

Is Dr. Bailey's book science? I cannot answer that question without reading it. But my own bias is that little health research to do with humans is worthwhile at the present time. Its larger potential value is that it will lead to more interesting questions to ask in the future, when we may have better technologies for understanding the interactions between genes and environment that create the deeply complex bags of water and chemicals that we are.

Labels: gender, health, humans

Isn't parenthood supposed to be about raising a kid to be a healthy, happy, independently functioning, contributing member of society? These distorted, egocentric days in Yuppieville, it seems instead to be all about the reproductive process, rather than a far-off endpoint, that bolsters the parent's self esteem. All the issues surrounding having kids -- when, how, and not to mention whether -- focus on the parents' wants and needs, as if they were choosing the car which best projects their self-image.

Here's a woman who, after struggling with health problems that threatened her ability to get pregnant, was able to give birth to a healthy boy at age 40. One would think she would feel extremely fortunate. Instead:

"I had my sense of self-worth tied up with having a 'normal' family," Deborah explained. "You know, the family with two children. It was always this destination to be counted upon. It was what made tolerable all the losses along the way, the surgeries, the ostomy bags, everything. So when this path felt threatened, all those other losses suddenly took on more substance."

...days before the process was to begin, she found herself lying awake nights, frantic over whether she was doing the right thing. "What gets to me is that the three of them would be genetically related," she said, "and I would be the one. . . . It's not about passing on my genes. It's that I don't want to be an outsider in my own family. I don't want to feel less legitimate in my child's eyes."

If not sharing genes somehow makes this woman an "outsider in my own family," than clearly it is about passing on genes. In one sense this woman cannot help but feel this way. She wanted to adopt a second child, but her husband, who claimed he didn't have enough time to spend with the son they already have, insisted that the next child must share his genes. These people are both trapped into their views of what is "normal" reproductively. Do they put as much thought into actually raising these kids?

Before starting our donor cycle, my husband and I met once with a social worker, a standard requirement for couples using donor eggs -- though, again, not for those using donor sperm. Her job wasn't to screen us (she did, after all, work for the clinic and had little incentive to reject anyone) but to help us imagine how the genetic asymmetry might play out.

Do you know why it is not required for sperm donation? Because most men do not freak out about using donors the way that women do (excepting the jerk above who obviously thought his manhood was in jepoardy if the child was not his genetically). Using donated sperm has been common for much longer, so maybe it is just a lag in how used we are to these technologies. But in general, it is women who seem to obsess over these issues, and read deep significance into every possible stage of the reproductive process. One of the most absurd examples I have encountered was a remark made by a woman who had given birth recently by emergency cesarean section. Referring to my own c-section, I was corrected by her: "You should say 'cesarean birth' so that it affirms that you gave birth to the baby." I could only stare open-mouthed. I hauled my kid around in my guts for nine months (most of which time her presence made me miserable), and this woman actually thinks that someone out there thinks I did not really give birth because the baby didn't exit through my vagina? She was in me, and then came out. Even it had been through my nose, I would certainly define that as "birth."

But in a sense perhaps the woman was right. She either said what she did because she is pathetically insecure, or because in her mind a vaginal birth was somehow superior or more valid. My own doctor was needlessly apologetic when he informed me of the necessity of my having a cesarean. I read a parent magazine article that actually discussed making the choice to attempt a vaginal birth of a breech baby as if it were a positive thing.

It is not convincing to suggest that safety due to protection from surgery is an adequate reason for making such a choice. In a western hospital, complications from a cesarean are not much more common than those from vaginal birth. From the baby's perspective, however, it is significantly more dangerous. I am close to someone who was a breech delivery, and became slightly brain-damaged as a result of being choked by her own umbilical cord. Why any mother would put her own desires (this does not include maternal health risks, which are a separate issue) above what is safest for the baby is beyond me. But such desires have fed the growing popularity of giving birth at home (also promoted by articles in the same magazine), and underwater in birthing tubs.

The egg donor article continues:

"People see a child in a supermarket checkout line and almost reflexively make some comment about who he looks like or doesn't look like," said Robert Nachtigall, an adjunct clinical professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco and a co-author of the paper. "We interpret it as a kind of shorthand by which people validate the child's position in the family, in society, by basically making comments that refer to the blood relationship that must exist between the child and his or her parents. The problem for people who have conceived with donor gametes is that they know it's not true. And the dilemma for them is how to respond, if at all."...The difference is that there's widespread cultural support for adoption in a way there isn't for donor conception.

So we are supposed to have special sympathy for those who make the choice to spend $40,000 on an ovum rather than a child? Why is it anyone's business in the first place? What happened to smiling and nodding politely? The answer is that they want to make it everyone's business because they have a bizarre need to have their choice "validated" by strangers. If the process of reproduction affects the child's "position in the family, in society" it is a self-fulfilling prophecy caused by constant parental worry. Plenty of adoptive parents have a good laugh when well meaning strangers remark on how their child resembles them. It happens all the time.

Resemblance talk did something else, too: although emphatic that it didn't change their love for their child, mothers said it was a constant reminder of their own infertility.

Granted, there certainly is something biological in people's obsession with fertility. After all, if we did not prefer to raise our own genetic child to raising someone else's, our genes would not get very far. Women may be more easily obsessed with reproduction than men because their investment in children is nearly always much larger than men's (the sole exception being a stay-at-home father of an adopted child). But humans have transcended a lot of base biological urges culturally. Killing is illegal among humans because with our rational brains we can project consequences, and we raise ourselves to a moral standard above what we grant to other animals. Humans also have other ways of leaving a legacy than simply by reproduction. As Stephen Sondheim once pointed out, we gain our immortality through both "children and art." Or an invention. Or a business. A strong biological urge to reproduce genetically should be tempered by the rational knowledge that the successful upbringing of a contributing member of society, carrying our heritage, is more important than whether he or she carries our genes. There are millions of adoptive parents out there who know that their kids are their kids, no matter who gave birth to them. How many abandoned mothers refer to their absent children's fathers as "sperm donors"? How many people want to disown their own rotten (but genetically related) kids?

These angst-ridden women who dwell on such superficial issues should get over themselves, but the truth is that most will not. What we should be concerned about is not how complicated genetic relationships will "play out," but rather that such self-absorbed women are raising kids at all, and for what purpose.

Labels: gender, genetics, health, humans

In Lisa Belkin's recent article (subsq. req'd) on women attempting to re-enter the workplace after leaving to have kids, "while 74 percent do find work, only 40 percent find work they call satisfying."

This statement only begs the questions: What percentage of men find their work satisfying? What percentage of women who never "opted out" find their work satisfying?

What all the discussions about continuing gender inequality in the workplace fail to address is that for most people, having a job is a less attractive option in many ways than not working, whether you are male or female. White-collar women are faced with a double-edged sword, because while it is harder for them than men to achieve success in most professions, it is also socially much more acceptable for them than men to quit their jobs to raise children. I know several women who were glad to have the excuse when it came along. Men, however, live in a completely different world. Those who stay at home with kids now are in general as anomalous, and disparaged, as the first women who left their kids to go to work, when most did not.

It is a complex issue, because men are more likely to prefer work to staying home for two reasons: one, they are simply expected to so they make their reality fit expectations in order to fit in with society; and two, most professional work is easier for men than for women because it genuinely is harder for women of the same ability to be recognized for such and advance in their careers.

As explained by Ben Barres, (subsq. req'd) most working women actually ignore the signs of sexism in their quest to succeed. This makes perfect sense; if you develop a victimization complex and dwell on perceived or real obstacles that are out of your control, it will waste energy better spent on working around any obstacles that do present themselves. Many women have had the attitude that if they ignore the whole idea of sexism and just do what we do best, they will succeed. The problem with this is that we end up with the situation we have now - a whole generation of young women that don't believe in a need for feminism, because they believe the lack of officially sanctioned sexism means that women have achieved equality (even when the numbers starkly show that in most professions, increasing proportions of women at high levels have stalled, and in some there have even been recent losses, instead of gains). If women are not advancing at the same rate as men, well, it's because they have made the choice to "opt out." Young women are turned off the feminist movement because they see their current situation as having the freedom of choice. But "choice" in this context is quite often an illusion; the fact that the choice made all too often, to settle back into traditional female roles, belies the notion of true equality in the workplace.

Unfortunately the media perpetuates the myth of equality via the propagation of these terms such as "opting out" and "choice". Is it really a choice to leave a career to raise kids when women have to be twice as good as a man just to keep up? The insidious problem about sexism today is that while it is usually no longer acceptable (not to mention legal) to be blatantly discriminatory in the workplace, there is no recourse, legal or otherwise, for women dying a slow death by a thousand small cuts. From the abstract of an academic paper on the topic (Soares, 2001. Women in science and technology: Restricted success. Quimica Nova 24:281-285):

Along the way [women] come across stumbling blocks that make their progress difficult. Most of these difficulties are not gender-specific, yet women encounter them more consistently than do men. It is remarkably true for the areas of Science and Technology.

Every Ph.D. learns about rejection. All else being equal, if a woman has to apply for several more grants before one gets funded or a dozen more jobs before she gets an interview, then that many more women will drop out before they do succeed. That alone would translate into significantly fewer women in higher academic positions. We can all name plenty of women who have achieved those positions, but that is not the point. The environment is such that highly driven people will likely achieve prominent standing in science, regardless of gender. The continuing disparity lies between those who put forth a fair amount of effort, are reasonable scientists, and succeed, and those who are at least as good at what they do and work hard at their research and teaching, and yet do not have the energy to keep fighting on and on after seemingly endless job and grant rejections. The former group is dominated by men; the latter group is dominated by women. In addition, because men are much more likely to believe they must be the primary breadwinner and thus have a full-time job, which for professional women remains "optional," it is highly likely that men in the latter scenario will indeed keep fighting longer to succeed. The mistaken conclusion is that this is due to some gender disparity in tenacity, when it is only due to society's expectations forming men's and women's expectations of themselves.

So the difference has nothing to do with ability, drive, competitiveness or any of the nonsense hypothesized by sociologists and Larry Summers. It simply has to do with a still unlevel playing field in day-to-day accomplishments versus rewards. Barres, with his experience both as a female and male scientist, is in a unique position to cut right to the heart of the issue:

I think people do what they are rewarded for doing, and I think women realize, whether it's conscious or unconscious, they are not going to get the rewards. So they put the hours into their families or whatever.

Barres does bring in the child support issue, which needs to be recognized as a worker issue, not a women's issue. However, he is still probably right to mention it in tandem with the higher hurdles women face because in our society child care is still considered a women's issue, and thus the lack of it results in a double-whammy:

It is very much harder for women to be successful, to get jobs, to get grants, especially big grants. And then, and this is a huge part of the problem, they don't get the resources they need to be successful. Right now, what's fundamentally missing and absolutely vital is that women get better child care support.

Certainly no one can deny the truth of his last sentence. But until we all recognize that this is just one of many working conditions (such as long hours, short vacation times, etc.) that makes many jobs unpleasant for everyone, the gender disparity will continue. People have worked hard at societal attitudes over the years, and no one can say they haven't improved. But it would certainly help if the mainstream media weren't constantly reinforcing the myth that advancement at work is all about choice.

Labels: gender, humans, sociality

There may be a reason why placental mammals, such as ourselves, were greatly more successful evolutionarily than marsupials (which, other than opossums, are restricted to Australia). Researchers have looked for possible constraints related to the marsupial reproductive system, which is the major difference between the two groups. Marsupials have very brief gestational periods, after which the young, still at the embryonic stage, are born from the uterus and climb along the outside of the mother's body to to a teat, which expands in the embryo's mouth to provide a strong point of attachment. Most, though not all, marsupials have pouches which protect the young at this vulnerable stage. The entire fetal stage of development occurs outside the mother's body.

In a lightning search, I found one interesting paper (Sears, K.E. (2004) Constraints on the morphological evolution of marsupial shoulder girdles. Evolution, 58, 2353-2370) which finds statistical evidence that there are constraints on the scapula (shoulder blade bone) due to the embryo's need to climb to the teat at such an early stage. This has apparently limited diversification in the structure of this bone, which in turn imposes constraints on locomotion. (The scapula is an extremely important site for muscle attachment; in humans, 13 muscles attach there). Simply stated, there may be a lot fewer marsupials than placentals out there because there are fewer ways to get around, and thus fewer niches available for them to expand into.

So, it was probably more likely that large-brained types like us would be placentals. But maybe it wouldn't be impossible. So I like to imagine sometimes the convenience that being marsupial would provide to the reproductive half of our species. For instance, in placentals like us, body resources are preferentially diverted to a developing fetus; we cannot control the process. If resources are scarce for a marsupial mother who is unable or unwilling to provide for her young, she does not have to. All she has to do is remove the embryo from the teat. (Marsupials are known to do this for various reasons, including sexual selection of the young.)

If humans were marsupials, there would be no abortion debate. This is because the abortion debate is not about life, it is about control. Because a placental woman cannot remove a developing fetus easily by herself, this action can be controlled by other people. There would be no possible way to prevent the removal of a dime-sized embryo from someone's body.

There are a lot of people out there who I am sure are outraged by my characterization of the abortion debate. But it is obvious to many of us that the political debate is not about the sanctity of life, or the definition of life, or the point at which life begins, or anything to do with life. All of these discussions are obfuscations. If it were about any of these, there would not be the large overlap there is between anti-abortionists and those who are pro-capital punishment, those who support a war that has spurred the killing and maiming of generally hundreds of innocent civilians (including a hefty number of children) per week, and those who are anti-birth control. Anti-abortionism is also a fairly recent phenomenon in Christian history. Therefore it is actually a political movement, not a foundational religious moral issue. But others have pointed out these inconsistencies before.

The interesting analysis is in what human behavior we attempt to regulate. Certainly there is a largely "golden rule" theory behind many of our laws. (Despite Christian Right assertions that our laws are based on the Biblical Ten Commandments, the evidence belies this because only two transgressions listed, murder and theft, are against the law and both are necessary for a stable, functioning society. The others are not.)

But there are also repeated attempts, some successful, others not, to legislate morality at a level that is not necessary for a stable society. Abortion is clearly one of these. Other examples I can think of are Prohibition, anti-sodomy laws, and anti-drug laws (which arbitrarily leave out a slew of drugs, including nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, and those deemed to have a medical purpose). Of these, only the last are still extant, and it would be a stretch to argue that they are in any way effective. But, it is at least possible, as it was during Prohibition, to nab someone with the goods and therefore punish a few token perpetrators. Sodomy laws were also largely unenforceable, aside from a few tokens, and have mostly been abolished. One can be caught in the act of sodomy, but it is harder than catching someone with drugs.

Why don't all these political Christian anti-abortionists demand other laws that could be deemed equally moral? For example, why does no one propose to make adultery illegal (as it is in many religiously based societies)? My guess is that lawmakers, because they are in positions of power, engage in it often and don't want their fun dampened. But another reason is that such a law would be about as easy to enforce as an anti-sodomy law. And what about greed, one of the seven deadly sins, specifically prohibited by the Ten Commandments? That would be inconvenient too, since it keeps our economy churning along. And of course one cannot attempt to regulate thought in a "free society."

But abortion is a winner. First, because it affects only women (and a few rogue doctors), which most of our lawmakers are not. Second, because pregnancy is the scarlet letter for many communities. It is God punishing the woman for fornication. It just so happens there is no scarlet letter for men (aside from a few diseases, and you couldn't legislate against the curing of a disease, could you?) so even those who believe men should be equally punished for such activity have no way of proving it. There's no point, so the men are safe.

For placental humans, anti-abortion laws are much easier to enforce than many morality laws, because either you go have it done by a doctor in a sterile facility, or you take your life in your hands. Certainly some people have opted for the latter approach when abortion has been illegal, but anti-abortion law remains relatively enforceable.

But if we were marsupials, there would be no scarlet letter for women, either. The disposing of an embryo would be so quick and easy it would be nearly impossible to catch someone in the act. So, we wouldn't bother. There would either be no attempt at anti-abortion law, because it would be acknowledged to be unenforceable, or, a law would pass without fanfare and hang out on the books forever, but be meaningless and unenforceable (somewhat like recent remnants of anti-sodomy laws). So no debate. But as we are, that power could be wielded easily, and so attempts to wield it will never end.

Labels: gender, health, humans, morality, religion

Apparently some women are actually outraged that there is finally a birth control pill that does not force us to have a period, supposedly because it is somehow "unnatural" not to have one every 28 days of our non-pregnant lives. And yet it is only due to a bizarre historical artifact that for the nearly 50 years that the Pill has been available, those of us using it have been forced to have our period thirteen times a year, even if we didn't want to.

Here's a brief summary of the human female menstrual cycle:
The first day of menstrual bleeding is arbitrarily designated as the first day of the menstrual cycle. During the first 4-5 days, during bleeding, hormones are at their lowest point. Over the next 10 days or so, an ovarian follicle develops, and once the follicle is mature, ovulation occurs. At this point, estrogen is peaking. Then, estrogen drops after ovulation and progesterone, which stimulates the uterine lining to develop in anticipation of receiving a fertilized ovum, increases. If the ovum is not fertilized, progesterone levels drop, which means the enriched lining of the uterus is not sustained, and menstrual bleeding occurs.

The birth control pill mainly contains progesterone. If you become pregnant, high levels of progesterone are maintained, which prevents further ovulation. Thus, the artificial introduction of progesterone essentially causes your body to behave as if it were pregnant, which inhibits ovulation. The traditional Pill introduces one progesterone-free week out of every four, so that menstrual bleeding will be simulated. It isn't true menstrual bleeding because we are never actually allowing our bodies to go through the cycle, we are just turning progesterone levels on and off like a switch to manipulate it.

If you ever thought about your reproductive cycle for ten minutes and asked your doctor why on earth you should be compelled to go through this ritual despite the fact that you have not even ovulated, you got some vague response about how it was not 'healthy' not to have periods. But women have been systematically misled for decades; there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that there are health risks associated with the absence of menstruation. Certainly the lack of menstruation can be an indicator of some further health problem (such as abnormally low body fat), but it actually serves no function other than your body saying "whoops, not pregnant this time."

What furthers the outrage was the assumption that women must have 13 cycles a year to be "normal." I personally had about a six-week cycle before going on hormones, but at the time, I thought it was a reasonable trade-off to have more "periods," given that they were significantly less debilitating (of course, since I was not having natural periods). But this New Yorker article from 2000 pointed out that there is evidence that menstruating more often is a product of industrialized society, and that in pre-industrial societies, it is normal for women to menstruate as few as four times a year. The article further shows the positive correlation between lifetime number of menstrual cycles in women and cancers of the reproductive organs.

So why on earth does the traditional birth control pill force us to simulate menstruation, when for so many of us, it is a miserable few days?

Perhaps at the time the Pill was being researched and developed, in the late 50s-early 60's, people knew that the primary force behind that research and development was Dr. John Rock, who happened to be a devout Catholic. In fact, he pursued this line of research precisely because he was a Catholic, and wanted to give Catholic women more control over their reproductive lives without violating their church's rules. He reasoned that if the rhythm method was acceptable to the church, surely intervention - using the same hormones occurring naturally in the body - in order to make the cycle more regular and prevent a fertile period entirely, would be acceptable too. Of course he ultimately was wrong, and became an embittered ex-Catholic by the end of his life.

But the greatest travesty was done to women who simply wanted convenient birth control, and to have power over their own reproductive lives. A menstrual period every 28 days was arbitrarily introduced into the regimen by a Catholic doctor who thought it would appease the pope. A pope, who, eventually, decided Catholics were not allowed to use the Pill. So every woman who has used the birth control pill since is either a non-Catholic, or a "Catholic" who doesn't give a hoot what the pope thinks anyway. And yet for nearly 50 years we have been stuck with a Catholic Pill as our only option.

The one argument made in the Times article about forcing regular "periods" that made any sense to me at all was the psychological reassurance of not being pregnant. Fine, those women can use a period-forcing pill as far as I am concerned. Why should the rest of us be compelled to as well?

Here are some of my particularly favorite quotes in the article:

"It's not an easy decision for a woman to give up her monthly menses," said Ronny Gal, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company.

There has also been a backlash among groups that celebrate the period as a spiritual or natural process, like the California-based Red Web Foundation. "The focus of our group is to create positive attitudes toward the menstrual cycle; suppressing it wouldn't be positive," said Anna C. Yang, a holistic nurse and executive director of the organization.

One [person] who attended the screening [of "Period: The End of Menstruation?"], Aviva Bergman, a 22-year-old student at Goucher College in Maryland, said she would not use products that suppressed her period because it seemed unnatural.

"I just feel that there's a reason you're getting it every month," she said.

You know what? Y'all can have as many periods as you like. You do your little spirit dances while you are washing the blood out of your underwear and popping the Advil like candy. If you believe in "natural," go live in a cave somewhere. Just don't have the gall to "backlash" against something that will make my life significantly more bearable, and that I should have already had for my entire adult life. Thank you.

Labels: gender, health, humans, nature

An observation that has been sitting on my back burner for awhile is the apparent phenomenon that mothers tend to be more responsive to their babies' cries than fathers. I don't mean this in the sense of a behavioral response, but rather, as a physiological response. For example, I'm amazed at how loud our daughter has to cry at night to wake my husband up - sometimes I hear it through ear plugs before he seems to notice.

Of course, this is a single observation. Ever the scientist, I formed two possible hypotheses about this phenomenon, which, based on conversations with other couples with small children, seems to be fairly widespread. One hypothesis is that it is usually the mother who has the heightened response, and that it could be a hormonal issue. (It probably is partly associated with breast feeding, but I stopped nearly a year ago and still have the response.) Another hypothesis is that it is the primary caretaker who has the heightened response, and just seems like moms because, surprise, they are usually the primary caretakers.

My bit of unscientifically collected data supporting the first hypothesis rather than the second is that out of probably half a dozen couples, it is the mothers who have the response, even though in two of these cases the father has been the primary caretaker. So I'm guessing there is some real physiological basis in this.

Real scientific studies could tell me whether I'm right or not. Surprisingly, though, an hour plus of searches both on Web of Science and Google produced nothing concrete on this topic. The studies I did find were nearly always on mothers only (which I found annoying), and mostly compared mothers and non-mothers, or especially, mothers of "collicky" vs non-collicky babies. A few studies, below, were a bit more interesting to me.

First:

Purhonen M, Kilpelainen-Lees R, Paakkonen A, Ypparila H, Lehtonen J, Karhu J, 2001. Effects of maternity on auditory event-related potentials to human sound.
NEUROREPORT 12 (13): 2975-2979 SEP 17 2001

Abstract: Auditory event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded in response to an emotional (a baby's cry) and a neutral (a word) stimulus in a group of mothers 2-5 days after childbirth (n = 20) and in control women (n = 18) who were not in the state of early motherhood. For each mother, her own infant's cry was recorded and used as the cry stimulus, whereas a strange baby's cry was used for control women. The word stimulus was identical for both groups. Stimuli were presented in intermittent trains in order to study the arousal responses to the first stimuli of the trains, and refractoriness of ERPs during stimulus repetition. The N100 responses were significantly larger in amplitude in mothers than in control women, not only to the emotional cry stimuli but also to the neutral word stimuli. The finding suggests a general increase in alertness and arousal in mothers, which may be necessary in enabling the mother to be continuously alert to her infant's needs. This allows good care of the infant and may be essential in building an emotional tie between the mother and her child.

I think this study also needed an additional test group of mothers responding to cries of strange children. The conclusion (about the "emotional tie between the mother and her child") may not quite be supported if any baby's cry elicits the same response. Or perhaps it is, given that mothers are going to be exposed to their own baby's cries more often. Because we are a social species, though, that would be relevant and interesting information.

It's not surprising mothers and non-mothers differ on this of course, but what about fathers? I really think this is an obvious thing to test. Aren't "emotional ties" with dad important? (I checked these authors and there was not a paternal follow-up to this paper.)

Here's another dealing with mothers' brains - it appears to be an unpublished pilot study that I found online. It suggests that the cingulate region of the brain (part of the limbic system, which is associated with emotional respons) is involved with maternal response to cries. Wish they had done it with fathers too!

Feasibility Of Using fMRI To Study Mothers Responding To Infant Cries.
J.P. Lorberbaum, J.D. Newman, J.R. Dubno, A.R. Horwitz, Z. Nahas, C. Teneback, M.R. Johnson, R.B. Lydiard, J.C. Ballenger, M.S. George.

This small pilot experiment demonstrates the feasibility of studying maternal response to infant cries in a fMRI scanner environment. It tentatively supports the notion that the cingulate is involved in response to infant crying. Consistent with some monkey lesion work, it suggests that the ROF may also be involved (2). In designing follow-up studies, we are considering such factors as maternal and infant temperament, the type of infant cry, using each mother's infant's own cries, the appropriateness of our control stimulus, postpartum timing, and allowing a mother to actively terminate the cries as in natural settings. Future work in this area may lead to understanding the brain basis of mother-infant interaction and the biological roots of child neglect and abuse.

Here's one that looks at fathers vs. nonfathers:

Fleming AS, Corter C, Stallings J, Steiner M, 2002. Testosterone and prolactin are associated with emotional responses to infant cries in new fathers.
HORMONES AND BEHAVIOR 42 (4): 399-413 DEC 2002

Abstract: To determine the responsiveness of new fathers and non-fathers toward infant cues, we exposed fathers and non-fathers to infant cries and to control stimuli and we measured affective, heart-rate, and endocrine responses, including salivary testosterone and cortisol and plasma prolactin concentrations prior to and after cry presentations. We found that (1) fathers hearing the cry stimuli felt more sympathetic and more alert compared to groups who did not hear the cries or to non-fathers who heard the cries; (2) fathers and non-fathers with lower testosterone levels had higher sympathy and/or need to respond to the infant cries than fathers with higher testosterone levels; (3) fathers with higher, as opposed to lower, prolactin levels were also more alert and more positive in response to the cries; (4) fathers hearing the cry stimuli showed greater percentage increase in testosterone than fathers not hearing the cry stimuli; (5) experienced fathers hearing the cries showed a greater percentage increase in prolactin levels compared to first-time fathers or to any group of fathers hearing control stimuli; finally, (6) partial correlations with parity and experience entered as a covariates indicated that both experience and testosterone contributed to the variance in fathers' affective responses to infant cries. Taken together, these results indicate that, as with a number of other biparental species, human fathers are more responsive to infant cues than are non-fathers and fathers' responses to infant cues are related to both hormones and to caregiving experience.

While the previous papers looked at brain response, this one studied hormones, which makes it interesting, as it is not necessarily intuitive that fatherhood affects hormones. But, not only do having less testosterone and more prolactin make a father more responsive, but the cries themselves affected hormone levels, indicating a true physiological response to the sound of a baby crying. While one might expect maternal hormones to do this, it is more interesting to find it in fathers too.

From looking at this paper and the following...:

Storey, A. E., Walsh, C. J., Quinton, R. L., and Wynne-Edwards, K.E.(2000). Hormonal correlates of paternal responsiveness in new and expectant fathers. Evol. Hum. Behav. 21,79-95.

...it becomes obvious that the situation is not clear-cut; men who naturally have more testosterone are less responsive to their babies crying. It is not too hard to imagine couples out there where the father is the one leaping out of bed at the slightest peep.

Finally, I found a report (pdf) available here, which aims partly to look at brain responses to baby cries of both men and women, with and without children - exactly what I was looking for. Sadly, it is only a progress report from 2001, and my searches on the authors names came up empty on any follow-up. But again, the cingulate gyrus is implicated.

Here are the questions I would like to see addressed:

What effects do breast feeding or not have on physiological response to baby cries? Looking at hormones would be confounded by the hormones associated with the breast feeding, but an fMRI might be interesting.

What is the effect, if any, of actually having given birth to the baby, vs. adoption? (I suspect there has probably been some research on this aspect, but I haven't taken the time to delve into it.)

And of course, I would like to see the fMRI data for the test groups mentioned in the progress report above.

To close, here is my list of all the things that often sound, to me, like a baby crying (and my husband thinks I'm nuts, of course):

Dogs barking, cats meowing, trucks and cars going by on the freeway, train whistles, sirens, wind, kids playing outside, various large appliances, lawn mowers, snow blowers, leaf blowers, and the flywheel on my rowing machine.

That's all I could think of off the top of my head. I will edit the list as I think of more things. Please comment if you can add to the list or have any data to back up or refute my groundless assertions!

Labels: brain, gender, humans

Anyone who cared to peruse the links to the left around the Biotunes site would know that I have a particular fondness of ants. In fact, I consider them to be the pinnacle of evolution. Yep, newsflash for all you "evolution-must-mean-progress- because-look-at-humans" types out there - humans ain't at the tip.

Why are ants so ubiquitous and speciose, and probably found in more habitats on earth than any other family of organisms? (I made up that last part but it could easily be true - anyone out there know?) One good guess is eusociality. Most animal species are solitary, but some are social. There are several different levels of sociality, but the most evolutionarily derived form is eusociality, which means there is a complete division of labor among individuals in a colony. Henry Ford had it right - the most efficient way to produce something is through specialization of tasks necessary to reach the goal. In ants, the queen's only job is to lay eggs. The workers specialize on various tasks such as nest cleaning, larva rearing, foraging and protection of the nest. Many humans like to fool themselves that they are good multitaskers, but our brains say otherwise. Even we are more efficient when we focus on one task. But we aren't as efficient at producing more humans as ants are at producing more ants.


Although humans are not eusocial, we are social, and a lot of what we do is going to be affected by the basic biological need to fit in socially - no man is an island.
What is interesting to me is that we are in a current fad in which everyone wants to use gender as a construct to explain general social behavior. Probably that's because we seem to have hit a brick ceiling in terms of women's progress in various professions, and there seem to be a lot of people dying to explain it in terms of gender genetics (e.g., the infamous Larry Summers). But what if all these beloved "differences" between men and women were explained by sociality?

In every species, solitary and social, males and females obviously have different reproductive roles. But societies are more complex. In many mammal societies there are alpha (reproductive) males and females with other individuals filling other roles. Humans are even less social than that, because generally everyone has the chance to reproduce. Also in general, those that conform to cultural norms are more likely to reproduce. (Hence my argument in the last post that any genes associated with autism are likely to be spreading, because many people who do not conform to societal norms have found a way to make a pile of money, and therefore become more attractive as mates.) If you look at human cultures around the world, there are some things we have in common - music, language, stuff like that. But I think you could ask any anthropologist and find out that cultural norms are all over the place. For example, there are matriarchal societies, albeit less common than patriarchal (body size probably has an influence there - individuals are certainly limited in some ways by their biology). There are societies in which men dress up in fancy clothing, and women wear something dull. So it actually wouldn't make any sense for specific behavioral roles to be encoded in our genes.

What does make sense for social creatures such as ourselves is to absorb the rules for behavior in our culture early on in our development. I am forever astounded by the studies (or interpretations of studies) that claim that human male and female behavior is different genetically because they tested 2-year-olds. I have a 17-month-old who learns several new words a day. Every day of her life, she has heard the use of the pronouns "he" and "she" to refer to the different genders. Through the interactions of not only parents but any other adults or kids with her, she is told that she is a "she." What is a "she"? That is an idea she adds data to every day. It has something to do with clothes, something to do with speech, something to do with hair, something to do with body shape, etc. This is part of how she develops an idea of how she is supposed to fit in to her culture. I don't care how many studies are done on toddlers, I am convinced that kids from day 1 are developing an image of how someone like them fits into society. This is image is changing all the time, of course, because there is always new data to fit into their constructed idea of role and behavior.

So that's why I will always roll my eyes when some parent tells me that of course it's all genetic because their daughter loves dolls and their son loves trucks, and they never tell them what to play with, the kids just choose...

Labels: ants, brain, gender, sociality