Gender, Nature, and Nurture
Language: English
Pages: 358
ISBN: 0805853456
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This engaging text presents the latest scientific findings on gender differences, similarities, and variations--in sexuality, cognitive abilities, occupational preferences, personality, and social behaviors. The impact of nature and nurture on gender is examined from the perspectives of genetics, molecular biology, evolutionary theory, neuroanatomy, sociology, and psychology. The result is a balanced, fair-minded synthesis of diverse points of view. Dr. Lippa's text sympathetically summarizes each side of the nature-nurture debate, and in a witty imagined conversation between a personified "nature" and "nurture," he identifies weaknesses in the arguments offered by both sides. His review defines gender, summarizes research on gender differences, examines the nature of masculinity and femininity, describes theories of gender, and presents a "cascade model," which argues that nature and nurture weave together to form the complex tapestry known as gender.
Gender, Nature, and Nurture, Second Edition features:
*new research on sex differences in personality, moral thought, coping styles, sexual and antisocial behavior, and psychological adjustment;
*the results of a new meta-analysis of sex differences in real-life measures of aggression;
*new sections on non-hormonal direct genetic effects on sexual differentiation; hormones and maternal behavior; and on gender, work, and pay; and
*expanded accounts of sex differences in children's play and activity levels; social learning theories of gender, and social constructionist views of gender.
This lively "primer" is an ideal book for courses on gender studies, the psychology of women, or of men, and gender roles. Its wealth of updated information will stimulate the professional reader, and its accessible style will captivate the student and general reader.
social support in friendship networks more than men do, and they care for sick friends and family members more than men do. One finding that supports Taylor's conclusion that women are better "tenders" is that marriage brings many more psychological and health benefits to men than it does to women (Berkman & Syme, 1979; Litwak & Messeri, 1989). Apparently, having a wife is health-promoting, but having a husband is not necessarily. Because women assume more of the burden of tending for others,
more recent approach to measuring masculinity and femininity. It is my own approach, and I got to choose its name: gender diagnosticity. Deconstructing and Reconstructing Masculinity—Femininity Before describing my approach to masculinity and femininity in more detail, let's first pause and take stock of where we have been and consider the state of the field in recent years. Recapitulation By the 1980s and 1990s, scholarly respect for the concepts of masculinity and femininity was clearly in
experienced gender. As a result, he is forced to examine all the preconceptions he carries with him, as a man from a world in which people definitely do have gender. The question that Genly Ai tries to answer is one that we all grapple with: How do men and women differ? Although fascinating, this question raises many scientific and political controversies on our own planet Earth. Throughout recorded history, men and women have often been seen as different. However, different has rarely been
children's evaluations of playing with masculine (or feminine) toys predicted their actual amount of play with masculine and feminine toys, whereas younger children's evaluations did not. At a conceptual level, Bussey and Bandura demonstrated that sometime between 3 and 4 years of age children internalize gender standards. As a result, children evaluate their behavior in comparison with these standards and they attach a kind of moral right or wrong to gender-related behaviors. Three-year-olds
violate gender stereotypes may also receive harsh treatment. For example, men who opt to stay home as house husbands may be viewed as weak, henpecked, and ineffectual. Men who work in professions that violate gender stereotypes (e.g., nurses, elementary school teachers, interior decorators) may have their masculinity questioned, often because of fears about homosexuality. In many different ways, people convey the message that feminine behavior is unacceptable in men and masculine behavior is