Why Can't a Man Be More Like a Woman?

by Wolpert, Lewis;

  Sex differences in children’s play provide important information. Preference for gendered toys may be first seen as early as ten months, and is definitely present by the age of three, and increases throughout the preschool years. Babies and toddlers spend most of their waking life playing, and there are large sex differences to be seen in their play, such as a preference of girls for dolls and soft toys, and of boys for trucks and mechanical toys. When tested at twelve, eighteen or twenty-four months old, girls have been found to look at dolls much more than boys do, while boys looked at cars much more than do girls. However, in one study made on twelve-month-old infants, both boys and girls preferred dolls to cars, suggesting that older boys’ lack of enthusiasm for dolls might develop later, perhaps due to social influences–or perhaps because the study used a picture of a car rather than one that moved. At six years old ninety-nine per cent of girls play with dolls but just seventeen per cent of boys. Boys, instead, prefer mechanically based play at that age.

  Contrary to some social theories, there is evidence that these toy preferences and other sex-typical types of children’s play are biologically determined and are influenced prenatally by testosterone. Foetal testosterone, when measured in amniotic fluid, relates directly to male-typical play in both boys and girls and predicts sexually differentiated childhood behaviour. Girls with CAH, who were exposed to higher concentrations of testosterone in the womb, have more male-typical play, though parenting and other social factors may play a key role. They play more with what are regarded as boys’ toys and less with girls’ toys compared to sisters who are unaffected or unrelated controls, and when offered a toy to keep they are more likely to pick a typically male toy such as an aeroplane. Their choice of playmates tends to include more boys than unaffected girls, and they prefer a boy-typical play style. Conversely, in a systematic assessment of boys with low prenatal testosterone exposure, male-typical play was found to be reduced in proportion to the lowering of the hormone concentration. We thus see a biological basis for early differences in the behaviour of our two sexes.

  Children prefer to play with their own sex, and this, along with other sex differences, becomes more noticeable from two and a half to five years. Once children start attending school, taking part in play with their peers of the same sex is an important factor. Girls’ speech tends to be more co-operative and their conversations can continue longer. Boys meanwhile play more group games than girls. There are differences between girls’ and boys’ aggression when young. Boys use more force to defend their territory and possessions as they grow older, whereas girls are initially aggressive but become less so and are better able to control their behaviour. This may be as a result of social conditioning.

  As Zakriski and her team have pointed out, there are robust differences between older girls’ and boys’ social environments. Compared with boys in their age groups, older girls more often experience peer talk and adult praise, but they encounter less teasing from adults as well as fewer warnings and punishments. However, girls are observed to be more likely than boys to respond aggressively to direct adult control, warning or punishment, whereas boys are more likely to be aggressive in response to adult instruction. Greater male resistance to instruction has also been noted in toddlers, suggesting it is a key feature of boys’ interactions with adults. Girls’ reactivity to discipline imposed by mainly female counsellors is consistent with evidence that girls’ aggression is pronounced with female caregivers, and suggests that they may perceive such interventions as violations of normal female relationships.

  Both boys and girls start to develop more skilful forms of play during early childhood, but sex differences in social play may be influenced by sex differences in mental skills, because girls develop language and the ability to understand other people’s minds earlier than boys. Boys will be slower in general to speak their first multiword sentences than girls. Girls are the first to involve themselves in social and structured types of play. By the age of three to four years old girls will get together to play, and by four to five they are able to co-operate with each other. By five to six, they have quite sophisticated social interaction with their peers. By contrast, younger preschool boys are more likely to play on their own than preschool girls. Later, boys play in larger groups often organised in a hierarchy, while girls share more and play in smaller groups.

  Moving on to the whole question of gender, parents usually have no doubt as to whether their newborn infants are girls or boys, but abnormalities in development can occasionally make this uncertain. Parents determine a child’s earliest experience as to what it means to be male or female since parents treat sons and daughters differently even when they are babies This extends to dressing them in different colours–blue for a boy, pink for a girl–and giving them quite different toys: dolls for girls, toy trains for boys. Almost as soon as babies are born parents have different expectations about the behaviour of sons and daughters. These relationships can have long-term effects on how children behave and augment the differences between the sexes–but biological factors clearly play a fundamental role.

  The development of gender identity is quite complex, and while it has a strong biological cause, social factors can play a role when the child is young. The differences in the body and brain caused by hormones in the embryo are thought to underlie sex differences in a wide spectrum of behaviours, including gender role. Gender is one of the first social concepts to be learned, and all sorts of stereotypes can be picked by children from which they can make assumptions about their roles as boys and girls.

  From a developmental perspective, when infant boys discover their genitals at eight to ten months of age their awareness of their biological sex can begin. Between one and two years old boys and girls become aware of physical differences between the sexes, and before their third birthday they are easily able to label themselves as either a boy or a girl. At four children have a firm idea of their gender identity and identify themselves as a boy or a girl for life, except in cases of some sexual abnormality. Girls are more advanced in grasping gender identity and half of eighteen-month-old girls understand gender labels like ‘lady’ and ‘man’, but most boys at this age do not. Infants begin to use gender labels at eighteen to twenty-one months and most children produce the words ‘girl’, ‘boy’ and ‘man’ by twenty-two months. While there is evidence that social environment after birth has an effect on gender identity or sexual orientation, a major role is played by specific neuronal circuits involving the hypothalamus, such as the third interstitial nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus (INAH-3), which is larger in males and is clearly related to the brain network for male gender identity. Recognition of one’s own face appears to emerge at around eighteen months of age and at two to three years old children are able to label themselves and others according to gender without difficulty. These advances seem to be biologically determined as there is no evidence that they are modified by external or social events provided that there are no sexual abnormalities.

  The attainment of gender identity requires children to understand that everyone, including themselves, is either a male or a female as Zosuls and her team point out in their study. Measures assessing gender identity have tested children’s ability to understand and correctly use gender labels to specify themselves and others. Gender labelling tells us that children have an awareness of separate gender categories and are able to use this information. In order to understand the development of gender labelling in very young children it has been necessary to use largely non-verbal measures. For example, pictures of males and females have been used, sometimes including pictures of the children themselves, and the child has to identify the sex by pointing at a picture of a male or female, or by sorting the pictures, into separate boxes for males or females. Most children are unsuccessful at visually assigning gender labels to categorise themselves or others until they are about twenty-eight or thirty months old. Since girls are more advanced in early language skills than boys, they are able
to understand gender categories earlier than boys.

  Around the age of two boys and girls begin to play with different gender-typed toys, with girls preferring to play with dolls and boys preferring to play with vehicles. The self-socialisation hypothesis suggests that this kind of behaviour is influenced by boys’ and girls’ ability to categorise themselves and others by gender. Girls produce gender labels consistently earlier than boys, even when their earlier development in language is allowed for, and greater socialisation with women might explain why they are more successful in recognising differences in gender.

  Girls typically have more distinctive clothing than boys, which may make their gender more obvious. Boys’ clothing, on the other hand, tends to be more varied. However, all babies, whether boys or girls, are perceived first and foremost as being cute, cuddly and dependent, and little differentiation is made between male and female. But once boys have become physically stronger, more active and independent, parents begin to recognise traditionally male attributes, such as a liking for sports and rough-and-tumble activities, and tend to make gender more obvious to boys with remarks such as ‘Don’t throw that ball like a girl!’

  Traditional developmental theories propose that children acquire gender-typical behaviour through social interaction, which leads to gender identification and to emulating the behaviour associated with their own gender. Males enjoy a socially dominant position in almost all societies and, from an early age, understand that they must uphold that superior position. Girls are taught to cultivate a submissive role. In the majority of societies boys spend more time in recreation, while girls spend more time helping with household chores and child care. In further support of these theories, it is emphasised that boys and girls receive responses of approval or disapproval from their parents and carers when they play with gendered toys, such as dolls, so that they tend to choose objects that have been labelled for their own sex or which they have seen others of their own sex choose. But boys do engage in less male-typed play when with their mothers.

  As the work of Dedovic and her colleagues pointed out, early gender socialisation and social learning is an essential factor in determining the different responses to stress observed in men and women, and in differentially emphasising what is important to boys’ and girls’ sense of self and self-worth. Historically, in Western cultures, boys have been encouraged to be more active and independent, while girls have received closer adult supervision and been encouraged to engage in more dependent behaviour and nurturing play. Higher levels of control from parents may also foster a sense of self in girls that is more socially determined. Gender socialisation and social learning may contribute to girls often valuing social goals above non-social goals and tending to be more interdependent, while boys in general are more likely to be independent in nature. Further, in adolescence girls are more likely than boys to desire closeness, to place a high value on interdependence and caring for others, and to worry about hurting others. Boys, on the other hand, have tended to adopt goals that promote self-interest and autonomy.

  Girls with CAH are typically born with varying degrees of genital masculinisation such as an enlarged clitoris and fused labia. Social theorists hold that their abnormal genital appearance at birth could cause parents to treat them differently, and it could be this difference in parental treatment, rather than the neural influences, which alters their gender-typed behaviour. In addition having masculinised genitalia could reduce their self-identification as female, which could in turn cause increased male-typical behaviour. Teenage girls with CAH show less interest in make-up and fashion but more interest in subjects like electronics, cars and sports.

  Evidence for a biological basis for male and female behaviour in children is clearly shown from the example of mothers who for medical reasons were treated with hormones during pregnancy. Those treated with progestins which increased male hormones had children who showed increased male-typical or decreased female-typical behaviour, while the children of those exposed to progestins which lowered male hormones showed the opposite effects.

  All this has nice evolutionary support from studies of primates which have found sex-typical toy preferences similar to those seen in children. Male vervet monkeys prefer to spend more time than females handling toys such as cars, and less time with toys such as dolls. Similarly, male rhesus monkeys prefer wheeled toys rather than softer toys. This type of play has been linked to systemising, which is a male-typical characteristic, as I shall discuss in my chapter on emotions. Chimpanzee males in the wild were found to be more likely to use sticks as weapons at all ages, while females of all ages were more likely to treat sticks as dolls–though there were some exceptions. Melissa Hines has reported many studies in non-human mammals where hormones were manipulated during early development to assess the impact of these manipulations on brain structure and behaviour later in life. For example, the female offspring of rhesus monkeys treated with testosterone during pregnancy show increased male-typical, rough-and-tumble play as juveniles, and increased male-typical and reduced female-typical sexual behaviour as adults. These hormone treatments also influence neural structure, enlarging brain regions that are larger in males and reducing those that are larger in females.

  Differences in styles of parenting may increase the development of differing interests and skills in boys and girls. In the United States, for example, fathers spend only about one third of the time with their children that mothers do, and so may have less influence. There is evidence showing the effects of parents’ attitudes on gender and the modelling of gender roles by siblings. But such gender roles and activities are also strongly influenced by hormones and genes, not only during prenatal development but also later during puberty. Testosterone is the prenatal masculinising agent, but oestrogens probably do not have any effect because both sexes are exposed to oestrogens from the mother. As I have mentioned, it is common for parents to dress their baby girls in pink and their baby boys in blue, although older children regardless of gender prefer the colour blue to other colours. But about a hundred years ago the colours chosen were reversed and baby boys were commonly dressed in pink. Just why there was this change is a cultural puzzle. There is some evidence that although blue is the preferred colour of both sexes, women actually have a evolutionary preference for the colour pink, because recognition of this shade helped them to gather ripe berries and fruit more efficiently. Certainly this preference has been clearly shown in a series of studies of children aged from seven months to five years old, where girls increasingly chose pink, and boys increasingly avoided it. Gender differences also can be found in children’s drawings. Flowers, butterflies and women in bright clothing tend to be drawn by girls aged five to six years old, but boys tend to draw more mechanical subjects like cars or trains or soldiers and fighting. Girls who have CAH are more likely to draw more masculine subjects such as moving objects, and to use darker colours rather than feminine brightness.

  Once children have learned to speak, boys quite often tell aggressive stories, while girls tell such stories less often. Children under four were given a task to work together for a reward, and boys used physical tactics much more often than girls. One could relate these differences to early differences in empathy. While studies strongly suggest that biology plays an important role, as children grow older, cultural and social factors also play a role in determining a ‘male’ brain with stronger interest in systems or a ‘female’ brain with stronger empathy. Social pressures may lead more boys than girls to play team sports and video games and use their hands on practising things like carpentry and car repair, says psychologist Richard A. Lippa. These activities help boys develop specific technical skills. But do these boys follow some sort of biological programming, or are they conforming to social expectations about the role assigned to their sex, as some social psychologists suggest? Gender stereotypes may lead to self-fulfilling predictions, with boys and girls conforming to expectations about the specific abilities attributed to them. Stereoty
pes about sex differences in abilities can be damaging in certain circumstances, such as the belief that girls are assumed to have lower abilities in relation to maths. But the case for biological influences is much stronger if sex differences are consistent across cultures and if they are unrelated to an individual society’s gender roles.

  An important and well-established finding is that sex differences tend to be larger in nations that are more gender-egalitarian and economically developed, which suggests a biological basis as there will be much less social pressure for the sexes in those societies to behave in particular ways.

  Contrary to the evidence that gender identity has a biological basis, there are people who say that there is no way to make a clear-cut distinction between biological sex and social gender. Some claim that the sexual differences in brain structures and functions do not have a biological basis, but can be due to social experience. There is good evidence that experience alters the development of the brain during childhood and adolescence, and this nerve cell plasticity could in principle help to illuminate the close relationship of sex and gender in an individual brain.

  But there is much better evidence for biological differences between the sexes, particularly in the brain, which are specified during embryonic development, as we have seen. By the age of three gender identity is usually firmly established and is extremely difficult, if at all possible, to change after that. A controversial case began in 1967, when an accident during circumcision left one of two twin brothers without a penis. His parents were convinced by Dr John Money, who believed that gender was learned rather than innate, to raise the boy as a girl. The child had cosmetic reconstruction surgery on his genitalia and his testicles were removed. He was treated like a girl and was raised with all the trappings of femininity. But when the parents told their child about the accident when he was a teenager, he then rebelled, started receiving testosterone injections and underwent a surgical reconstruction to become a male again. As an adult he continued living as a man, got married and adopted children, but later committed suicide.