Biologische Faktoren vs. Erziehung: Auswirkungen bei den Geschlechterrollen

Eine interessante Studie befasst sich mit dem Zusammenhang zwischen den biologischen Einflüssen und familiären und erzieherischen Einflüssen:

The top line of Figure 1 shows the effect of increasing mother’s encouragement of femininity for women with low exposure to androgen. For these women with low exposure to androgen, mother’s encouragement of femininity has a strong effect on gendered behavior in adulthood. The bottom line in Figure 1 shows the effect of increasing mother encouragement on femininity for women with high exposure to androgen. The line is generally flat, indicating that no matter how much encouragement the mother provides it has little effect, and the daughter remains more masculine than average. Thus, Figure 1 shows that high prenatal androgen exposure „immunizes“ daughters to the effects of feminine socialization. The limits of female gender socialization can be illustrated another way. After respondents were asked to indicate which behaviors their parents encouraged, they were asked to indicate for each behavior whether their parents encouraged the behavior in order to reinforce their daughter’s natural tendencies or because their daughter was below average on the behavior. The number of times the respondent checked encouragement of female-typical and male-typical behaviors because she was below average on the behavior were counted separately, and the female score was subtracted from the male score to create a variable called „remedial socialization.“ The higher the remedial socialization score, the more the parents appeared to be working to encourage female behaviors because the daughter was „insufficiently feminine.“ Table 4 shows the results when the remedial socialization variable is added to the hormone model (shown in Table 2). Its effect is significant, generally additive to the model, and it has a positive coefficient, indicating that the more the parents worked to improve below average femininity, the less  feminine the daughters were in adulthood. Respondent answers indicate that if a daughter has natural tendencies to be feminine, encouragement will enhance femininity; but if she has below average femininity in childhood, encouraging her to be more feminine will have no effect

Frauen, die bereits den Hormonen nach ein sehr feminines Gehirn hatten waren leicht dazu zu bewegen, sich sehr weiblich zu verhalten, Frauen, die ein den Hormonen nach sehr männliches Gehirn hatten, waren hingegen nicht dazu zu bewegen, im Gegenteil, sie verhielten sich dann eher noch unweiblicher. (vgl. zu Bekräftigungstheorien etc)

Bei Familieneinfluss sieht es ähnlich aus:

Table 5 shows that the importance of time spent with family interacts with second-trimester SHBG (our inverse testosterone effect) in predicting adult femininity. This interaction is graphed in Figure 2, in which the equation for Table 5 is evaluated at five levels of SHBG in standardized units. Figure 2 shows that for those who, as adolescents, answered that time with their families would be very important to them a decade later (a distinctly feminine response), their values on gendered behavior at adult hood were clustered and slightly above average in femininity, showing only a moderate effect of their differential prenatal androgen exposure. But for those who as adolescents said that time with their families would not be important at all to them a decade later, their values on gendered behavior as adults are widely dispersed and depend heavily on their prenatal androgen exposure. Those most highly androgenized in the second trimester are three standard deviations more masculine than those least androgenized. Figure 2 demonstrates how prenatal hormone experience continues to influence the trajectories of women’s gendered behavior during adulthood. A decade of young adult life separates the adolescent attitudes and the adult measure of gendered behavior. This is a decade during which many opportunities are encountered and many choices are made. During this period, those who held equally nonfamily-oriented attitudes in adolescence arrived at quite different gendered behavior by the end of their third decade of life. Those most androgenized prenatally drifted most toward more masculine behavior.

Also ein deutlicher Einfluss der Hormone, allerdings auch ein Einfluss der Einbindung in die Familie. Um so weiter die jeweilige Biologie von dem eigenen Phänotyp entfernt war, um so weniger konnte die Familie ausrichten. Bestand kein großer Bezug zur Familie, dann setzte sich die Biologie durch. Allerdings ist hier noch nicht berücksichtigt, dass Mütter ihre Kinder gerade dann in dem Verhalten bestärken werden, wenn sie merken, dass das Kind dies gut aufnimmt, eben weil es sehr weiblich ist.

Dazu auch die in der Studie angeführte Grafik:

Man sieht gut, dass Frauen, die einen niedrigen Testosteronspiegel hatten, durch eine weibliche Erziehung sehr stark beeinflusst werden, die mit einem hohen Testosteronspiegel aber sogar ein „Abwehrverhalten“ auf eine zu weibliche Erziehung zeigen und dann noch  männlicher werden.

Seine Erwartungen bezüglich der Anfälligkeit bei Männern für soziale Beeinflussung:

I now explore the implications of the fact that the models predicting gendered behavior show that high prenatal androgenization of females not only masculinizes their gendered behavior predispositions at later ages, but immunizes them against socialization toward typical feminine behavior. Generalizing this effect to males, we should predict that males‘ much higher prenatal androgenization (perhaps tenfold that of females), caused by testosterone from their own testes, not only masculinizes their later gendered behavior predispositions, but also immunizes them against later feminizing socialization. The only males that would not be highly immunized against feminizing socialization would be those who as fetuses had androgen exposures as low as females. These would be rare clinical cases. So in a general way simply by being male, males can be thought of as highly immunized against feminine socialization by prenatal androgenization.

Da wäre dann eben die Frage, ob Männer und Frauen in diesen Punkten direkt vergleichbar sind.

Aus der Schlußfolgerung:

A biosocial macro theory is simple: Humans form their social structures around gender because males and females have different and biologically influenced behavioral predispositions. Gendered social structure is a universal accommodation to this biological fact. Societies demonstrate wide latitude in this accommodation-they can accentuate gender, minimize it, or leave it alone. If they ignore it, it doesn’t go away. If they depart too far from the underlying sex-dimorphism of biological predispositions, they will generate social malaise and social pressures to drift back toward closer alignment with biology. A social engineering program to degender society would require a Maoist approach: continuous renewal of revolutionary resolve and a tolerance for conflict. But if a degendered (or post-gendered) society is the goal, our micro-models offer some guidelines. It may be easier to degender society by changing female behavior to more closely coincide with the present behavior of males rather than the reverse.

Zu dem Artikel fand ich zudem die folgende Anmerkung in „The Evolution of Human Sociality: A Darwinian Conflict Perspective“ S. 214:

Udrys finding that socialization affects gender role behavior perhaps qualifies but does nor contradict the findings of GearY (1998) and Lytton and Romney (19919 that there is little differential sex role socialization currently taking place in Western societies. Udry is focusing only on the degree of masculinity or femininity, whereas Geary and Lytton and Romneys focus is considerably broader,  they are looking at such things as encouragement or discouragement of achievement, strictness of parental discipline, restrictiveness. and clarity of communication. Differential sex role socialization docs occur, but only in certain areas. Moreover, Udry perhaps overstates die importance of sex role socialization for masculinity or femininity because he, like virtually all sociologists, is still caught in the trap of thinking of socialization as something entirely separate from biology,  the fact that mothers encourage femininity in their daughters and fathers masculinity in their sons is clearly closely tied to the fact that mothers arc themselves already more feminine and fathers are themselves already more masculine. Hie encouragement of femininity in girls is the norm because mothers recognize that die female sex really is more feminine, fathers that the male sex really is more masculine. Socialization is itself a biologically driven phenomenon to a very large extent, and the encouragement of femininity- in girls and masculinity in boys is a human universal.

Was aus meiner Sicht ein durchaus berechtigter Hinweis ist. Sozialisation erfolgt eben durch Eltern, die wiederum ihrer Biologie unterliegen und sich hiervon nicht frei machen können.