Neuroscientist Lise Eliot finds that claims of sex differences fall apart. In one study, scientists dressed newborns in gender-neutral clothes and misled adults about their sex. The adults described the "boys" (actually girls) as angry or distressed more often than did adults who thought they were observing girls, and described the "girls" (actually boys) as happy and socially engaged more than adults who knew the babies were boys. Dozens of such disguised-gender experiments have shown that adults perceive baby boys and girls differently, seeing identical behavior through a gender-tinted lens.
[more inside]
posted by cashman
on Sep 3, 2009 -
106 comments
"
Women and children, first," is a familiar cultural refrain, with its popular roots in the gallant sacrifice made by the male contingent aboard the doomed
Titanic. Their sacrifice has inspired
poetry,
sculpture,
male social clubs, and, of course,
cinema. Yet, this sacrifice of near-mythic scale
was in some respects a myth, with
survival statistics skewing well in favor of men of higher social and economic class than children (and, to a lesser extent, women) of lower status.
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Aug 25, 2008 -
70 comments
Some 25 million years ago, humans and
vervet monkeys diverged from a common ancestor. In very rough terms, perhaps one and a quarter million human generations, or five million vervet generations, have been brought forth upon the Earth since that common ancestor lived. Of course, many differences have evolved between humans and vervets in those 25 million years: among other things, human parents choose toys for their children; vervet parents do not.
But after all that time and genetic change, and despite
studies attributing human children's toy preferences
to adult stereotypes,
a new study by
Dr. Gerianne Alexander finds that
vervet males, like human boys, prefer toy trucks and balls, while vervet females and human girls prefer dolls and toy cooking pots. What's more, the vervets play with the toys much as human children do:
males roll trucks on the ground, females inspect dolls (apparently) for genitalia.
Previously on MetaFilter: Pinker vs. Spelke, Gender and Brain morphology, Harvard president Larry Summers and his daughter's "baby truck".
posted by orthogonality
on Dec 8, 2005 -
80 comments
What Dads Don't Need for Father's Day: "A team of psychologists headed by Dr. Toni Zimmerman from Colorado State University analyzed the top-selling parenting books. Using a feminist perspective, they trawled the books for hidden gender messages. In findings published earlier this year, they concluded that the two mega-best sellers, John Gray's
Children Are from Heaven and Laura Schlessinger's
Parenthood by Proxy: Don't Have Them If You Won't Raise Them are filled with stereotypes, formulaic advice and information that does not conform to research findings."
Both books scored low in a feminist analysis of best-selling parental advice books. Kathleen Trigiani also wrote
a series of essays on John Gray entitled "Out of the Cave: Exploring Gray's Anatomy".
posted by jenleigh
on Jun 19, 2005 -
49 comments
Girl Power or:
Partnership status and the human sex ratio at birth: a paper by Karen Norberg
Could the sex of a child be influenced by the status of the parents' relationship at the time of conception? In a sample of 86,436 births in the United States, we find a small excess of sons among births to parents who were married or living with an opposite sex partner before the child's conception, compared to births to parents who were not. This is the first evidence that household arrangements can affect the human sex ratio at birth, and could explain the fall in the proportion of male births in some developed countries over the past thirty years. (Data published on
FirstCite registration required)
via
The Economist
(special note for mathowie: No word yet as to whether or not those single moms can also reliably produce offspring with an astigmatism.)
posted by lilboo
on Oct 27, 2004 -
12 comments
