Are men and women hardwired differently? In general, are women more naturally nurturers? Are women more likely to take control of the home life, including the kids? Is the structure and norms of the workplace still a man’s world?
3 thoughts on “Biology”
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Apt. 11d 
Men and women share much more than the bits on which they differ, in terms of hard-wiring. I think that it is, in many ways, impossible to answer this question–we’re treated as specifically gendered beings from the moment we’re born (or before that, if parents know what the sex is going to be). What’s the first question anyone asks, after the health stuff is taken care of? We all have capacities, talents, proclivities, and they can all be shaped in a wide variety of ways; some of those ways will differ based on the physical appearance we present to the world.
I’m going on about this because I think that the Venus/Mars dichotomous approach is ultimately extremely damaging, to men and women both. Its emergence and evolution is detailed quite nicely in Thomas Lacquer’s (I’m probably spelling it wrong) “Making Sex,” and I wish I had my copy back. I can summarize here, if you’d like.
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I’m a biologist, and the previous comment is on-target. It’s not biological, except that we are intensely social animals, and gender roles and behaviors are socialized early and hard.
In terms of caregiving, whether it’s by parents who are taking time off from the paid workforce or by others who are filling in for parents in the paid workforce, one key is to have more and more caregiving done by men. When I lived in Madison there were quite a few day care centers that had male employees. Sadly, folks are paranoid about it because I think there’s a twisted societal perception that male caregivers are more likely to be pedophiles.
I do know I’ve seen articles about how the privileged and over-professionalized want to hire “mannies” to care for their kids, since neither mom nor dad has enough time to influence them, because they are too busy protecting and expanding their wealth/privilege.
And there’s been lots of posts and links here to the issue of dads who take time off from work to care for families and kids. But that’s a very small segment.
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On the one hand, the answer is almost certainly “yes”, to the extent that men and women have different hormones that effect emotion, it would be extremely unlikely if one of those hormones did not effect how we viewed child-rearing.
Also, biological does not necessarily mean “hardwiring” of the brain. The fact that the woman carries the baby and physically expels it from her body creates a specific 9-month bond that almost certainly has an effect. So, even if there are no biological differences, the different genders’ experiences could also create different results.
Finally, even if the answer is partly biological, that does not deny that it is also social. Until several generations ago, a baby HAD to be cared for by its mother (unless they could afford a wetnurse), or the baby would die. Mothers caring for children certainly seems like it was a necessity for society, at least then.
The issue, though, is “So what?” Each woman will make her own decision. If the determination that nurturing is or isn’t biological is used to pressure women into one decision or another, then the answer is being misused. And that means that I object to both the “Women should stay home becomes it’s women’s work” position and the “Society will not be ‘fixed’ until men and women chose to stay home with the kids in equal numbers” position.
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