Gender roles and the function they serve in our society have been known to be a complex system of statuses, viewpoints, and other elements that bring together a particular type of stratification within our culture today. Talcott Parsons developed a model for this system of stratification that analyzed the popular mid 20th century form of the nuclear family. In his article, “Sex Roles in the American Kinship System,” Parsons lays down his beliefs that the roles we play as male and female are essential to creating a functional and productive kinship. Through setting out a particular structure that will potentially ensure that competition and conflict will be avoided, Parsons asserts that these kinship groups act as functioning units of stratification within our society. This paper aims to clarify the strengths of Parsons’ arguments, such as the functionality and effectiveness of certain systems within our culture, while contrasting the outdated viewpoints which he presents that might not be as applicable in today’s modern times considering the amount of social changes and open opportunities that are now available to both sexes.
By the time we reached late childhood and adolescence our concept of gender identity and sexual orientation is firmly entrenched (Wood, 2010). Our behavior, aspirations and attitudes is also strongly influenced by the gender role expectations in particular cultures. This essay will relate, contrast sex and gender in society and how important it is for sociologists to distinguish them both. The term “sex” is the natural biological genetic makeup that distinguishes males from females and in particular the sexual organs and their characteristics. Bodies are, so we think, natural, God- given, sacred, hardwired.
Nature in terms of health and social care defines as the qualities we are born with that makes us what we are. Nurture defines as how we are influenced as a child by the environment around us, including other people. Many scientists, philosophers and researches argue that individuals’ personalities and talents come from their DNA and many others argue that the majority of it is influenced by life experiences and the environment. There have been studies involving identical and fraternal twins to find out if it is the genetics (nature) or environment (nurture), which was the effective one on the case of personality development. Which side of the debate is more influential?
Biological explanations of gender development by Andy Watson The biological approach takes an extreme nature view of gender development as it believes that an individual’s gender is decided at conception. However this is a reductionist view as both social learning theory and psychodynamic theory have shown that our environment plays an important role in shaping our gender identity. Gender is a psychological term, which may reflect a person’s biological sex but is more to do with how they behave or think. This contrasts with the term sex which refers to biological status as male or female. When a foetus is formed, it has 2 sex chromosomes which decide if the foetus will be male or female.
• The biological roots of human conduct have become increasingly disguised, as modern symbolic forms of indirect expressive behavior have replaced more primitive and direct ones. • At least some human behavior is the result of biological propensities inherited from more primitive developmental stages in the evolutionary process. In other words, some human beings may be further along the evolutionary ladder than others, and their behavior may reflect it. • The interplay between heredity, biology, and the social environment provides the nexus for any realistic consideration of crime causation. Basic Priniciples- Psychological Perspectives of crime causation: • The individual is the primary unit of analysis.
This side of the nature-nurture debate suggests that we are a certain way because of the way we were bought up and our life experiences. Biological programming - this comes down to your genes. Biological programming suggests that you will have similar medical conditions to your parents supporting the idea of natural selection and genetics. Maturation theory - this theory sees child development as being controlled by evolution and that genetically there is a series of events that will occur automatically. It is believed the development has a biological process and this can be predicted over time.
The women’s movement and the consequent development of feminist ideas in the 1960s and 1970s influenced the question of gender and began emphasise the importance of gender as a concept of its own. (Howson, 2013, 51). To understand the differences between male and female, it is important to formulate a basic distinction between gender and sex. The key distinctions to note are based around biology and social arrangements. Oakley (1972, cited in Howson, 2013) refers to gender as the ‘psychological, social and representational differences between men and women, which are socially determined and culturally variable’.
Life history theory looks at human lifespan stages through birth, infancy, childhood, reaching puberty, through reproduction stage, menopause, grandma stage and death. We may have a better understanding of why we get old and die as life history approach answers the questions as to why we have evolved the way we did and why we have the particulars of the lifecycle that we have and it helps us understand how decisions that are made biologically and behaviorally early in life, particularly during prenatal and postnatal growth and development, affect
‘To put it at its most basic, women want resources and men want to spread their genes.’ Discuss the evolutionary approach to explaining parental investment in humans e.g. sex differences, parent-offspring conflict. Men and women both have different sexual preferences and behaviours which may have been shaped by evolution, the evolutionary theory of relationships believes that the reproductive behaviours of men and women today have their origins in the evolutionary past and exist because they provided survival or reproductive advantages to out ancestors. Men and women seek different qualities in a relationship and in partner selection, a women looks for resources and a male seeks to spread his genes. David Buss (1989) conducted a cross cultural study looking at partner preferences in both genders, data was collected from a total of 4,601 men and 5,446 women aged between 18 and 28.
Behaving Brain 1. Explain the major concepts of evolutionary theory, such as natural selection and variation. Charles Darwin created the theory of evolution and helped us to understand the roots of behavior and mental process. Natural selection states: variations increasing that odds of reproducing and surviving are most likely to be passed on to future generations, this has shaped our traits and behavior tendencies. Nature has selected advantageous variations from the mutations and new gene combo's produced at each human understanding.