Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy (48 page)

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Authors: Melvin Konner

Tags: #Science, #Life Sciences, #Evolution, #Social Science, #Women's Studies

BOOK: Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy
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190
Very slowly, men were won over:
For further discussion and references for this and the next few paragraphs, see the Wikipedia entry “Women’s rights,” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women’s_rights, accessed Sept. 13, 2014.

191
“the right to copulate with a feeling of security”:
See Jill Lepore’s “Birth-right: What’s Next for Planned Parenthood?”
New Yorker,
November 14, 2011, at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/14/111114fa_fact_lepore?currentPage=all, accessed Sept. 13, 2014.

192
Craft guilds almost all male:
Maryanne Kowaleski and Judith M. Bennett, “Crafts, Gilds, and Women in the Middle Ages: Fifty Years After Marian K. Dale,”
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
14, no. 21 (1989): 474–88.

192
“white married women’s labor force participation”:
Raquel Fernández, “Cultural Change as Learning: The Evolution of Female Labor
Force Participation over a Century,”
American Economic Review
103, no. 1 (2013): 472.

193
“In the first few decades of the twentieth century”:
Dora L. Costa, “From Mill Town to Board Room: The Rise of Women’s Paid Labor,”
Journal of Economic Perspectives
14, no. 4 (2000): 101.

193
“As late as 1970”:
Ibid., 101.

194
“[They] began singing”:
Irving Howe,
World of Our Fathers
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1976), 299–300.

195
“[A] young man helped a girl to the window sill”:
Ibid., 305.

Chapter 8: The Trouble with Men

200
Womb envy:
Margaret Mead,
Male and Female
(New York: Morrow, 1949). Mead seems to have adopted the idea from psychoanalyst Karen Horney; for a history of the idea, see Miriam M. Johnson’s
Strong Mothers, Weak Wives: The Search for Gender Equality
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).

201
Same baby, different responses:
J. A. Will, P. A. Self, and N. Datan, “Maternal Behavior and Perceived Sex of Infant,”
American Journal of Orthopsychiatry
46 (1976): 135–39.

201
audio of a child’s mischievous remarks:
Mary K. Rothbart and Eleanor Emmons Maccoby, “Parents’ Differential Reactions to Sons and Daughters,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
4 (1966): 237–43.

201
PASTON Scale:
K. H. Karraker, D. A. Vogel, and M. A. Lake, “Parents’ Gender-Stereotyped Perceptions of Newborns: The Eye of the Beholder Revisited,”
Sex Roles
33, no. 9–10 (1995): 687–701.

201
A study of three-week old infants:
Howard Moss, “Sex, Age, and State as Determinants of Mother-Infant Interaction,”
Merrill-Palmer Quarterly
13 (1967): 19–36.

201
Children label themselves:
The best overview of the similarities and differences between boys and girls in behavioral and psychological development is Eleanor Maccoby’s
The Two Sexes: Growing Up Apart, Coming Together
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).

201
Confirming older studies on other ethnic groups:
M. L. Halim, D. Ruble, C. Tamis-LeMonda, and P. E. Shrout, “Rigidity in Gender-Typed Behaviors in Early Childhood: A Longitudinal Study of Ethnic Minority Children,”
Child Development
84, no. 4 (2013): 1269–84.

202
Same-sex playmate preference:
C. L. Martin, O. Kornienko, D. R. Schaefer, L. D. Hanish, R. A. Fabes, and P. Goble, “The Role of Sex of Peers and Gender-Typed Activities in Young Children’s Peer Affiliative Networks: A Longitudinal Analysis of Selection and Influence,”
Child Development
84, no. 3 (2013): 921–37.

202
“Jimmy’s Baby Doll and Jenny’s Truck”:
C. Conry-Murray and E. Turiel, “Jimmy’s Baby Doll and Jenny’s Truck: Young Children’s Reasoning About Gender Norms,”
Child Development
83, no. 1 (2012): 146–58.

202
Same-sex groups as two cultures:
Maccoby,
The Two Sexes
.

202
Over a third of babies watched television:
Common Sense Media, “Zero to Eight: Children’s Media Use in America 2013,” October 28, 2013, at http://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/zero-to-eight-childrens-media-use-in-america-2013, accessed Sept. 13, 2014.

203
Child-training practices from ethnographic descriptions:
H. Barry, M. K. Bacon, and I. L. Child, “A Cross-Cultural Survey of Some Sex Differences in Socialization,”
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology
55 (1957): 327–32.

203
Luo boys assigned girls’ work:
Carol R. Ember, “Feminine Task Assignment and the Social Behavior of Boys,”
Ethos
1 (1973): 424–39.

203
Big changes and new programs for fathering:
For details and references, see Melvin Konner,
The Evolution of Childhood: Relationships, Emotion, Mind
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 475.

203
Male monkeys become more nurturing:
G. Mitchell, “Paternalistic Behavior in Primates,”
Psychological Bulletin
71, no. 6 (June 1969): 399–417; and Gary Mitchell, William K. Redican, and Jody Gomber, “Lesson from a Primate: Males Can Raise Babies,”
Psychology Today
7, no. 11 (April 1974): 63–68.

204
cultures with frequent combat separate fathers:
J. W. M. Whiting and B. B. Whiting, “Aloofness and Intimacy Between Husbands and Wives,”
Ethos
3 (1975): 183–207.

204
Girls’ and boys’ cultures diverge by adolescence:
Alice Schlegel and Herbert Barry III,
Adolescence: An Anthropological Inquiry
(New York: Free Press, 1991).

205
Children of gay and lesbian parents:
Charlotte J. Patterson, “Children of Lesbian and Gay Parents: Psychology, Law and Policy,”
American Psychologist
64, no. 8 (2009): 727–36. See also Konner,
Evolution of Childhood,
329–34.

206
Montagu’s
Natural Superiority: Ashley Montagu,
The Natural Superiority of Women,
5th ed. (Walnut Creek, CA: SAGE, 1999).

207
Diana Nyad’s swim from Cuba to Florida:
For a biography and interview, see
National Geographic,
which named her one of its 2014 “Adventurers of the Year,” at http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/adventurers-of-the-year/2014/diana-nyad/, accessed April 10, 2014. For her inspiring TED talk, see http://www.ted.com/talks/diana_nyad_never_ever_give_up.

208
Nobel Prizes in science:
Montagu,
Natural Superiority,
50–51.

208
Today we can add:
See http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/lists/women.html for women Nobel laureates since the prize began.

208
“May it not be”:
Montagu, 50.

209
Common brain defects affect boys more:
S. Trent and W. Davies, “The Influence of Sex-Linked Genetic Mechanisms on Attention and Impulsivity,”
Biological Psychology
89, no. 1 (2012): 1–13; and A. M. Bao and D. F. Swaab, “Sexual Differentiation of the Human Brain: Relation to Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation and Neuropsychiatric Disorders,”
Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology
32, no. 2 (2011): 214–26.

209
“It’s pretty difficult to find any single factor”:
Quoted by Constance Holden, “Sex and the Suffering Brain,”
Science
308 (2005): 1574. Insel was also referring to the preponderance of depression, anxiety, and eating disorders in women.

209
Life-course-persistent conduct disorder:
R. F. Eme, “Sex Differences in Child-Onset, Life-Course-Persistent Conduct Disorder. A Review of Biological Influences,”
Clinical Psychology Review
27, no. 5 (2007): 607–27.

209
Males “win” hands down:
Montagu,
Natural Superiority,
133.

210
Genetic defects with older parents due to older fathers:
E. Callaway, “Genetics: Fathers Bequeath More Mutations as They Age,”
Nature
488, no. 7412 (2012): 439; Augustine Kong and twenty other authors, “Rate of De Novo Mutations and the Importance of Father’s Age to Disease Risk,”
Nature
488, no. 7412 (2012): 471–75.

210
Differences in life expectancy:
J. C. Regan and L. Partridge, “Gender and Longevity: Why Do Men Die Earlier Than Women? Comparative and Experimental Evidence,”
Best Practice & Research Clinical Endo-crinology & Metabolism
27, no. 4 (2013): 467–79. Men may be catching up in longevity in some countries, viewed from age sixty-five rather than from birth: M. Thorslund, J. W. Wastesson, N. Agahi,
M. Lagergren, and M. G. Parker, “The Rise and Fall of Women’s Advantage: A Comparison of National Trends in Life Expectancy at Age Sixty-five Years,”
European Journal of Ageing
10, no. 4 (2013): 271–77.

210
Career time committed to the “mommy track”:
This is not intended to imply that men should not share equally in child care, only that in families where that does not happen (for example, where there is no father), women’s lower mortality and greater longevity can offset a significant part of lost career time, and mothers should not be targets of discrimination.

211
Women gain influence after children grow up:
J. K. Brown, “Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Middle-Aged Women,”
Current Anthropology
23 (1982): 143–56.

212
Difference at seventeen and twenty-nine months:
Raymond H. Baillargeon and seven other authors, “Gender Differences in Physical Aggression: A Prospective Population-Based Survey of Children Before and After 2 Years of Age,”
Developmental Psychology
43, no. 1 (2007): 13–26.

212
persists throughout growth:
For a broad overview in evolutionary context, see J. Archer, “Does Sexual Selection Explain Human Sex Differences in Aggression?”
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
32, nos. 3–4 (2009): 249–66; discussion on pp. 266–311.

212
Predation has little to do with aggression:
For details, see Melvin Konner,
The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit,
rev. ed. (New York: Holt/Times Books, 2002), 184–85. The complete references can be found at http://www.melvinkonner.com/images/PDFs/tangledwingnotes.pdf, accessed Sept. 13, 2014.

213
Female aggression limited and different:
A. Campbell, “The Evolutionary Psychology of Women’s Aggression,”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
368, no. 1631 (2013): 20130078.

213
Golding’s novel:
William Golding,
Lord of the Flies
(London: Faber & Faber, 1954).

214
Robbers Cave:
Muzafer Sherif, O. J. Harvey, B. Jack White, William R. Hood, and Carolyn W. Sherif,
Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment
(Norman, OK: Institute of Group Relations, 1961).

214
Many experiments with adults:
Peter Robinson and Henri Tajfel,
eds.,
Social Groups and Identities: Developing the Legacy of Henri Tajfel
, International Series in Social Psychology (London: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1997).

215
“male warrior hypothesis”:
M. M. McDonald, C. D. Navarrete, and M. Van Vugt, “Evolution and the Psychology of Intergroup Conflict: The Male Warrior Hypothesis,”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences
367, no. 1589 (2012): 670–79.

215
More negative opinions when fertility risk was high:
C. D. Navarrete, D. M. T. Fessler, D. S. Fleischman, and J. Geyer, “Race Bias Tracks Conception Risk Across the Menstrual Cycle,”
Psychological Science
20, no. 6 (2009): 661–65.

215
not just the black-white divide:
M. M. McDonald, B. D. Asher, N. L. Kerr, and C. D. Navarrete, “Fertility and Intergroup Bias in Racial and Minimal-Group Contexts: Evidence for Shared Architecture,”
Psychological Science
22, no. 7 (2011): 860–65.

216
“social conditioning plays a considerable role”:
Montagu,
Natural Superiority,
144.

217
Power “is the great aphrodisiac”:
Hedrick Smith, “Foreign Policy: Kissinger at the Hub,”
New York Times,
January 19, 1971, p. 12, downloaded April 11, 2014, at http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F50D11F7345C107B93CBA8178AD85F458785F9. The article, including the quotation, was also placed in the Congressional Record, January 26, 1971: http://www.mocavo.com/Congressional-Record-Volume-117-Cong-92-Sess-1-Part-1/857762/334, accessed Sept. 13, 2014.

217
“What motivates people to succeed?”:
Maneet Ahuja,
The Alpha Masters: Unlocking the Genius of the World’s Top Hedge Funds
(New York: Wiley, 2012), 116–17.

217
“I was just thinking, you know”:
Question and answer transcribed by the author; video available at http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000092902, accessed April 11, 2014.

218
“We don’t really like each other in person”:
Kate Taylor, “Sex on Campus: She Can Play That Game, Too,”
New York Times,
July 14, 2013, Sunday Styles section, p. 1; published online July 12, 2013, at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/fashion/sex-on-campus-she-can-play-that-game-too.html?pagewanted=all, accessed Sept. 13, 2014.

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