Week Four Blog Entry: Nature vs. Nurture

My view on the nature versus nurture debate is that the learning of gender roles, or gender socialization, can be attributed to a combination of nature and nurture.

I attribute nature/biology as being responsible for our underlying motives. The way men and women’s bodies are built – anatomical structure, hormones, brain function, etc – must predispose us towards certain temperaments and roles in society, i.e. women as caregivers and men as providers.

These biological factors likely set into motion values, norms, and social practices that then continued through time (social reproduction). These social practices are now so entrenched in society that they’ve also become the behaviors, and roles perpetuated through nurturing. In the course textbook, sociologist George Herbert Meade’s work showed us that children develop their sense of self by coming to see themselves as others see them. Therefore, if “others”, or agents of socialization, see that child as a cute little girl, the child will pick up on those cues – for instance the child will learn that pink colors, toy dolls, helping mom in the kitchen, floral scents, books with female characters, and television programming emphasizing female attributes, are attributed to themselves. Even in the case the parents choose to raise the child in a nonsexist environment, the nonsexist child rearing study showed us that outside influences are virtually impossible to avoid. The child will still pick up biased cues as to who they are, or how others see them.