Week Four: Nature vs. Nurture

I definitely think that gender roles and how they are percieved by society is on the nurture side.  Although we are shaped by biology with the fact that we are either male or female, we learn through play as children the roles that men and women typically take on in society.  The "Beth/Adam" experiment deals with gender socialization and seems to prove the point that gender roles are learned through social factors and influences of people around you.  Reading in the textbook about children's storybooks and the roles that males and females take in those books isn't surprising.  Most media portrays males as the protector of the family and women as the one who stays home to raise the children.  The quote by the mother of the 5 year old boy who read a story to her son and reversed the sexes was amusing but also eye-opening.  It really made me realize how much as a society we assign genders.

The section in the book on "unsocialized" children brought up a lot of interesting arguements.  After reading this section, I think that nurture is what influences humans the most.  If it was human nature to know how to speak and do a variety of other tasks then the "wild boy of Aveyron" and "Genie" both would have known how to speak and interact with others.  Instead when they did try to communicate, it was through strange noises.  Genie eventually did learn English but it was on such a basic level.  Althought it is possible that both children suffered from undiagnozed mental abnormalities, it is more likely that the fact they weren't nurtured as young children is the reason behind their strange and unhuman-like behaviors.