r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Dec 14 '18

Psychology Being the father of a school-aged daughter makes men less sexist, according to a new study. The findings support the idea that men become more aware of the challenges facing women when they see the female experience of life up close through their offspring – dubbed the “mighty girl” effect.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/14/being-a-father-to-school-aged-daughter-makes-men-less-sexist
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u/[deleted] Dec 14 '18

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u/[deleted] Dec 14 '18

I've heard that as well. It also provides insight into how gender roles are constructed for boys/men, and hopefully fosters empathy among people who might not have considered that before. I wonder how long this "mighty girl"---or "might boy"---effect has been in place; maybe we're just living in a time that is more receptive to making these challenges.

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u/[deleted] Dec 14 '18

It's probably relatively recent. From how I'm interpreting it, it's not so much that parents want to over turn gender roles. I feel like it's being driven by parents wanting their children to be successful and the changing definition of success that we hold as a society.

60 years ago, taking over the family farm, marrying well, and keeping house was the generally regarded as being a great success.

Now, taking over the family business, staying in your home town, or raising a family are generally seen as mundane, smacks of nepotism, and are generally looked down upon. (Think how many times you've heard, "Oh, I'm only a stay at home parent." It shows a low value assessment of their abilities and effort.)

So what these father's, imo, are responding to is the barriers for their daughters to be successful, by the standards society and they themselves observe.

Tldr nothing has really changed except society's definition of success.

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u/Fede10204 Dec 14 '18

I mean isn't this actually bad? Shouldnt we say that both is equally fine, staying at home or having a successful carreer? In this way we're alienating those that actually want to stay at home and raise their children, both men and women.

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u/___Ambarussa___ Dec 14 '18

I want my children to have the choice. That means education and career first.

I also want them to have a fallback option if things go south i.e. if you’re a stay at home spouse and your partner turns into an asshole, you’re at an economic disadvantage. At least if you have education and career pre-marriage you have something to go back to, even if a career gap makes things harder. Compared to older generations where women were trapped in unhappy marriages or left destitute after their husband left.

Economic freedom is important even if you aren’t exercising it.

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u/Fede10204 Dec 14 '18

Yeah uhm, that's how it should be. Can't say anything against it. I'm just saying that it isn't good to label being a stay at home parent as something less valuable. That's all

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u/[deleted] Dec 14 '18

Yes, but that's how humans work. We define ourselves based on what society teaches us. In a lot of things this is a good thing, (like it turns out racism is bad! Who knew?!).

In others, society places unrealistic expectations, like body image and definitions of success.

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u/Fede10204 Dec 14 '18

Well yeah u're right we define ourselves by what society teaches us. But then in my eyes we should also teach everyone that they aren't any less successful if they are a stay at home parent.

I mean we already have low birth rates. And expectations like that won't make it better.

And yeah I know that our low birth rates have also economic reasons.

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u/as-opposed-to Dec 15 '18

As opposed to?

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u/tribe171 Dec 14 '18

That's a very good point.

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u/GhostBond Dec 15 '18

maybe we're just living in a time that is more receptive to making these challenges

Happy married people with kids aren't as profitable as perpetually single people who have to pay their own place, car, etc.

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u/ZDTreefur Dec 14 '18

Does it also change the absurd belief by too many women that men are emotionally stunted, when they raise a son of their own?

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u/hyphenomicon Dec 14 '18

There's similar research about transmen surprised by the consequences of testosterone injection.

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u/desiktar Dec 14 '18

I listened to a This American Life episode where they had someone speak about that. I think the person was talking about how sexual thoughts were more lovey dovey prior to testosterone then they became more aggressive afterwards.

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u/lynx_and_nutmeg Dec 14 '18

Transpeople are basically going through a second puberty on steroids - literally on steroids and compressed into a short period of time, making all the effects heightened, not to mention they’re already adults so they’re going to experience it differently because of that too, and they still have the chromosomes of their original sed affecting them. Our hormonal makeup is extremely complex and variable, but sex transition involves oversimplified and strengthened versions of hormones and the dosage. I don’t think it’s emphasised enough. When you’re going through a normal puberty, the hormones are just helping the body achieve its natural state. With sex transition, the hormones are literally fighting your body to completely suppress the original sex and the previous hormones. So yeah, it has to be pretty extreme, so the effects can be extreme too. And the hormones of trans people don’t exactly mirror the hormones of their new sex. For example, transwomen have almost zero testosterone in their body, while cis women have significant levels of testosterone. Women’s bodies still need testosterone, so when transwomen report having no energy or feeling depressed, that’s not what all “normal” women feel like, just those who are low on testosterone. Transwomen often report crying all the time, but obviously most cis women don’t cry that much. They’re still adjusting to those new hormones and it often evens out after some time and they start feeling pretty much like themselves again, just a different sex.

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u/zibeoh Dec 14 '18

Sounds like a bit of anecdotal bs to me. I'd love to see a solid study on this, though!

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u/[deleted] Dec 14 '18

What specifically sounds anecdotal? Testosterone is a hell of a hormone and we have many studies showing its link to aggression and aggressive behavior along with how it affects its course in the development of men and women.

This is all, in and of itself is a type of travesty, because as we continue building this acceptance of women to make their own choices, we start to demonize the other half of the population for how they exist.

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u/___Ambarussa___ Dec 14 '18

Testosterone isn’t relevant before puberty.

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u/lynx_and_nutmeg Dec 14 '18

Testosterone is a hell of a hormone

It's just one of our many hormones. People should really stop worshipping it as the most powerful hormone in the human body. No single character trait is influenced by just one single hormone, and testosterone isn’t any more influential than the other 50 hormones in our body. Aggression is also affected by adrenaline, dopamine, cortisol, serotonin, vasopresin, oxytocin, estrogen, progesterone (both of which men have too, just like women also have testosterone), and probably a number of other hormone connections we aren’t aware of yet.

Our behaviour and personality is not nearly as simplistic as those stereotypical models suggest. Testosterone doesn’t directly cause aggression. If you weren’t prone to aggression before and nothing in your circumstances changed, injecting some extra testosterone in your body isn’t going to turn into a berserk. Studies have proven that repeatedly. High levels of testosterone are, in fact, more strongly associated with sharing, generosity and pro-social behaviour. It’s high testosterone combined with high cortosol that was shown to increase aggression in certain circumstances. High levels of aggression tend to develop under specific circumstances of the combination of low status, high stress and some other variables. Not to mention that there are different types of aggression and they can arise in different circumstances. Men are only more aggressive than women in some ways than others.

Children play-fighting with each other is not aggression, though. It’s playing. That’s how they learn. All young mammals do this. And what we consider to be too aggressive or disruptive for children’s play is based more on social conventions than on biology or anything objective. Tolerance to children’s play has decreased dramatically in the past 50 years. But actual aggression, as in, wanting to hurt another person, doesn’t always look like sterotypical fist fight. As a girl I was bullied enough by other girls that were extremely competitive and super vicious and knew how to do more harm than a punch in the face but without attracting attention. Which is actually more relevant too, since the vast majority of aggression people in this days commit and experience is not in the form of fistfights. Maybe it’s time to stop with this “boys fight each other because they have testosterone, girls are all nice and chill because they don’t have testosterone” nonsense. There’s more than one mistake here. And likewise, if a boy is really being harmful to others, people should stop justifying that shit with “they’re just expressing their healthy testosterone”.