Maternal & Paternal Impulses
The Proper Way to View Our Culture's Changes (?)
We’re not supposed to notice that men and women tend to be different but we do. If we do notice it we’re supposed to attribute the differences to ‘society’ or ‘nurture’… but these are essentially social science terms, and the intellectuals making those claims DO NOT want to explore the dynamics they’re proposing. Are there any biological inputs at play? Why do these differences seem to extend across all cultures and through time? Why do we see similar differences and bimodal distributions when we look at non-human primates? How much would society need to change to erase these differences? NOTE: I become more convinced every day that the real motivation of many feminists is not to erase sex differences but to reverse them. I think there are radicals on the Left who don’t want men and women to be equally empowered or competitive or aggressive… they want women to be dominant and men to be subordinate. This is merely a feeling I have from interacting with some of them. Resentment and envy are difficult emotions to conceal.
I will proceed along a different logical route. I propose that men and women are biologically different and evolved to perform different roles in the hunter gatherer bands which comprised our species’ condition for many hundreds of thousands of years before the development of agriculture. While those differences are partly mediated by culture they are deep and fundamental and they affect not only our musculature and bone densities and reaction times but also our emotional assumptions and intrasexual socialization dynamics and interests and psychological responses.
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that there is a bimodal way of viewing child-raising and achievement and competition and aggression and that these two modes now have much vaster implications for society. Our institutions are all based on natural human instincts and responses but they are monstrously complex and so simple impulses (like ‘make everyone equal’) which can be good and useful in a small neolithic band can push a person toward terrible policy decisions in the modern age. To describe these two modes and to associate them with the disparate male and female views of the world and of humanity I call them the maternal orientation and the paternal orientation.
The paternal orientation values achievement. It creates standards (high ones, if possible) and then expects people to live up to them, or pay the costs. It demands logical evidence for arguments and tends to support free speech. It demands standards of behavior and punishment for violation of those standards. It might believe that people are basically equal or good (or not) but it’s less concerned with the potential or the ‘true identity’ of people and more concerned with their behavior. It defaults to responsibility and personal behavior as explanations for life outcomes. It is impatient with efforts to ‘coddle’ or protect people or keep them safe, especially from emotional harm. It doesn’t consider emotional harm to be harm at all.
The maternal orientation values unconditional love. It wants to help people. It wants to support them and protect them from the slings and arrows of the world. It tends to regard everyone is equally precious and regards differences in outcome as lack of support or investment rather than deficiencies in talent or application. It wants to forgive miscreants and tends to believe that everyone is basically good and can demonstrate that, if only they’re given the right outlets. It’s less concerned with achievement and is suspicious of competition (especially physical competition). It abhors aggression. It regards communication as an opportunity to bring people together and wants to preclude and restrict words and ideas which hurt people’s feelings. It NEVER wants people to feel left out. It truly is ‘inclusive’. It defaults to society and circumstances as explanations for life outcomes.
Could it be that so much of our society’s changes during the past decades have been a result of increasing numbers of women (especially women without children, who still have maternal impulses but no children of their own with which to employ them) in professional roles and leadership roles? If human institutions are based on natural modes of behavior what might the consequences be of replacing an organizational hierarchy that is 80% male with one that is 75% female (therefore 25% male) and in which the males feel uncomfortable asserting their natural tendencies? What might the effects be of making a college student body 65% female and forcing many of the most assertive and competitive men into silence and invisibility?
What if there were ideological shifts which promoted radical views of human equality and prioritized feelings of safety and comfort above most other things at the same time those shifts in sex were happening? What if these shifts were partially driven by new technologies and online social forums which enforced ideological conformity and helped drive social contagion effects and demonize dissenters and opponents?
Do these changes explain most of what we’re seeing?
Women (even across cultures, although all of this research is specifically American) seem to be much less supportive of the principle of free speech and more supportive of ‘social justice’ and emotional support than men:
