UNNATURAL EQUALITY

frightened in a strange laboratory. And, according to Jerome Kagan, since similar differences can be seen in monkeys and baboons we are forced to consider the possibility that some of the psychological differences between men and women may not be the product of experience alone but of subtle biological differences. Many researchers have found greater dependence and docility in very young girls, greater autonomy and activity in boys. When a barrier is set up to separate youngsters from their mothers, boys try to knock it down; girls cry helplessly. Animal studies suggest that there may be a biological factor in maternal behavior; mothers of rhesus monkeys punish their male babies earlier and more often than their female offspring; and, they also touch their female babies more often and act more protective toward them. The definitive research on hormones is still to be done, but one trait thought to be affected by hormones is aggressiveness. In all cultures, investigators report, male infants tend to play more aggressively than females. Some suggest that female may be as aggressive as men — but with words instead of deeds. However, it has been established that the female hormone estrogen inhibits aggression in both animal and human males. It has also been proved that the male hormone androgen influences aggression in animals. For example, castration produces tractable steers rather than fierce bulls. The influence of androgen begins even before birth. Adminis­tered to pregnant primates, the hormones make newborn females play more aggressively than ordinary females. Moreover, such masculin­ized animals are unusually aggressive as long as they live, even if they are never again exposed to androgen. According to some experts, this long-lasting effect of hormones administered or secreted before birth may help to explain why boys are more aggressive than girls even during their early years when both sexes appear to produce equal amounts of male and female hormones. Will there some day be a “unisex” society, with no differences between men and women except anatomical ones? Time magazine asked. It seems unlikely. According to psychoanalyst Therese Benedek: “Biology precedes personality.” “Nature has been the oppressor,” observed psychologist Michael Lewis. Women’s role as caretaker was the evolutionary result of their biological role in birth and feeding. The baby bottle may have freed women from some of the tasks of that role, but, says University of Michigan psychologist Judith Bardwick, “the major responsibility for child rearing is the woman’s, even in the Soviet Union, the Israeli Kibbutz, Scandinavia and mainland China.” Furthermore, though mothering skills are mostly learned, it is a fact that if animals are raised in isolation and then put in a room with the young of the species, it is the females who go to the infants and take care of them. “Perhaps the known biological differences can be totally overcome, and society can approach a state in which a person’s sex is of no consequence for any significant activity except child bearing,” admits Jerome Kagan.”But we must ask if such a society will be