The Two Sexes: Growing Up Apart, Coming Together (The Family and Public Policy) - Softcover

Maccoby, Eleanor E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674914821 ISBN 13: 9780674914827

Publisher: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press, 1999

Synopsis

How does being male or female shape us? And what, aside from obvious anatomical differences, does being male or female mean? In this book, the distinguished psychologist Eleanor Maccoby explores how individuals express their sexual identity at successive periods of their lives. A book about sex in the broadest sense, The Two Sexes seeks to tell us how our development from infancy through adolescence and into adulthood is affected by gender.

Chief among Maccoby's contentions is that gender differences appear primarily in group, or social, contexts. In childhood, boys and girls tend to gravitate toward others of their own sex. The Two Sexes examines why this segregation occurs and how boys' groups and girls' groups develop distinct cultures with different agendas. Deploying evidence from her own research and studies by many other scholars, Maccoby identifies a complex combination of biological, cognitive, and social factors that contribute to gender segregation and group differentiation.

A major finding of The Two Sexes is that these childhood experiences in same-sex groups profoundly influence how members of the two sexes relate to one another in adulthood--as lovers, coworkers, and parents. Maccoby shows how, in constructing these adult relationships, men and women utilize old elements from their childhood experiences as well as new ones arising from different adult agendas. Finally, she considers social changes in gender roles in light of her discoveries about the constraints and opportunities implicit in the same-sex and cross-sex relationships of childhood.

About this title

Review

The Two Sexes is a book about gender differences that takes on the big questions most of us have asked at some point: Why are men and women so different? How much of our behavior is biology and how much is learned? How do our gender roles in childhood affect the way we relate as adults?

One of Stanford University professor Eleanor Maccoby's key discoveries about childhood gender development is that girls and boys act far more alike on their own than they do with groups of their friends. Maccoby also offers sound evolutionary reasons why we might be biologically inclined toward sex- differentiated behavior. In the end, though, she asserts that "biology is not destiny."

With this in mind, she explores in The Two Sexes what sorts of changes can and should be made to the roles we play in our sexual relationships, work relationships, and parenting. This a complex and scholarly work, but Maccoby writes in clean, reasoned prose accessible to nonacademics. --Maria Dolan

From the Back Cover

How does being male or female shape us? And what, aside from a obvious anatomical differences, does being male or female mean? In this book, the distinguished psychologist Eleanor Maccoby explores how individuals express their sexual identity at successive periods of their lives. A book about sex in the broadest sense, The Two Sexes seeks to tell us how our development from infancy through adolescence and into adulthood is affected by gender.

About this edition

• Publisher: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0674914821
• ISBN 13: 9780674914827
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384