Monday, October 22, 2007
Hierarchy, evolution and extended human phenotype
Why some men stay at home with their child or children, and their women go to work?
This question asked me a friend of mine; she is psychologist, works as a teacher and also in charity. Well, she suggested that it is only an attempt of these men to be different on purpose. I said she was right, and compared this type of male behavior to juvenile individuals who nowadays use piercing in order to differentiate from the others.
But now I think I was partially wrong, it is not solely only pursuing the goal of being different as a man who is in the household and does not work outside. I think now that it is slightly different. Most probably it is a question of resources, most probably men who stayed at home have married women who are more after their own carrier, they have already most probably achieved relatively high status in their jobs, and they also are capable of making more money than their husbands. In such a case it is absolutely normal that the woman goes out to work and man stays at home, as the family is better off compared with the situation when the husband goes to work and earns only half of the money his wife could make. This, of course, puts extremely bad light on the capacities of such a man and he feels that as degrading. So his only defense against this “degrading” of his male status is to “sell” his new situation as something special, and that he is also capable of doing women’s work at home etc, and sort of show of with his position, by which he counter effects his degrading of staying at home and not working.
So again it seems to me that this is again a case for Hierarchy in human society; a case that is in itself evidence for the existence of this hierarchy, in this case the hierarchy between men and women, where men as males are considered higher than females. Men’s work is considered much more important than women’s work.
Men think of their work as more important and women are put down because their work is look upon as unimportant one. There are several psychological tests showing similar results. So in one test students of one American university participated in quite a difficult test before a jury, females as well as males, just only few days later they were allowed to take their respective partners along with them to the test. The results are shocking. Males had much lower blood pressure when their female partners were with them, and the tested female persons had remarkably higher blood pressure when they had their male partners with them. The reason for this might be as follows.
A test before a jury is a stressful event, for both the males and females, because they can be told to be too poor and their self-esteem might drop, that means their position in the hierarchy might be threatened. If a tested male person has his female partner next to him, he can always be sure that he might drop down when not passing the test before the jury but anyway he would be above his female partner; that means he would not be totally down, there would be still his female partner below him in the hierarchy.
On the other hand a tested female person if having her male partner with her and not passing the test in front of the jury would drop down and at the same time she would be below her male partner, therefore she would suffer a double fall in hierarchy, once she would be below the jury for not passing the test and second she is automatically below her male partner.
So taken the results from both sides it shows that there is something that we can call hierarchy, this hierarchy is viewed absolutely and relatively and it exists among nearly all humans and human groups, and one such grouping event is sex, and female sex is considered as if on lower position in the human hierarchy.
This question asked me a friend of mine; she is psychologist, works as a teacher and also in charity. Well, she suggested that it is only an attempt of these men to be different on purpose. I said she was right, and compared this type of male behavior to juvenile individuals who nowadays use piercing in order to differentiate from the others.
But now I think I was partially wrong, it is not solely only pursuing the goal of being different as a man who is in the household and does not work outside. I think now that it is slightly different. Most probably it is a question of resources, most probably men who stayed at home have married women who are more after their own carrier, they have already most probably achieved relatively high status in their jobs, and they also are capable of making more money than their husbands. In such a case it is absolutely normal that the woman goes out to work and man stays at home, as the family is better off compared with the situation when the husband goes to work and earns only half of the money his wife could make. This, of course, puts extremely bad light on the capacities of such a man and he feels that as degrading. So his only defense against this “degrading” of his male status is to “sell” his new situation as something special, and that he is also capable of doing women’s work at home etc, and sort of show of with his position, by which he counter effects his degrading of staying at home and not working.
So again it seems to me that this is again a case for Hierarchy in human society; a case that is in itself evidence for the existence of this hierarchy, in this case the hierarchy between men and women, where men as males are considered higher than females. Men’s work is considered much more important than women’s work.
Men think of their work as more important and women are put down because their work is look upon as unimportant one. There are several psychological tests showing similar results. So in one test students of one American university participated in quite a difficult test before a jury, females as well as males, just only few days later they were allowed to take their respective partners along with them to the test. The results are shocking. Males had much lower blood pressure when their female partners were with them, and the tested female persons had remarkably higher blood pressure when they had their male partners with them. The reason for this might be as follows.
A test before a jury is a stressful event, for both the males and females, because they can be told to be too poor and their self-esteem might drop, that means their position in the hierarchy might be threatened. If a tested male person has his female partner next to him, he can always be sure that he might drop down when not passing the test before the jury but anyway he would be above his female partner; that means he would not be totally down, there would be still his female partner below him in the hierarchy.
On the other hand a tested female person if having her male partner with her and not passing the test in front of the jury would drop down and at the same time she would be below her male partner, therefore she would suffer a double fall in hierarchy, once she would be below the jury for not passing the test and second she is automatically below her male partner.
So taken the results from both sides it shows that there is something that we can call hierarchy, this hierarchy is viewed absolutely and relatively and it exists among nearly all humans and human groups, and one such grouping event is sex, and female sex is considered as if on lower position in the human hierarchy.
# posted by Dalibor @ 7:53 AM 
