Maternal Dominance Hypothesis

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Originally Posted by zanacal

You know, I haven't wanted to say this, because it makes me sound like a bad mother to begin with, but I feel far more cuddly and loving towards the boys these past couple of weeks. Of course I always cuddle and love them but my patience doesn't last very long when they're making a fuss over something like a broken toe nail (rather than a 'proper' injury!) and in general I'm not a touchy sort of person. I've wondered whether this is a positive effect of all the stuff I'm doing to lower my T. I guess I feel more maternal.

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Ladies I am not sure you being cuddly or not towards your boys has anything to do with the maternal dominance hypothesis (which I thought was pretty much proven in animals anyway). If it makes you feel beeter my mother had 3 girls and she was not an affectionate person. I have 2 girls and I go out of my way to be more affectionate towards them because I was missing that from my mother. Also there was a doco that I was watching but can't remember the name. They did this experiment where they left different adults for 5 min with a baby dressed in blue. All the adults were like hello fellow aren't you a tough little boy, look at those big tough cheeks and they were practically throwing him in the air and playing tough with him. Then they got the same baby and dressed it in pink and left the adults with "her." All the adults were like hello beautiful girl aren't you sweet, singing lulaboies to her and cuddling her. In other words we are socialised to raise boys tough and raise girls affectionatelly. Thus, I am sure the fact that you feel you are not very affectionate towards your boys will not stop you from having a girl or will stop you from being affectionate towards her. GL sending you lots of pink dust.

You know i always said i would be more affectionate when i had kids since my mom was not supper huggy kissy with us but i kinda ended up the same way as she was and here is what i think.My mom is sooo awesome she had 5 kids 3b2g and dealt with my dad who was a cheating fool who would leave my mom for weeks at a time with little food for us and when he did come back he would bring his skank and want my mom to make them something to eat.When he was home he was violent and beat my mom alot and would put us kids against her "who do you love more mommy or daddy? and so i really think my mom was so busy being a parent and making sure she got day to day life accomplished that she never had time to just enjoy being a mom,and now i feel im wrapped up in being busy that i do the same thing but i have a wonderfull husband so that is not a issue.I really am so focused on getting through the day that before you know it the day is over.My kids are very loving and sweet even with each other so i cant be that bad but i do strive to be more affectionate with them.

Thanks Layla - I was talking about a change in myself and how I am which I thought may be related to the diet and supplements I'm taking to try and lower my own T - it may or may not be related and may be real or completely imaginary :D

Hugs queen-of-harts, that sounds so tough x

:HH: to both of you. I meant to add that neither one of you sound to me like you are not affectionate towards your boys. GL with your pink sways I also look at all sorts of things and wonder (or more like it hope) that they are a sign of increased T levels in me. :bigsmile:

Zanacal - I can totally relate to what you're saying. I am a VERY affectionate mum to my two boys...loads of kisses and cuddles. But I can be hard on them too and my patience gets thin fast and I can end up screaming before I know it. Since beginning my supps (well, about a week into them) I noticed a definite shift in my 'demeanor' in terms of being more patient and tolerant. I put it down to the supps working and lowering my T. Not sure if it fits with the hypothesis here but I do recognise a change.

Let's put it down to that together then sassy - positive thinking together :D I'm not sure it's anything to do with this hypothesis either, it's just where the subject came up!

Thanks Layla!

My puter is not working well this morning (hubby infected it with a virus yesterday and I couldn't get it to work at all) and it's taking forever to load up the "reply with quotes" so I'll do it this way.

QOfH said: "I think the stuff like hip ratio and less likely to be divored stuff gets to me because we cant change our hips and most would not divorce just to see if it helped our sway lol and i always wondered and now it seems true that are girl moms just more loving and maternal and all that? Maybe lowering my T will make me more affectionate and mellow? "

Well, you CAN change your W to H ratio through diet and exercise and with the divorce thing, you have to keep in mind that it's not getting a divorce that sways, it's much more likely that the personality of people who are more likely to have boys are just more likely not to divorce. Maybe from sheer stubbornness, who knows??? It's coincidental, not a cause and effect. If you were to get a divorce, you would not suddenly be more likely to have girls, because your fundamental personality would remain the same.

I do not believe for 5 minutes that girl moms are more maternal and loving than boy moms are. I have Grant's book and that really isn't what she's saying at all. According to her research, boy moms were more interactive with their children than girl moms were. The boy moms were constantly initiating interactions with their sons while the girl moms hung back and let their daughters begin the interactions, at which point the moms responded to them. Grant is a mom of 3 boys herself and if anything, her book and some of her conclusions were kinda derogatory to the girl moms and actually left a bad taste in my mouth because of that (which is why I don't go around suggesting people read it.)

My own personal take on this is as follows. (and this is in no way meant to be offensive to anyone.) I do think that there ~may~ be slight differences in the way boy moms and girl moms interact with their kids much along the lines of what Grant observed. I suspect that boy moms are a little more proactive and girl moms may allow their kids more space and opportunities to handle things on their own. But BOTH of those can be good parenting strategies depending on the child.

As those of us who had very controlling parents might attest, having a mom or dad who is really micromanaging every aspect of your day-to-day existence and demanding perfection, can be a bit soul-crushing for a more sensitive kid (and on average, girls tend to be a bit more sensitive than boys do). Whereas with a more self-reliant and confident kid (and on average, boys tend to be a bit more...I don't even have a word to desribe it but it's the opposite of sensitive, yet not "insensitive"), not only do they not put up with too much of that nonsense, but with a real firecracker of a kid, sometimes you NEED to be a little bit OCD with them, constantly monitoring every little thing they do because otherwise they'll get themselves into trouble. It just makes a kind of evolutionary sense for kids that are a little more shall-we-say, labor-intensive (and there are both boys and girls that fit into this category) to have moms that are able to rise to the challenge of that. Otherwise every kid who came along with a penchant for getting into mischief (again, perhaps more likely boys but there are plenty of girls who are high-maintenance as kids and teens as well) would have died before reproducing themselves. Being a mellow mom with a kid who needs a firm hand is just not going to work for that kid.

That DOES NOT mean in any way, shape, or form, that because as Grant puts it, a person is overall better "suited" towards raising a kid of one gender and so those of us with a lot of one gender should just give up and pack it in. I believe with all my heart and soul that the world NEEDS a variety of people and the human race has survived for a million years with kids of both genders being born to all kinds of women. Remember, just because we have more boys or girls on average than some other women do, if we had 10 kids at least SOME of them would surely be opposites. (Remember the Duggars and their 6 boys in a row and now 4 girls in a row...a lot of us are throwing up our hands in the air and thinking we're set for producing only one gender after 2 in a row LOL!!!)

We are all very flexible human beings with a wide repertoire of skills and behaviors in our mommy arsenal and ALL of us are totally capable of tweaking our parenting style in response to a child of different needs. A mom who is maybe a little more passive will find herself rising to the challenge of a more intense kid, and a mom who is a little more in-your-face will find herself backing off if she sees that a sensitive child doesn't respond as well to that strategy. My third son is a spitfire and needs a firm hand sometimes, while my 4th is sensitive and gets upset easily. I find that I respond to DS 4 totally differently than I did DS 3. Different kid, different response. In no way are we only "suited" to raise a kid of one gender or another. That is silly nonsense and I HATE it that Grant sullied her otherwise sound research by drawing a conclusion that is just patently ridiculous.

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Originally Posted by queen-of-harts

I love my kids with evey ounce of my soul but im not the huggy kissy type.i find it easier to be affectionate when they are babies but as they get older its harder because i just want them to behave and be quiet and give me my space ugh i sound horrible.It HAS to be the hormones that effects the way we interact with our kids.The weird thing is that i get choked up easy like when i watch a sweet commercial or movie and i cry...after the birth of all my kids i cried like a baby i was soo happy they were born. Does our bodies sense that female babies need more tenderness so they can grow up and nurture their children and if we are less nurturing and more domineering a boy may be a better bet since they are usually not the ones who need to raise the babies so they can be less affectionate? Does this make any sense? Im sorry if i am offending anyone and we are all good moms but there is no denying we all interact with our kids differently and i wonder if this sends some sort of message.

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Oh thank goodness it's working properly now!!! Yay.

That is EXACTLY what I believe. We tweak our parenting in response to the needs of each individual child and there are plenty of girls who are firecrackers and need a more proactive parent just as there are plenty of boys who are sensitive and need a gentler response. We aren't programmed automatons acting out some ancient script. Parents and kids are two separate human beings interacting with each other in myriad ways.

Please, no one despair over these ideas. They are only that, ideas - the ideas of ONE person and although it is backed up by some interesting research, the conclusions drawn do not necessarily follow (see above post). I honestly think that the world NEEDS girls born to mostly-boy-moms and boys born to mostly-girl-moms!!!

I want to share the story of a "hypothetical" person (she actually exists and some of you will know exactly who it is but I she isn't on this board and I feel weird talking about a friend in the third person without her permission!!! I am sorry but I do think it can help people.:() Anyway this hypothetical person had a son who passed away as a baby and then 7 daughters in a row. Her last daughter is a little spitfire and has temper tantrums non stop and then after dealing with this situation for several months, she got pg again and lo and behold, it was a boy!! So it seems to me well within the realm of the possible that the interactions she had with her last, most difficult daughter, actually may have caused the kind of response that altered her hormones in such a way that she finally was able to conceive a baby boy.

My point is, our bodies respond to the needs of our kids and can even change our hormones according to our children's needs. No one should get frustrated or decide that maybe they don't "have what it takes" because we ALL have what it takes. If we didn't, if we couldn't alter our emotional response to our children depending on their needs, the human race would have died out a long time ago!!!

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Originally Posted by Layla

Ladies I am not sure you being cuddly or not towards your boys has anything to do with the maternal dominance hypothesis (which I thought was pretty much proven in animals anyway). If it makes you feel beeter my mother had 3 girls and she was not an affectionate person. I have 2 girls and I go out of my way to be more affectionate towards them because I was missing that from my mother. Also there was a doco that I was watching but can't remember the name. They did this experiment where they left different adults for 5 min with a baby dressed in blue. All the adults were like hello fellow aren't you a tough little boy, look at those big tough cheeks and they were practically throwing him in the air and playing tough with him. Then they got the same baby and dressed it in pink and left the adults with "her." All the adults were like hello beautiful girl aren't you sweet, singing lulaboies to her and cuddling her. In other words we are socialised to raise boys tough and raise girls affectionatelly. Thus, I am sure the fact that you feel you are not very affectionate towards your boys will not stop you from having a girl or will stop you from being affectionate towards her. GL sending you lots of pink dust.

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Well, Grant's research dealt with actual human beings and not animals and she did a lot to differentiate between socialization and actual differences between boy and girl moms.

My q regarding "socialization" is, do people socialize boys and girls differently just for fun/patriarchy or because there are real genetic differences between boys and girls and boys may NEED to be treated like a big boy and girls may NEED a more tender approach??? Couldn't socialization have developed over the ages as a response to the needs of different-gendered children and not because gender is a social construct?

I used to believe that all gender stereotypes were artificial and even bought my older sons a Barbie and she ended up naked on the floor with her head ripped off inside of 5 minutes LOL.

To share my own personal experience, I am a pretty tough mama with very high expectations (too much sometimes) and yet I am still very affectionate..I like to think the affection mitigates the toughness to a certain extent. Even my grown son still hugs and kisses me and my MIL has always remarked on how lucky I am because neither of her kids, son or daughter, is at all affectionate to her. I think that it's partly my own personality and upbringing, but at the same time DS 1 and 3 have always just sort of needed a more firm-yet-loving approach. I really do think there is a chicken-egg situation where we respond to the needs of the child at hand regardless of their gender...it's just that on average, more boys need firmness and more girls need TLC. NO ONE is only suited towards raising a kid of only one gender!!!!