Essay on "Biology and Social Construction"

Essay 5 pages (1484 words) Sources: 0

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Gender roles and the ways in which the children act according to their sex is something obviously innate. It is not in our hands to create a boy or a girl and there are certain characteristics that the children take up by biology. A girl will have more feminine approach towards things and a boy will usually be more masculine and tough about situations. Where we can say that these are innate qualities, we can also argue that these may just be the societal expectations that people have from the children. The boys are expected to be bold, courageous, brave and manly in whatever they do, while the females are expected to be soft hearted, have motherly instincts, and be caring and soft in their nature. This proves the collision between biology and the societal expectations.

The boys will be expected to follow the footsteps of their fathers and have an interest in particular types of games and careers and similarly, the girls are supposed to be helping around the house, studying particular subjects, taking up specific jobs and so on. We cannot simply state that these are our expectations or that these are the areas where the child has their interest towards because there is a combination of both of them.

To keep the order in society and to have a harmonious setting where the norms are followed, the biology and the interaction processes are combined and they act together to define the roles, the norms, values and expected patterns of behavior. The nature and nurture debate that sociologists often indulge in also leave the discussion to a tie between their influences and there is a common ground between the two. For the shaping up of the children into healthy and moral social beings, they have to be taught and socialized according to these patterns and their innate personalities have to be molded in order to be according to what it should be.

The examples of the feral children describe how the isolation of society from an individual will leave them to be no better than stray animals. Feral children were some young beings who were isolated at birth and were cut off from the outside world. They were left in a closed room and some were left with a pack of animals. When discovered some years later, they had no human instincts in them and were just wild creatures who did not know how to walk, talk, eat or behave. It was also quite a difficult task to teach them anything after they had passed out of their early years as Freud's theory states.

The sociologists came to the agreement that when a child is born and exposed to the outside world, it is not just the social interactions that influence what they become and it can not only be associated with purely genetics and biology that shapes them into who they are. Therefore, the connection between the two started becoming more evident and experimentation and field work proved the findings of the researchers.

Conclusion

The relationship between physiology, neurology, social constructions and genetics is reflected through the upbringing of the child. It shows how the human beings acquire their senses, their personality, and their knowledge of the things around them. Human nature cannot be defined according to just a single one of these aspects that are on play in the world around us. Any one of these taken out of the equation will leave a hole.

A huge part of our lives and our decisions is based upon our genders and how we adapt and follow the roles associated with the sex we belong to. Our whole life is shaped along those lines and not conforming to them does have its implications and it's down sides which is why so much emphasis is laid by society upon taking up these roles and following what is expected of the individual. The society outlines for us, certain criteria that are expected of the gender and the lines along which one has to conform. Hence, whereas part of it is innate and comes naturally to the individual, society does shape our thoughts and our perceptions and influences what we define as wrong or right and moral or immoral. The criteria of conformity are also subjected to the biological and societal influences. READ MORE

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