The weird hormone argument

USA Today follows a trend I'm seeing more often in recent years, to explain human failings in terms of testosterone.  When the father is absent from the home, we're told, young men can't channel their innately destructive male hormones.  Now it seems, however, that even young women don't do well in fatherless homes, and we can hardly blame their unchanneled testosterone for that.  Nor does it make much sense to blame the testosterone of the absent father, which presumably isn't polluting the home from his new location across town or a couple of states away.

What does this leave?  The mother, who is still present?  Does she have toxic hormones?

Such a lot of silliness to avoid the idea that having both a mother and father present is a pretty good idea whenever you can pull it off, and not because of their complex chemical interactions.

7 comments:

E Hines said...

Now it seems, however, that even young women don't do well in fatherless homes, and we can hardly blame their unchanneled testosterone for that.

Except for those young women who identify as young men (or old men, whatever blows their, umm, skirts up). In that case, we can blame their dearth of testosterone. In fact, the example demonstrates that there is a Laffer curve of testosterone.

Eric Hines

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I'm still pointing to the genetic piece of that. Fathers who leave also leave behind the genes of the sort of guy who would leave. Or not get along. And there are the genes of the other partner as well, who most usually exercised a lot of choice in picking that guy. Or his hormones. That provides a tidier explanation why the daughters aren't doing as well, also. It is my understanding that the children of fathers who die when they are children do not display the same rate of pathologies.

And if you contributed some sort of terrible impulse-ridden and violent genes to your children, you aren't likely to provide that much instruction about how to channel those destructive bits.

I don't want to entirely deny the importance of parenting, and fathering. You don't have children and adopt children and raise them if you don't feel there's some advantage. But it may be mostly at the margins. I have five grown sons - I'm saying a whole lot is genetics.

jaed said...

the children of fathers who die when they are children do not display the same rate of pathologies

Without wishing to completely disagree with your point, that also gives rise to a different story about why the father isn't there, one that may be less likely to stoke pathology. It might be interesting to study families where the father left early and the mother chose to tell the kids that he died, versus families where the father did in fact die when the kids were similar ages.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Yes, that has always been the standard explanation, that the father who died overseas in the war, or who fought some terrible disease also creates a narrative that children can cling to and be inspired by. That is possible. My problem is that the people saying that insist that something of that nature must be the explanation. The environmental explanation is the default.

douglas said...

AVI- I think there's definitely something to that. Interestingly, in recent years, some research has suggested that perhaps we, in our actions, shape our genes for the next few generations, perhaps five (wish I could remember where I saw that). That is to say there are behaviors that affect your hormonal levels which in turn affect your genetic reproduction. It would explain a lot in terms of how instinctual behaviors exist

Christopher B said...

AVI - I think you are right on the science but it doesn't really answer Texan's question. If the mainstream really believed that behavior was determined by genetics to that degree they would be forced to confront a whole host of blank slate fallacies, IQ among them. The use of testosterone is likely intended as an obfuscation to avoid talking about genetic components of behavior, as well as a way to avoid talking about fundamentals of that are inconvenient to the idea that all negative behaviors are the result of ignorance and social structure.

Texan99 said...

I don't doubt that sometimes having the absent father present would have been even worse. Still--the numbers on the school shooters don't suggest a problem with bad-but-present fathers.

All I really know for sure is that the testosterone explanation is bollocks.