tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16201378.post113201299271008023..comments2023-12-28T18:17:11.191-05:00Comments on Gruntled Center: Raising Boys Without Men (Part One)Gruntledhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14377809238377382438noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16201378.post-1132072406757170622005-11-15T11:33:00.000-05:002005-11-15T11:33:00.000-05:00Drexler does not tell us much about what she means...Drexler does not tell us much about what she means by "the next generation of exceptional men." She notes that she used William Damon's "Social-Cognitive and Moral Judgment Interview," but gives us no details of what that instrument asks or shows. I think you are right, Ken, that "accepting all family arrangements" is probably part of the instrument. Nor is there anything like a control group.<BR/><BR/>Mostly, though, I think Peggy Drexler is a nice mom who had a great time hanging around with these little boys. That is the basis of her estimate that they will become good men.<BR/><BR/>Doug, I think (as I wrote about in part two), the key fact about the lesbian couples is that they are stable, mature, economically comfortable couples who love their son and try to provide everything he needs. I think most sons of such couples, composed in any way nature makes possible, would be nice boys. <BR/><BR/>S. Kimbro, I have wrestled with The Nurture Assumption. My difficulty is not really relevant to this case, but to the effects of birth order, which Harris disputes. Since these boys are mostly only children, we don't see much birth order effect. In this case, I think the mothers are more attentive than most parents to their kid's peer groups, because they are attentive, well-heeled urban moms in San Francisco. Moreover, Drexler has only seen these boys as boys. The teen years is when the peer group comes into its own.Gruntledhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14377809238377382438noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16201378.post-1132069773568020572005-11-15T10:49:00.000-05:002005-11-15T10:49:00.000-05:00There is another interesting point embedded here ...There is another interesting point embedded here that I will borrow from Judith Harris’ book "The Nuture Assumption" which postulates that the influence of peer groups matters more than individual parenting in determining a child’s personality and character later on in life. Perhaps boys raised solely by females are also placed around different peer groups than boys raised by a heterosexual couple. In some cases, maybe a single mother would make effort to expose her son to male influences, consciously or not, to provide him with a more gender-balanced social experience. Or in other cases, maybe the sons of lesbian couples purposefully seek out different, more male-centered peer groups in school. If peer groups play such a large influence on how children turn out, then it would be interesting to know if children of female-only parenting make different selections than children of heterosexual couples when it comes to choosing their friends and social surroundings outside the home.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16201378.post-1132067234999350262005-11-15T10:07:00.000-05:002005-11-15T10:07:00.000-05:00As a practicing non-sociologist, I am more interes...As a practicing non-sociologist, I am more interested in how such researchers define a 'good' man. In this case, (or from your account of it) Ms. Drexler bases part of her definition of goodness on the acceptance of polymorphous sexual/marital arrangements. Would a man who chooses a life of solitary celibate contemplation (say, a Trappist monk) be 'good'? This life is certainly not 'normal' by American standards.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16201378.post-1132065797351048012005-11-15T09:43:00.000-05:002005-11-15T09:43:00.000-05:00This is a very difficult topic to write on because...This is a very difficult topic to write on because entering it one intends to uncover a new world and usually finds answers to be exactally as one might expect (the simple has very little difference to the norm). I find when I worte a paper on Lesbian couples that I had very little to say that would be interesting to hear. Because homosexuals are a stigmatized group, and that we know very little about the biological causes of homosexuallity (if the causes are biological) we asume that what we are looking for will be new and different from the norm. Sociologist quickly learn this is not so.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com