Nature vs. Nurture in Men and Women
https://archivesbb.nbclearn.com/portal/site/BbHigherEd/browse/?cuecard=45950
General Information
Source:
Creator:
NBC Today Show
Jodi Applegate
Resource Type:
Copyright:
Event Date:
Air/Publish Date:
10/19/1997
10/19/1997
Copyright Date:
Clip Length
Video News Report
NBCUniversal Media,
LLC.
1997
00:05:34
Description
Do men and women behave and think in different ways because they are genetically programmed at
conception, or is it the different ways in which they are raised as boys and girls? Author and journalist
Gail Sheehy and June Reinisch of the Kinsey Institute discuss the role nature and nurture play in the
differences between men and women.
Keywords
Nature, Nurture, Gender, Sex, Differences, Women, Men, Culture, Child, Children, Growth, Development
, Parents, Parenting, Testosterone, Masculine, Masculinity, Manhood, Menopause, Boys, Girls, Males,
Females, Sociobiology, Behavior, Gail Sheehy, June Reinisch, Kinsey Institute, Psychology
Citation
MLA
"Nature vs. Nurture in Men and Women." Jodi Applegate, correspondent. NBC Today Show.
NBCUniversal Media. 19 Oct. 1997. NBC Learn. Web. 30 March 2017
© 2008-2017 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Page 1 of 5
APA
Applegate, J. (Reporter). 1997, October 19. Nature vs. Nurture in Men and Women. [Television series
episode]. NBC Today Show. Retrieved from
https://archivesbb.nbclearn.com/portal/site/BbHigherEd/browse/?cuecard=45950
CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE
"Nature vs. Nurture in Men and Women" NBC Today Show, New York, NY: NBC Universal,
10/19/1997. Accessed Thu Mar 30 2017 from NBC Learn:
https://archivesbb.nbclearn.com/portal/site/BbHigherEd/browse/?cuecard=45950
Transcript
Nature vs. Nurture in Men and Women
JODI APPLEGATE, co-host:
Continuing our look at The Sex War, we ask one of the more basic questions: are the differences between
men and women matters of nature or nurture? Put another way, do we behave and think in different ways
because we're genetically programmed at conception--nature. Or is it nurture, the different ways in which
we raise boys and girls?
Unidentified Woman: Did you wash the dishes, too? There are dishes that need to be washed.
APPLEGATE: Of course, at this age, those differences remain somewhat undefined. But in general, most
will agree, girls' behavior differs from boys', and the question is, why? And joining us this morning to try
and help answer that question, author and journalist Gail Sheehy, and director emeritus of the Kinsey
Institute, June Reinisch.
Ladies, thank you for joining us this morning.
I'd like to start with another one of the questions from the survey that Jack and Jonathan were talking
about, and this one is about nature and nurture, and men's and women's different perceptions of it. Men
thought, by 47 percent, that nurture was more important than nature, that the way a person's raised is more
important than biology. But women seem to be more convinced of that--58 percent said it's more
important how you're raised than what is inborn. I'm curious as to your reactions to that?
Ms. JUNE REINISCH (Kinsey Institute): Well, I--I--first of all, I think it's a significant difference, and-and, by the way, more men tho—felt it was nature. Significantly more men...
APPLEGATE: Right.
Ms. REINISCH: ... felt it was nature. I think, because of the way our culture is set up, and there are so
many more prerogatives and privileges for men, and that's still true, even though we're working to change
that, it's nice for men to--and I think it's comfortable for men to feel that that comes with, in quotes,
"nature," comes directly from God. That's the reason that it's there, and that's the reason perhaps it should
stay.
Whereas women are committed to the--to the idea that these things can change, and we believe that if it
can change, it must be nurture. There is no war between nature and nurture, and it isn't a dichotomous
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Page 2 of 5
question. It's actually 100 percent and 100 percent nurture. It's a constant interaction between two of them.
APPLEGATE: Because if you look at biology over time, culture influences biology and vice versa, right?
Ms. REINISCH: Absolutely.
Ms. GAIL SHEEHY (Author/Journalist): But I think you have to start with fundamental differences.
There--they--they really are there. The male embryo, for instance, is born with female sexual parts and a
feminized brain. It's in the first six to eight weeks after birth, that the testosterone--male hormone kicks in
and turns the clitoris into a penis. So, to be controversial, you could say that males really start life as
females.
Ms. REINISCH: Yeah. I have to say...
Ms. SHEEHY: And from then on--from then on, proving their masculinity is an eternal problem in every
culture. There is always a--a testing, usually harsh testing in which a boy has to prove himself to be a
man, whether it's drinking, fathering children, being a warrior. A man is made a man. Whereas, in the
cultural studies, no such parallel belief exists for women. A girl becomes a woman and it's nature.
Ms. REINISCH: Well, I--I--I have to disagree a little bit, and that is that we don't both start out as female.
In fact, we both start out as human, neither male for female, and it takes six weeks for the male to start to
differentiate into a male because of changes in the gonads and the hormones, and for females to start to
differentiate into a female. So, actually, the clitoris doesn't turn into the penis. The same piece of tissue
becomes the glans penis or becomes the clitoris. The same piece of tissue becomes the scrotum that's the
labia majora.
APPLEGATE: I tell you what: let's go back even further than conception. Let's go back a couple hundred
thousand years, and talk about cavemen and cavewomen and how each makes a very different kind of
investment in a cave baby, if you will. Why is that so significant? Tell us a little bit more about that.
Ms. REINISCH: There's an area of science called sociobiology that talks about those kind of things for all
mammals. There are two very different jobs that males and females have.
First of all, the--the point is to get your genes, your--who you are--into the next generation. But the job is
very different for males and females. Females have a big investment in every single baby because they
have to gestate that baby for nine months, they they have feed it from their bodies for two to four years
before they can start another one. So each baby costs a woman very much.
A male has no investment in that baby. What he wants to do is get as many sperm into as many women as
possible so that, hopefully, he'll be able to have some babies with his genes since he's never positively
sure that any baby is his.
APPLEGATE: So, do you think it's kind of amazing that we are as, quote, unquote, "civilized" as we are
nowadays, given that?
Ms. SHEEHY: Well, I think one of the things we have to do is to counteract that genetic programming
because now we've figured out, through our technology, how to live so much longer.
I mean, it was--male bodies are designed to overreact to danger. They flood with stress chemicals, and
that was fine, you know, for being chased by tigers in the wild when men only lived to 35. Now that they
can live to 80 to 85, their hearts can't keep up with all that stress response unless they learn things like
meditation and relaxation response.
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Page 3 of 5
And similarly, females were programmed to do their job, contribute to the species, and then they were
irrelevant before menopause until just the latter part of this century. Now we can live 30 years, on
average, beyond menopause, so we have to learn how to counteract that genetic programming so we have
healthy, active lives during those extra years we've given ourselves.
Ms. REINISCH: I think that also...
APPLEGATE: So healthy men can watch football this afternoon and women can go shopping, and we'll
be living out our...
Ms. REINISCH: Well, I...
APPLEGATE: ...biological destiny? You know what? As women, we—we probably love to talk, but we
have to--well, we've got a male producer in my ear cutting me off.
Ms. REINISCH: Well, socially--right. Oh well.
APPLEGATE: And anyway, June Reinisch, Gail Sheehy, thank you both very much for being with us
today.
Ms. SHEEHY: Thanks.
APPLEGATE: We appreciate your input.
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