[Glorantha] Nurture: hardware or software?

> That argument [that women tend to have a biological inclination
> towards nurturing] breaks down as soon as you identify a social group
> where the majority of women hand over nurturing to someone else
> though choice. One such social group is the English upper classes
> who routinely employ nannies to handle child care.
> Now it's possible to argue that social pressures are removing that
> choice and that may sometimes be the case

That's a good point, but as you say, I would argue more or less as you suggest.

> but cultural attitudes
> rarely conflict with basic instincts.

Piffle. Utter rhubarb. Sticking with the English upper classes of (say) the late C19th. Most of the cultural attitudes they are reputed to have had conflict with basic instincts! The whole way society was organised could be described as a systematic repression of basic instincts.

Coming back to modern Britain (and I daresay America as well), take breastfeeding as an example. Clearly there is a physical compulsion to breastfeed, (some women have difficulty with it, a few can't do it at all, a lot of them find it hard and painful, but nevertheless) but there are a lot of cultural attitudes that have caused this to be considerably repressed in our society. I won't list them, but there are loads of reasons this has happened.  

> Which leads me to believe that nurturing is, for the most part,
> learnt behaviour. This view is supported by research into why some
> women make particularly poor mothers. It turned out that most of them
> had experienced inadequate care when they were children - they just
> hadn't learnt the nurturing behaviour patterns. So while they could
> look after the baby's physical needs they failed to provide the right
> mental and emotional stimuli.

I think you're conflating a few different arguments there. I think that there is an instinct to nurture (which is not necessarily as strong in all women), but the ability to do it well is learnt. Skills and knowledge, though I contend that there are some basic instincts in there as well, humans are very good at overriding their basic instincts though, and at letting others tell us to suppress them.

> In my experience [Margaret Thatcher] is not atypical either but then I'm
> used to mixing with strong minded women.

I don't think that being strong minded is what made/makes Maggie atypical, but I'd best not get into that one, the language I am likely to come out with may offend.

Cheers -

Malk. Received on Thu 06 Jul 2006 - 09:39:07 EEST