Sex Differences in Social Play: The Socialization of Sex Roles

The role of the mother and related adults in promoting sex differences in social play is understood and an understandably high degree of concordance between the social activities of young animals and the experiences from which they benefit the most is suggested.

Abstract

The chapter aims to understand the role of the mother and related adults in promoting sex differences in social play. Sex differences in the social play and in the social experience of juveniles are found to be influenced by the actions of perinatal hormones. The nature of this influence appears to be in organizing the circuitry of the CNS, such that the animals are predisposed to respond to a particular stimulus in a certain way. The result of this early hormonal experience is that, males and females seem to differ in their preferred forms of social play. In the normal socialization process, both the influence of the mother and other adults and of early hormonal events seems to contribute in the same direction to the pattern of sex differences in social play. The studies discusses in this chapter also suggest an understandably high degree of concordance between the social activities of young animals and the experiences from which they benefit the most. Sex differences in social play may be seen as differences in the developmental strategies that have evolved to conform to the sex roles typical of the species. Where large sex differences in the social roles of the adults exist, there would be sex differences in developmental strategies. These developmental strategies are expressed as sex differences in preferred activities, which appear to be a function of perinatal hormones.