Same-Sex Vs Opposite-Sex Parent-Child Relationships

Peacemaker Putin notes the importance of the same sex parent-child relationship.

The impact a Father has on his son cannot be overstated. Same goes for the Mother on the daughters. Modeling is powerful.

Behavioral modeling by children of parents is a bit of a sketchy proposition given what we now know about the large contribution of genetic inheritance and the relative paucity of shared environment (i.e. parental) effects on kids’ outcomes.

But in my opinion there is something to the notion that parents have different, and unequal, impacts on their same-sex versus opposite-sex kids’ development. Parents exert their influence (however little it can be quantified by current measurement systems) through two ways: presence and modeling (or what could be called “character appropriation”). The former is predominant in the development of opposite sex children and the latter on same sex children.

For example, a father’s presence shields daughters from becoming cock carousel femcunt mudskanks, and a mother’s presence guides sons towards social engagement. The parent-child interaction gets much more interesting and subject to vulnerabilities from disruption when the sexes are the same.

In the realm of modeling, fathers are a crucial decanter from which sons imbibe so many valuable lessons: toughness, grit, confidence, spirit, and the fulfillment of the all-important need of a son to look up to an older man. Mothers likewise impart their daughters with the wisdom of chastity and faithfulness, and the power of femininity and sexual guardianship.

The above formula requires unpolluted input variables. A slutty single mom isn’t going to impart anything good to her daughter, and a violent, disparaging, AWOL father will activate all sorts of negative gene-environment feedback loops in a young son’s spongiform brain.

Perhaps this presence-modeling theory of sex-differential parenting explains the social phenomenon of the association between longer-lasting marriages and birth of sons. Fathers instinctively and subconsciously know that their steady and reliable guidance will be a lot more critical to their sons’ positive development than to their daughters’.

Btw if CH is the first Shivmaester to come up with this theory, please feel free to lavish me with oodles of ego canoodles.

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Commenter tteclod adds something with which I can find no fault,

CH: You may not have considered the interaction between heritable traits and learned adaptation of heritable traits, or at least didn’t say anything about it.

Let’s put it this way: the difference between the 90% heritable success and the extra 10% parental contribution is the difference between an A student and a B student, or a star athlete and an also-ran teammate. In a competitive environment (all of planet earth), these differences define social strata.

My son is smart. That’s genetics. My daughter is also smart, but not as smart as my son. Also genetics. However, the success of both my son and my daughter is augmented by my participation in the education of each, most especially because they are very much like me (nature) and I know how to be like me successfully (nurture). Without me, each child fumbles through life not knowing how to succeed except through learning from experience. That’s stupid. Every man knows it is best to learn from the mistakes of others, not his own.

Throw in incremental generational improvement in nature (slow) and nurture (fast), and you have the difference between r-selection and K-selection. K-selection assumes the opportunity to build incrementally upon civilizational augmentation of progeny, whereas r-selection hopes for some success among much failure. I prefer the putting my finger on the scale in favor of my children.