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I just had to join in with a "hear, hear" for stamping out evolutionary psychology (at least in its pop-science incarnation.). Now that I have a child of my own, I'm constantly eavesdropping on playground conversations about which behaviors are "hard-wired" in boys or girls, mother or fathers. The minute I hear the word "hard-wired," I wince in anticipation of its inevitable accompaniment: an affirmation of the gender status quo. Boys are hard-wired to like trucks. Girls are hard-wired to wear pink. (What role motor vehicles or rose-patterned tights played in caveman culture has yet to be determined by science.)
The truism that newborns tend to resemble their fathers more than their mothers so that the father will know the child is his, and thus protect it, has become a veritable item of dogma among parents in my circle. This claim, based on a 12-year-old study that has been amply refuted since, is a classic example of an ev-psych argument: While the first part of the theory (that babies look more like their dads than their moms) may or may not be true depending on whose research you trust, the second part (that this resemblance serves as a proof of paternity for the doubting father) is pure and unprovable speculation. But it certainly is handy that the imagined mating behavior of monkey-men happens to reinforce contemporary Western values about male breadwinning and the specter of female infidelity.
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