Prenatal exposure to male hormones influences which activities girls are interested in, but the effects of those hormones do not extend to gender identity, a new study suggests.<\/p>\n
The researchers explored how prenatal exposure to androgens \u2014 hormones that are typically higher in males than in females \u2014 affected whether girls played more often with boys or girls.<\/p>\n
They found that androgen exposure was not associated with girls spending more or less time in activities with other girls, but it was associated with an increased interest and more time spent in activities that have traditionally been thought of as masculine.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople used to think \u2014 and some still do \u2014 that gender development and behaviour is based either on a person\u2019s biology or social environment. But I think people now realise that it\u2019s both, and the question is how these forces work together,\u201d said co-author Sheri Berenbaum, Professor at Pennsylvania State University in the US.<\/p>\n
The researchers examined the effects of hormones on sex segregation by studying girls with classical and non-classical congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH).<\/p>\n
Girls with classical CAH are exposed to excess levels of androgens prenatally, while girls with non-classical CAH are not.<\/p>\n
For the study, published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behaviour, researchers recruited a group of girls between the ages of 10 to 13 with classical CAH and non-classical CAH.<\/p>\n
They interviewed the girls about their activity interests, gender identity and attitudes about gender roles, among other things.<\/p>\n
The researchers found that there was no significant association between androgen exposure and girls\u2019 time spent with either boys or girls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Prenatal exposure to male hormones influences which activities girls are interested in, but the effects of those hormones do not extend to gender identity, a new study suggests. The researchers explored how prenatal exposure to androgens \u2014 hormones that are typically higher in males than in females \u2014 affected whether girls played more often with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23601,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23600"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23602,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23600\/revisions\/23602"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}