When girls and boys in the USA are socialized in a more similar manner...

people commit crimes.

We know the reasons, usually, but why males are more statistically prone than females may be decided in more than one realm than socialization alone.

It would be interesting to see a study of gender-based transgression, whether or not it is expressly illegal tansgression.

chromosome studies?

Recommended.

Also, which types of crimes? Violent? Theft?

I voted not clear...

n/t

This question assumes, first, that criminal tendencies are linked with the socialization of a child. Not merely correlated, but actually linked. I am going to assume that the general idea is that women commit fewer crimes because female children are generally socialized to be less violent, less aggressive, and less self-centered than male children. Who can say if that is actually the case, but let's go with it for the purposes of this post.

Therefore, assuming that this is linked with crime, the effect of a "more similar" socialization would depend entirely on what side of the gender divide saw its socialization altered the most -- it would depend on whether boys were socialized more like girls traditionally have been, or vice versa.

Personally I am of the opinion that the two biggest factors in crime are poverty, as another poster said, and certain mental illnesses. Socialization could have an impact on mental illness, of course, and it could be argued that socializing children to favor aggression, violence, and self-centeredness tends to produce mental illnesses that more often manifest themselves in crime. The "traditional" socialization of female children can also produce mental illness, but it would probably produce a "victim" type more often than a perpetrator. I have known a number of young women who say that they just could not "take a life," even if they were being attacked by a would-be rapist or murderer and it came down to killing or being raped/killed. They were probably subjected to a strong form of this type of socialization. Which is more damaging, socializing a child to be a violent narcissist, or socializing a child in a way that destroyed that person's very survival instinct? Can we just say that both types suck? :shrug:

The only link offered is time. However, the answer options include the following:

• "... young women and young men WON'T commit crimes at the same rate. Young men will continue to commit more crimes."
  
  
• The socialization of girls and boys in the USA isn't going to become more similar.
  

Don't condescend to me.

What happens would depend on whether there is a cause-and-effect relationship between socialization and crime and whether (assuming such a relationship existed) boys or girls saw the greater change in how they were socialized.

If this relationship exists, then it seems fairly clear-cut: Socialize boys more like girls, and crime among men would decrease while crime among women would stay about the same. Socialize girls more like boys, and crime among women would increase while crime among men would stay about the same. This is not hard to comprehend.

The world doesn't always operate in conformity to what people comprehend.

Word!!!

;)

Alternatively, is there something special about socialization, gender, and criminality that ensures that future patterns involving socialization, gender, and criminality will not be any kind of coincidental correlation, but will result from easily recognizable causal factors?

I see at the top of the thread this:



At the beginning of the body of your reply I see this:


What was special about the use of the word "when" at the very beginning of this thread that signaled to you that we are talking about phenomena that are "not merely correlated" but "actually linked"?

Several years ago, I attended a fascinating panel discussion on how to prove anything with statistics. You take two things, any two things, and draw graphs producing a progression for both and then you overlay them. For example, you could correlate the price of gas with number of women in the workforce and claim that more women working for wages is a cause of high gas prices because they produced a similar progression. Ridiculous, isn't it? The mathemetician who presented the panel chose several examples of the most ridiculous kind.

Why am I mentioning this here and now? Because it seems as if there is a similar attempt to correlate two things that aren't necessarily in a cause/effect relationship.

What kind of crimes are you talking about? Embezzling? Rapes? Murders? Accidentally killing someone and getting convicted because you didn't have a good enough lawyer? Shoplifting? Income tax evasion? Insider stock trading? Extortion? Drug dealing? Possessing marijuana? Failing to pay your share of the rent and your roommates have filed a suit in small claims court? Corporate espionage? Mugging? Running red lights? Failing to stop at four way stops when there's no one else on the road?

As I see it, these are vastly different kinds of crimes and I doubt very much that gender-based socialization has much to do with the incidence of them. What has more to do with it, is how strongly a person was encouraged to become a law-abiding person, how minor/major the crime, opportunity, motive, need, and a host of other considerations.

The fact that my mother loves the color pink and tried to make me wear pink as often as possible when I was a child has nothing to do with the fact that I'll roll through stop signs if I can't see anything to stop for. The fact that my dad refused to take me hunting with him has nothing to do with the fact that I'd never ever dream of committing tax fraud.

There is only one reason I'd ever kill another human being and that is self defense. I got that from karate class, not from having to wear frilly dresses while my brother got to wear play clothes to church and certainly not from noticing that none of the men ever cleared tables or did the dishes after megahuge family dinners and all the women were expected to help out.

becomes more gender neutral females increase violent acts.

is what I would assume. So I voted none of the above.

effect is actually proven