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Nurture

I. Introduction
To nurture a child is to focus on their influences on development: health, temperament, culture, and family, and also to look at their developmental domains: physical, cognitive, emotional, and social. These key areas, according to Head Start’s Information and Publication Center, (HSIPC) a areas that can be focused on when nurturing a child. When child development is looked at however, there is always a lacking factor, men. Women have always been the gender in charge of primary child care, whether it is in the home, or at a child care facility.   As of 2001, a consensus shows that only 2 percent of teachers are males. (Sargent, 2004) This outcome is mostly due to sociological reasons. Sociological reasons include but are not limited to gender norms, stereotyping, and discrimination.   Oxytocin levels play a large part in the hormonal contribution to the reasoning of this unbalance of gender roles. The key ideas being discussed in the paper will be reasons why females are generally the primary child care providers and whether men should have an integral part in nurturing.

II. Biological Theories
Males start off as females in a mother’s womb. It is until a key unlocks the creation of a male otherwise it goes on to become a female.   It is this key that will help to determine many differentiable features men and women have. This key feature is a hormone which helps in regulating mood, growth, tissue function, metabolism, and sexual and reproductive function. These hormones control how people feel, look, and sometimes act.   A specific hormone called oxytocin comes to mind when child caring is presented.   Oxytocin is released during childbirth and breast-feeding to help create a deep bond between mother and child. According to a UCLA study that includes Dr. Laura Cousin Klein (Hey…Girlfriend, 2004), oxytocin levels in women rise when they are under stress. One of the effects of this oxytocin increase is the need to tend to a child. Once she engages...