Sex Role Learning in the Nuclear Family

In his article, Theories of Identification and Their Derivatives (5), Bronfenbrenner ends his excellent analysis and codification of identification theories with the injunction that what we need is not more theory but more empirical research. He states that elaborate theoretical explanations of assumed phenomena have been made but that in reality very little is about the extent of variation in the behavior of fathers and mothers toward sons and daughters, and even less about the possible effects of such differential treatment (5, P39). We would argue that very little is known about parental behavior and identification processes, not because there are no data, but because there is no adequate theoretical explanation to which existing findings can be assimilated and thereby become known. It is the purpose of this paper to attempt to make theoretical sense out of already available findings, many of which appear anomalous from the standpoint of current orthodoxy, by proposing some simple, but we think crucial, modifications in Freudian and post-Freudian identification theory.