Le figure genitoriali nella famiglia ipermoderna e le loro conseguenze sul discorso di genere

In questo studio abbiamo voluto tentare un approccio multifunzionale per l’analisi della società moderna, più precisamente per analizzare la figura della donna e dell’uomo in questa epoca, figure che non potrebbero essere analizzate senza considerare le tematiche genitoriali e familiari che sono alla base della società stessa, italiana e non solo. Abbiamo voluto indagare sia la figura materna che quella paterna, prendendo spunto dalle opere di Massimo Recalcati e di John Bowlby che tanto hanno meditato per quanto riguarda il rapporto della madre e del padre con il proprio figlio. Ci è sembrato necessario partire dalla famiglia e dalle figure genitoriali poiché queste costituiscono le fondamenta, sin dai tempi antichi, di ogni società, e considerare come sono variate tali figure nell’epoca ipermoderna costituisce un punto essenziale per delineare alcuni punti fondamentali di quella che Zygmunt Baumann ha definito società liquida. La scienza medica ha insegnato che alla base della «cultura» (in senso antropologico), di ogni cultura, sta il tenace legame del figlio con la propria madre, in un rapporto di dipendenza biologicamente determinato dalla prolungata infanzia dell’essere umano, condizionandone l’intera esistenza e, in qualche modo, sottraendogli sempre il raggiungimento della piena maturità. Infatti bisogna considerare che l’intera esistenza di un uomo, di qualsiasi essere umano, è influenzata da ciò che egli vede e sente nei primi anni di vita (nei primi 3 anni di vita, secondo la scienza), pertanto il rapporto con la madre, il primo rapporto con la figura materna, è basilare per la vita futura dell’individuo. Una volta terminato il ruolo materno, ossia quando il ragazzo è pronto per entrare nella società, è il padre (o meglio, la figura paterna) ad accompagnarlo nel suo raggiungimento della virile maturità e a prenderlo per mano durante il periodo, cosiddetto, della castrazione (psicologica), ossia della piena maturità e del distacco dal “seno materno”. Il femminismo con i suoi movimenti degli anni ’70 ha portato ad una rottura, ad una vera e propria rivoluzione nel rapporto tra le parti. La donna ha acquisito una sempre maggiore consapevolezza portando non solo ad un nuovo e rinnovato tipo di femminilità, ma anche, dirimpetto, ad una differente tipologia di mascolinità, probabilmente meno consapevole e più debole, alimentando una sorta di sentimento ginecofobico che acuisce man mano che si va avanti, nonché un’assenza di dialogo tra i due universi, quello femminile e quello maschile, con una paura di fondo da parte di quest’ultimo.

Differences in management and outcomes between male and female patients with atherothrombotic disease: results from the REACH Registry in Europe

Although guidelines recommend similar evaluation and treatment for both sexes, differences in approach and outcomes have been reported.

Effect of sibling competition and male carotenoid supply on offspring condition and oxidative stress

Early developmental conditions have major implications for an individual's fitness. In species where offspring are born simultaneously, the level of sibling competition for food access is intense. In birds, high sibling competition may subject nestlings to decreased growth rate as a result of limited food and increased levels of oxidative stress through high metabolic activity induced by begging behaviors. We manipulated the level of sibling competition in a natural population of great tits and assessed the consequences for nestling body condition and resistance to oxidative stress. In a full factorial design, we both augmented brood size to increase sibling competition and supplemented the male parents with physiological doses of carotenoids thereby doubling the natural carotenoid intake, aiming at increasing the males' investment in current reproduction and thereby decreasing sibling competition. Nestling body mass was reduced by the brood enlargement and enhanced by the carotenoid supplementation of fathers. Nestling resistance to oxidative stress, measured as total antioxidant defenses in whole blood, was not influenced by the treatments. Because nestlings experience high metabolic activities, an absence of an effect of sibling competition on free radicals production seems unlikely. Nestling body mass decreased and resistance to oxidative stress tended to increase with initial brood size, and hence these correlational effects suggest a trade-off between morphological growth and development of the antioxidant system. However, the result of the experimental treatment did not support this trade-off hypothesis. Alternatively, it suggests that nestling developed compensatory mechanisms that were not detected by our antioxidant capacity measure.

Female mating preferences and male coloration covary with water transparency in a Lake Victoria cichlid fish

Rapid speciation in Lake Victoria cichlid fish of the genus Pundamilia may be facilitated by sexual selection: female mate choice exerts sexual selection on male nuptial coloration within species and maintains reproductive isolation between species. However, declining water transparency coincides with increasingly dull coloration and increasing hybridization. In the present study, we investigated the mechanism underlying this pattern in Pundamilia nyererei, a species that interbreeds with a sister species in turbid but not in clear water. We compared measures of intraspecific sexual selection between two populations from locations that differ in water transparency. First, in laboratory mate-choice experiments, conducted in clear water and under broad-spectrum illumination, we found that females originating from turbid water have significantly weaker preferences for male coloration than females originating from clear water. Second, both the hue and body coverage of male coloration differ between populations, which is consistent with adaptation to different photic habitats. These findings suggest that the observed relationship between male coloration and water transparency is not mediated by environmental variation alone. Rather, female mating preferences are indicated to have changed in response to this variation, constituting the first evidence for intraspecific preference-trait co-evolution in cichlid fish. (C) 2010 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2010, 99, 398-406.

Genetics of male nuptial colour divergence between sympatric sister species of a Lake Victoria cichlid fish

The hypothesis of sympatric speciation by sexual selection has been contentious. Several recent theoretical models of sympatric speciation by disruptive sexual selection were tailored to apply to African cichlids. Most of this work concludes that the genetic architecture of female preference and male trait is a key determinant of the likelihood of disruptive sexual selection to result in speciation. We investigated the genetic architecture controlling male nuptial colouration in a sympatric sibling species pair of cichlid fish from Lake Victoria, which differ conspicuously in male colouration and female mating preferences for these. We estimated that the difference between the species in male nuptial red colouration is controlled by a minimum number of two to four genes with significant epistasis and dominance effects. Yellow colouration appears to be controlled by one gene with complete dominance. The two colours appear to be epistatically linked. Knowledge on how male colouration segregates in hybrid generations and on the number of genes controlling differences between species can help us assess whether assumptions made in simulation models of sympatric speciation by sexual selection are realistic. In the particular case of the two sister species that we studied a small number of genes causing major differences in male colouration may have facilitated the divergence in male colouration associated with speciation.

No evidence for a genetic association between female mating preference and male secondary sexual trait in a Lake Victoria cichlid fish

Sexual selection by female mating preference for male nuptial coloration has been suggested as a driving force in the rapid speciation of Lake Victoria cichlid fish. This process could have been facilitated or accelerated by genetic associations between female preference loci and male coloration loci. Preferences, as well as coloration, are heritable traits and are probably determined by more than one gene. However, little is known about potential genetic associations between these traits. In turbid water, we found a population that is variable in male nuptial coloration from blue to yellow to red. Males at the extreme ends of the phenotype distribution resemble a reproductively isolated species pair in clear water that has diverged into one species with blue-grey mates and one species with bright red males. Females of the turbid water population vary in mating preference coinciding with the male phenotype distribution. For the current study, these females were mated to blue males. We measured the coloration of the sires and male offspring. Parents-offspring regression showed that the sires did not affect male offspring coloration, which confirms earlier findings that the blue species breeds true. In contrast, male offspring coloration was determined by the identity of the dams, which suggests that there is heritable variation in male color genes between females. However, we found that mating preferences of the dams were not correlated with male offspring coloration. Thus, there is no evidence for strong genetic linkage between mating preference and the preferred trait in this population [Current Zoology 56 (1): 57-64 2010].