. What has been said about cultural history is true of individuals: If we do not know our familial history, we are most likely to repeat it."
Bradshaw introduces two key elements to the debate over the role gender differences play in the marriage relationship: one is the relative paucity of studies considering issues of familial systems at all, and second the Determinist vs. Geneticist debate of which is more influential, environment or biology? Specifically, the controversy of the day is straightforward and in the headlines: Are we taught our gender behavior, or are we born with it?
Addressing the matter of research first, there would appear to be three fields of study that should have an interest in familial systems/marriage relationships: sociology, anthropology and psychology. So-called "soft" sciences one and all, each has emerged as a respectable academic discipline primarily in this century; hence, even "old" research within these disciplines is relatively newborn when compared to, say, chemistry or physics. All are somewhat outgrowths of the "speculative" branches of philosophy - Hegel vs. Locke, "natural" man as innocence personified vs. that same natural state as inherently depraved. The Darwinian philosophers of the 1800s introduced genetics into the philosophical equation: humans were not "created" as individuals by an omniscient God, but evolved from a juggernaut combination of environment, gene pools, chance and "survival of the fittest" --- Man does not control his personality, impersonal evolution does. The Marxists of the (former) Soviet Union brought back human determinism into the equation by asserting that environment and Pavlovian-theoried "conditioning" are the controlling factors; indeed, the key advocate of this position, the Soviet scientist T. D. Lysenko, was sponsored by Stalin - which gave his genetics/behavior theories the weight of official law.
Oddly, within the arena of debate among th...