the Female Body GOVERNING

Beyond X-X and X-Y 287
nutrition and health, having a bigger infant might reduce a woman’s
chance of surviving to give birth to many more. So, in theory, it
would be advantageous to have higher numbers of slightly smaller
babies. Equally, if a man was having babies with a number of different
partners, it would be better for him to have as large a[n] infant
as possible with each. This means that the man and woman are in
unknowing competition for the survival of their genetic code.
The article goes on to describe the IGF gene that comes from the father,
terming it his “weapon” in boosting the size of his infant. The heavily
gendered presumptions underpinning the language of such reports are
quite clear and gloss over the location of this gene on chromosome 11.
This means that both sexes carry the gene, and if both copies were active
it may result in an overexpression and potentially offspring too large to
give birth to, while if both of the copies were inactive the underexpression
would affect the formation of a healthy infant.
An apparent example of the genetic battle comes from behavioral
genetics and research on “nurturing genes.” Nurturing genes entered the
mass media in 1998, when scientists at Cambridge published a report in
Science on the action of Mest. The BBC reported the fi ndings under the
headline, “Genes for Better Mothers,” which stated, “Researchers from
Cambridge University say they have found a mothering gene in mice. . . .
Writing in the Nature Genetics journal, the Cambridge researchers say
this might be nature’s way of ensuring females put full effort into caring
for their young” (BBC, 1998). In 1999 a similar report of another
gene, PEG 3, appeared under the title, “Second ‘Good Mother’ Gene
Found.” This article noted “that males appear to have the upper hand
when sexes battle over how much time to spend with the babies” (Fox,
1999). Genetically modifi ed mother mice without PEG 3 do not exhibit
nurturing behavior, and their pups normally die. In 2001, Susan Murphy
and Randy Jirtle (2003), researchers at the Duke University Cancer
Center, reported in an issue of Genomics, that the related gene in humans
is paternally imprinted as seen in mice. Initially, this seems to reveal that
imprinting has an important role in the behavioral expression, and thus
have important implications for the biology of gender roles; however,
the gene may also be a possible mechanism for autistic behavior, which
would account for the observed lack of nurturing behavior. The idea that
nurturing genes are imprinted as a result of the “confl ict theory” has also
come under criticism. A recent article (Hurst, Pomiankowski, McVean,
et al., 2000) points out the “nurturing gene” affects not the offspring
but the grand-offspring and “grand-offspring are equally related to their
maternal grandmother and to their maternal grandfather. So there is