The Mode of Standardization

      There is a well supported (by research evidence) theorem in soci-
ology called the "mode of standardization". Simply put, this theorem
stipulates that: the more frequently two different kinds of groups interact
with each other (provided that the interaction is not brought about by
coercion), the better able to understand and to appreciate each other
those two different kinds of people or groups are likely to become. In
essence, frequent interaction leads to mutual understanding, liking and
loving. Moreover, it also leads to a gradual and ever increasing
concordance of attitudes, values, beliefs, hopes, desires, aspirations, and
dreams between the two different kinds of people or groups. In short,
through frequently interacting, people gradually come to think pretty
much alike and also to like and even to love as well as to understand
one another.
     Years of interviewing very shy men have convinced me that love-
shys do not understand women very well at the gut emotional (as opposed
to intellectual) level. And what people do not understand they tend to
fear. For men with sisters, interacting with females who are in their own
age group tends to remove much of the aura of mystery surrounding
the female sex. More succinctly, through growing up with sisters around
boys are accorded the valuable experience of frequently and directly
interacting with female age-mates on a thoroughly informal basis. They
are thus permitted to relate to girls as people who are little different
from themselves.
     Important too is the fact that sisters very often bring their friends
home for after school play and for a myriad of recreational activities.
Normally adjusted boys similarly invite to their homes their own same-
sexed friends. Thus, throughout their formative years youngsters who
grow up in families with opposite-sexed siblings are at a clear advantage
in that they are accorded the near-daily opportunity to meet and to
informally socialize not only with their own opposite-sexed siblings, but
also with the close friends of these siblings. During adolescense opposite-
sexed siblings can provide an important pool of potential dating partners
in the friends whom they invite to the home.
     Even when brothers do not date their sisters' friends, as is typically
the case when the sister is older rather than younger than the brother,
the presence of a sister still provides a growing boy with an unending
series of valuable learning experiences. Thus, having a sister allows a
boy to perceive girls as real people who can be approached, joked around
with, argued with, and whose companionship can be enjoyed. Having
a sister provides a man with a head start in being able to relax emotionally
around women. And the ability to relax and feel comfortable when
around women is the first step towards bypassing or overcoming the
love-shyness problem.
     In her 1976 book entitled DILEMMAS OF MASCULINITY, Mirra
Komarovsky cited her own research evidence indicating that for young
men a history of good relations with sisters was a far more important
determinant of self-confidence in successful dating and courting of young
women than was a history of good relations with brothers or even with
mothers.1  My own data indicated that neither the quality of the brother-
sister relationship nor whether the sister was the older or younger sibling,
made anywhere nearly as much difference in terms of predicting a man's
non-shyness in his informal relationships with women as did the mere
fact of his simply having a sister in the first place. Only very few of the
men studied for this book had poor or strained relationships with their
sisters. And whereas having a younger sister did yield a better payoff for
the male than did having an older sister, my own data indicate that even
an older sister is far better for a boy than not having any sister at all.