One reason standardizing the male and female personality is harmful is society's attempts to mold females to one personality and males to another personality. For example society's assumption and attempt to make boys fight and girls remain passive (896). By doing this both sexes will be forced to march regimented looking neither to the right nor to the left (862). Simply meaning that a girl will be forced to be feminine in temperament while a boy will be forced to be masculine in temperament society will have no room for the masculine woman or the feminine male. Mead, also wrote, "the regimentation of one sex carries with it, to greater or or less degree the regimentation of the other also. Every paternal behest that defines a way of sitting, a response to a rebuke or a threat, a game, or an attempt to draw or sing or dance or paint, as feminine, is molding the personality of each little girl's brother as well as molding the personality of the sister" (863). Clearly meaning that when a parent teaches a girl child that certain behavior is feminine, then it obviously teaches the boy or brother that he shouldn't do it because it is feminine or girly, on the other hand, if the parent teaches a boy child that behavior is masculine then the girl or sister shouldn't do it because it is masculine or manly. Take for example a high school girl who wants to take an auto shop class and she is told by her mother that auto shop is not an appropriate class for a young lady then makes her take the home economics class instead because it is a more socially acceptable class for a young lady. On the other hand you have a high school boy who wants to take the home economics class and is called a sissy by his father and made to take the auto shop class instead. Therefore making each of them conform to societies standards of how each sex should be.
Finally society suffers because it loses out on the gifts' of those who are born into the wrong temperament, by standardizing the male and female personalities. Take for example, Mead stated," such a system would be wasteful of the gifts of many women who could exercise other functions far better than their ability to bear children in an already over populated world. It would be wasteful of the gifts of many men who could exercise their special personality gifts far better in the home rather than in the marketplace" (863). By that statement, she was suggesting that a woman who had a good head for business talents would be wasted if she was forced to be a homemaker doing the cleaning, cooking and raising of the children. A man'sgifts of being a good homemaker doing the cleaning, cooking and raising of the children would be wasted if he was forced to work outside the home in business. At the end of the scale is the mild, unaggressive young son of wealthy parents, who is forced to lead, at the other end is the aggressive, enterprising child of the slums, who is condemned to take a place among the ranks (869).This part suggest society also looses the aggressive skills used in good leadership positions because of the role in which the individual was born into he is forced to be a lowly common figure. On the opposite side of this statement the wealthy unaggressive individual is forced to be aggressive and a leader, because of the role he was born into even though he is mild mannered and his skills could be better used in a non aggressive occupation.
Clearly, these examples show that the standardizing of male and female personalities is harmful because is attempts to mold females and males to a set temperament even if they don't fit that specific mold creating deviants or outcasts out of the individuals who can't conform to their assigned sex role and society also suffers and looses out on individuals gifts when they are born into the wrong temperament. If society could become less strict and recognize individual gifts as they occurred in either sex and could recognize that beneath the superficial classifications of sex the same potentialities for temperament exist, there would be tremendous gains for society and the individual, but alas generation after generation individuals who don't conform to fit societies mold will perish as will their gifts because society has no place for them.