This book discusses the characteristics of adolescence cross-culturally and examines the differences in the adolescent experience for males and females. Several relationships are tested in order to gain an understanding of cross-cultural patterns in adolescence.

Textor summarizes cross-cultural male initiation rites findings pertaining to cultural, environmental, psychological, and social phenomena.

This article examines institutionalized male transvestism and the couvade, finding that they are mutually exclusive in a cross-cultural sample. Possible explanations for the negative association between male transvestism and the couvade (e.g. sex-identity differentiation and confusion) are discussed.

This study attempts to replicate earlier findings regarding transvestism using a larger sample and a different index of sex distinctions. It is asserted that societies that maximize sex distinctions will not have institutionalized male transvestism.

This study argues that different types of homosexuality must be examined separately. Authors focus on mentorship and pathic homosexual behavior and test factors that are associated with these two types of behavior.

This study employs a psychological theory and builds on the holocultural literature on male homosexuality. Two hypotheses relating homosexual behavior among men to social constructs for sexuality (the couvade, male transvestism) are derived from a study by Munroe (1980). The hypotheses are tested and supported in a sample of cultures drawn from Munroe's codes and the Human Relations Area Files.

This study examines Parsons' and Bales' proposition that a universal feature of social structure is gender sex role specialization of tasks. Results suggest that women contribute substantially to the subsistence economy across many domains, casting doubt on such universality.

This study uses logistic regression to test the relationship between homosexuality and ecological and psychosocial variables. Significant associations were found between the frequency of homosexuality and type of agriculture, the occurrence of gathering, and psychosocial stressors in women's lives.

This article reviews psychological, sociobiological, and cultural materialist theories on male homosexuality. The author tests hypotheses focusing on parent-child relations, the gender of childhood companions, and residence patterns. Only the gender of childhood companions was significantly associated with homosexuality.

This book chapter builds on Horton's 1943 psychoanalytical study of drunkenness. The author tests an overall theory that drunkenness, which facilitates personal and uninhibited interactions, is more acceptable, and therefore prevalent, in societies with loose, rather than rigid, social relationships. Indicators of social rigidity, such as strict socialization or male dominance through patrilocality, are tested for relationships to drunkenness.