I remember reading an anecdote about a baby who didn’t like being held by their father, who happened to beat the baby’s mother during pregnancy. No idea of the veracity of the story but something about it had me thinking similarly about “instincts” and where they come from. The meaning of the word does seem to be a lot like memories that are “passed on for generations”.
Young children generally are more cautious around men than women, which is probably good risk management. Instinctive? Possibly.
Is it, though? This data [0] says otherwise.
[0]: http://www.breakingthescience.org/SimplifiedDataFromDHHS.php
A more neutral source:
https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf
… which suggests the opposite (but there’s not much in it).
In terms of broader risks, males commit a clear majority of violent offences and a vast majority of sexual offences.
This isn’t even just a human thing. Male primates (and mammals generally) exhibit more aggressive behavior than females. It’s probably a deep consequence of anisogamous sexual differentiation:
https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169...