If men are so good at fixing things, why do they keep breaking women’s hearts?
Part I: a gender perspective on independence, inspiration and insanity
It’s pretty much universally accepted that MOST women are skilled at quickly processing emotions while MOST men might take hours, days, or never even get to the same place. MOST men will counter this by claiming that they live based on logic, while MOST women are irrational.
(DISCLAIMER: Linguistics professor Deborah Tannen, Ph.D., wrote that ALMOST ALL of us think in absolutes, unable to hear qualifiers. I’ll capitalize the qualifiers I use in the hopes this won’t start a flame war, with people yelling “Well I can do that, and I’m not a [insert gender here].” Yes, it’s possible for SOME guys to be really good with feelings and SOME girls to be really bad with them.)
So who’s right?
To find out, we need to explore real differences between MOST men and MOST women and how an awareness of these differences can improve our relationships.
Gender behavior is reinforced almost from birth.
Studies have shown that parents unconsciously treat babies differently, based on their gender. Mothers and fathers also exhibit different behaviors, with Mothers speaking with emotion-laden language more with baby girls, while fathers bond through more active play with their children.
When my boys were young, I decided to take a child development class, hoping to stay ahead of the learning curve. We learned about an experiment that blew me away so much that I still remember it 23 years later.
The magic button.
The study observed babies old enough to sit in a high chair, but too young to speak. As the babies explored the tray with their hands, they found and pushed on a button that caused a pleasing image to be projected on a screen in front of them. Each time they pushed the button, they would see a new image.
Is it really only nurture and no nature?
After the babies had enough feedback to expect a new image every time they pushed the button, the researchers turned off the mechanism with startling results. The boys kept pushing on the button with variations in speed and force. Meanwhile, the girls pushed the button a couple of times more and then started crying.
It’s hard to imagine that the behavior observed could have been solely due to 8 months of nurturing. (1) Think about how astounding that behavior is, and how differently you may interpret that behavior.
Did you fall into the trap already?
When I told friends about the experiment, the guys laughed at the girls’ helplessness. But were they really helpless? Or did they recognize very quickly that the best course of action was to enlist aid? (2) On the other hand, were the boys stupid for continuing to push the button? Or were they displaying a primitive form of independent problem solving (a crucial survival skill resulting from hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary pressure)?
I hope this story has given you pause to think a little differently about your relationships or your role as parents. In part 2, we’ll explore how differently men and women view the world and how this affects their communication styles.
Thanks for reading this far.
Notes:
- Science is finding that there are gender defined, physical differences in our brains, but we’ll have to leave that controversial subject for another time.
- What gets a faster response than a crying baby?
