Understanding each other
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Are Men and Women really different? Aside from the obvious phsyical differences there are those we often do not take into account. Note that these findings are generalizations and they apply to most men or women, but not to all men or all women.
1. PHYSIOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES
Girls develop left side of brain faster than boys: leads to talking, vocabulary, pronunciation, reading earlier, better memory.
Boys develop right side faster than girls:
visual-spatial-logical skills, perceptual skills, better at math, problem solving, building and figuring out puzzles.
Girls more interested in toys with faces than boys are; play with stuffed animals and dolls more; boys drawn to blocks or anything that can be manipulated.
Women use both hemispheres of brain; corpus callosum thicker in women.
2. SOCIAL INFLUENCES
Studies of infants:
Both men and women speak louder to boys than girl infants; they are softer and express more "cooing" with girls. Boys are rarely told they are sweet, pretty, little doll; boys are told they are a pumpkin head or "Hey big guy".
Boys handled more physically and robustly than girls, bounced around more .
Girls are caressed and stroked more than boys.
Up to age 2, mothers tend to talk to and look at their daughters significantly more than than they do with their sons, and make more eye contact with the daughters as well.
Mothers show a wider range of emotional response to girls than boys. When girls showed anger, mothers faces showed greater facial disapproval than when boys showed anger. May influence why girls grow up smiling more, more social, and better able to interpret emotions than boys.
Fathers use "Command terms" with boys more than girls; more so than mothers gave.
Developmental Differences Between Boys and Girls:
Nursery rhymes, books and cartoons perpetuate stereotypes,which often promote damsel in distress( the female in the horror flicks wearing heels running from a beast..come on now...get real!), frumpy housewife, helpless senior citizen, sexy heroine (Lora Croft types) and swooning cheerleader. As well as the muscular strong silent type (Conan the Barbarian), the nerdy wimp (Jerry Lewis movies)and the "I know what's best" for all concerned (Ward Cleaver types), and the hero (Knights in shining armour).
Girls use more terms of endearment than boys.
Boys get away with more aggressive antisocial behavior in school and home than girls.
Girls who act as tomboys are accepted; boys who act like girls are severely reprimanded ("don't cry" "Don't be a sissy").
Girls tend to talk about other people; secrets in order to bond friendships; and school, wishes and needs.
Boys talk about things and activities. What they are doing and who is best at the activity.
Teenage girls talk about boys, clothes and weight.
Teenage boys talk about sports, mechanics, girls,and function of things.
age 12-18: biggest event for girls: have a boyfriend
are 12-18: boys are equally interested in the following: sex, cars and sports.
This carries into adulthood when women talk about relationships, people, diet, clothing, physical appearance and men. Men talk about sports, work, money, cars, news, politics, women and the mechanics of things.
3. OTHER DIFFERENCES
Men are more logical, analytical, rational.
Women are more intuitive, holistic, creative, integrative.
Men have a much more difficult time relating to their own feelings, much less understanding women,and may feel very threatened by the expression of feelings in their presence. This may cause them to react by withdrawing or attempting to control the situation through a display of control and/or power.
Men are actually more vulnerable and dependent on relationships than women are and are more devastated by the ending, since they have fewer friends and sources of emotional support.
Men are more at ease with their own angry feelings than women are.
Women are in touch with a much wider range of feelings than men, and the intensity of those feelings is usually much greater for women than men. As a result of this, many man perceive that women's feelings appear to change quickly; men may find this irrational and difficult to understand.
Men tend to be more functional in approaching problem-solving; women are aesthetically-oriented in addition to being functional.
Women tend to be much more sensitive to sounds and smells than men are; and women as such tend to place a greater emphasis on "atmosphere".
The next page deals with the two most common complaints men and women have about each other, and suggested ways to deal with the opposite sex.