The Female Brain
The other night I went to a fascinating lecture at my daughter's school delivered by a psychiatrist named Louann Brizendine. She is the author of a new book entitled The Female Brian, which details the scientific reasons behind the differences between men and women.
In her book, she discusses that these differences begin in the womb when our brains become heavily influenced by either the production of estrogen or testosterone.
From the moment we enter the world as either a baby girl or baby boy we are already reacting to our environment in ways that are dictated by our gender. Dr. Brizendine does not discount nurture all together but she makes a strong medical case for the argument that men and women think differently, process information differently and learn differently as a result of how gender-related hormones affect the brain. In her lecture, she noted that she was educated in the 1970s at a college campus that was at the forefront of the women's movement. She and her peers had a strong desire to believe that the genders were basically the same and that if they had male children they would raise them not to fit into stereotypical gender roles. She then recalled that despite her best efforts, she recognized after the birth of her own son that there is more to the "stereotypical" behavior than just what we teach our children.
Her research has examined the hormone levels of individuals as they fluctuate throughout the years. She takes a close look at the teen years and why they are so tumultuous along with the unusual and sometimes frustrating sleep habits of teenagers. One of the attributes I appreciated most about her approach to the science was that there were no value judgments, but clear, understandable and scientific reasons why our daughters behave so differently from our sons and why it is sometimes hard for the genders to understand one another. As a psychotherapist who does a great deal of work counseling couples, I find her work insightful and valuable in the therapeutic process, and I believe that the better we understand the opposite sex, the more likely we are to appreciate and embrace the differences.
Categories: News
Support Groups: Breakups & Divorce, Family Issues, Female Sexual Issues, Healthy Relationships, Healthy Sex, Menopause, Parenting Teenagers (12-18), Pre-menstrual Syndrome (PMS)
3
Helloooo...my friend....hellooooooo rofl
By match3153 July 3, 2008 5:21pm
2
Helloooo...my friend....hellooooooo rofl
By match3153 July 3, 2008 5:21pm
1
Blah, blah, blah, and then I enter Target, and there is not a single toy for 2 and up that is not heavily gender-stereotyped. My eyes hurt from all the pink, and my stomach turns to all the Power-Rangers. Same about the clothes. Clothes coming from Europe or India have a much greater variety of patterns for both boys and girls. So maybe baby boys react differently to visual stimuli, but the road from baby boy to boy to man is a long and very heavily influenced one. This is interesting research, but it doesn't say much about differences between men and women - only about differences between baby boys and girls.
On another note, I wonder why the title is "The Female Brain". Why not "The Male Brain"? Is the author taking the male brain as a standard, and female as something to write about? Considering that all brains start out as female (just like all fetuses), until the testosterone is secreted, I would argue the opposite. Someone who was "at the forefront of the women's movement" should reconsider their terminology.
By cb72 May 28, 2008 2:48pm