Family
Mothers and Fathers are Different
At the dinner table, nine-year-old Jennifer is looking glum. Her explanation is that her best friend had invited Meg Harper over to play that afternoon but Jennifer was excluded. She began talking about not having any friends. Her father quickly jumped in to minimize the issue, assuring Jennifer that everything was okay and she'll probably be invited over tomorrow. Mom is more visibly upset, hugs her daughter, talks about how she was hurt by some friends when she was young, and suggests that they work on Jennifer's costume for the class play after dinner. Later mom chastises dad for not being very understanding and minimizing Jennifer's distress. Dad is annoyed, even angry, at the criticism because he cares very much about his daughter and thought he had shown that by listening to her comments and trying to be helpful.
Men and women are not the same. As the sharing of parental responsibilities increasingly becomes the norm, so do misunderstandings and conflicts about the "right way" to do things. At the core of this is the fact that mothers and fathers are inherently different in significant ways that influence their perceptions and reactions. Therefore, with parents trying to be more cooperative, it is essential that they learn more about these differences. But this issue has been so politicized that rational discourse usually gives way to rigidified debate.
Clearly there has been a history of an overvaluation of male characteristics and a devaluation of behaviors associated with being female. Our society is in the process of discarding a number of inappropriate stereotypes about men and women. However, it is definitely nonsensical to go to the other extreme and deny that there are any differences. Men and women are physically defined by hormonal and physiological differences and it should be obvious that these differences must contribute to some neurological, cognitive, and emotional differences between the two sexes. The challenge that faces all of us is learning to identify and understand these differences in a non-judgmental context. All human characteristics have their potential positive and negative consequences.
My decades of experience as a specialist in families and marriages has brought me to the conclusion that one of the primary psychological differences between men and women is that women view the world from the "inside" while men view the world from the "outside." (Please note that all discussions of sex differences are generalizations and will, naturally, vary among individuals.) In other words, women tend to view events in terms of how the other person actually experienced them, while men tend to be more external observers, focusing on the details and logistics of the events. It is this difference that has defined women as being more empathetic. In fact, there has been considerable recent research on the psychology of women stating that this capacity for empathy is one of the central, dominant psychological characteristics of women.
At the same time it has led to a perception of men as being more logical in dealing with solving people problems. The "distance" of being an observer probably contributes to the male tendency to focus on solutions rather than the process or feelings aspect of the problem. This particular difference between men and women accounts for a significant amount of the communication problems between men and women. In essence they are looking at the same events from two different perspectives and that often results in women being described as too emotional and men as not caring. But these perspectives compliment each other and, whether as a marital issue or a parenting issue, it is best if both perspectives are valued and supported. For Jennifer, each parental response was helpful. Combined, she gets the whole package!
Another example. It's 1:00am and their son was due home at midnight. Dad says he's going to sleep because he is sure his son is okay and, besides, there is nothing he can do to help by sitting up and waiting. Mom cannot understand how dad can go to sleep at a time like this. She stays up, anxiously waiting until she finally hears her son arrive. Is this a "caring mother" and an "uncaring father"? Of course not. It is just another example of the father logically concluding the odds are quite likely that their son is fine while the mother is imagining her son lying injured somewhere and feeling the pain. Being in pain prevents the mother from going to sleep. Not being in pain allows the father to go to sleep.
These are two different perspectives that lead to two different sets of reactions. They shouldn't be labeled as good or bad, better or worse, caring or uncaring. Instead the differences need to be understood and appreciated if moms and dads are going to be able to effectively share parenting responsibilities.
My other favorite characterization of male-female differences is that men have "tunnel vision" while women have "radar." In my opinion men tend to become intensely focused on a single activity. While that can contribute to extraordinary achievements or very intense experiences of pleasure, it also can result in a narrowness of focus and insensitivity to what else is happening around them. Women are multi-taskers who are more aware of the multiple events, especially the complex social processes, going on around them at any given moment. It contributes to a richness of interests, though they may find it harder to stay focused on a primary task.
Thus we have a "typical living room scene." Father is watching a football game on TV. He is oblivious to a problem the children are having only a few feet away. Mother arrives from a distant room to handle the matter and screams with frustration at her "useless" husband who defends himself by denying the problem needed any attention and labels his wife as "over-reactive." With everyone properly labeled, it's back to business as usual, except that unhealthy stereotypes have been reinforced and marital bonds have been damaged.
The radar concept was clearly in play here. Mothers seem to have an awareness about their children regardless of how near or far away the children are located. A mother doing chores around the house seems to always be aware of her children, to have a sense of how they might be doing, whether the children are in another room, outside playing, or even away from home. She is more likely to have thoughts about her children while doing a task than a father would. Mothers typically go and check on children when things are quiet. Fathers are less likely to do this.
Certainly a piece of this difference is that historically mothers have been the primary caretakers. Men operate, to some degree, on the assumption that mothers will ensure the welfare of the children along with a belief that their wives are the experts when it comes to parenting. As men take more of a role in parenting right from the beginning, we may see a change in this pattern. Actually I believe the roots of this go back over a hundred thousand years when men were the hunters, who had to sit still, focused for many hours on the singular task of killing an animal to provide meat for his family, while women were the gatherers, moving about the edge of the campsite, finding food, keeping an eye on the children, and looking out for dangerous animals simultaneously. So it may take a while for this to change!
I am stressing the need to appreciate and support the male-female differences. Part of this is for couples to learn to take maximum advantage of their individual strengths while learning to minimize the impact of their individual weaknesses. One couple that I recently worked with learned to do this very effectively. For example, the mother is a morning person and the father is a night person. For starters, they made mom primarily responsible for getting the children up and out in the morning and dad primarily responsible for bedtime. They had to respect the different styles each had in carrying out these responsibilities. Mom tended to be more organized in her approach in the morning, sometimes resulting in some confrontations with their less organized son, while dad was into more horsing around at bedtime, when mom would have preferred he focus on calming the children, not exciting them!
Rather than fight about these differences, as so many couples do, they learned to accept and respect the differences, which increased their sense of closeness as working partners. Meanwhile mom helps that somewhat disorganized son with his homework because dad gets too frustrated with him, so dad cleans up after dinner to free up her time.
When these parents first came to see me, their youngest child, a four-year-old boy, was soiling. We concluded that this was a reaction to the considerable amount of stress being generated by mother's efforts to get her husband to take more parental responsibility in the family and his resistance to doing so. Fortunately their marriage was essentially okay, so once they were able to step back and look at the issues, the tension was sharply reduced. A key part of the process of change was recognizing their gender differences. As the situation became more positive and less stressful, the child's symptoms disappeared.
One special issue fathers have that relates to their "tunnel vision" style is that when they involve a child in a task, such as raking leaves, they are often too focused on getting the task done, and have little patience for the child fooling around. I often encourage fathers to recognize that it is even more important to be focused on the relationship building aspect of any activity they share with a child, in other words, to enjoy watching your child having fun with you. Even more important, join in the fun. The significance of these experiences far outweighs getting the task completed.
Mothers, on the other hand, often need to be encouraged to allow their children to experience the pain of disappointments or hurts. The desire to protect the child from physical or emotional pain is driven by that "inside the person" empathy, i.e., the child's pain becomes their pain. I find myself often encouraging mothers to step back and let their children work through the situation with less micromanaging and a quieter level of empathy.
The trend towards a greater degree of sharing parenting in today's families is a healthy one. In does pose the challenge of parents being able to understand, respect, and take maximum advantage of their varying strengths and weaknesses as a parent. It is my contention that some of these differences are gender-related and not very amenable to change. In a supportive environment, each parent is able to accept these differences and blend them into an effective parenting system.
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