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Well, over-reaction is a subjective term. There are some who think that the nation is over-reacting to the WTC attacks by chasing bin Laden through the mountains of Afghanistan. (I'm not one of them.) It would be accurate to say that men and women react differently to stress. This invites further characterization. But to say that men "over-react" is just another way of saying that men are inadequate, and this conclusion has no basis in scientific fact. This article and its conclusion ought to be rejected out of hand as junk science.
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by Anonymous User on Thursday December 06, @11:50AM EST (#2)
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Let's look at what this study actually says, as opposed to what the media claims it says. The study shows that male lambs release higher levels of cortisol than female lambs. The media then makes the giant leap than men are sheep (no comments from the peanut gallery please).
On another note, does anyone know if higher levels of cortisol is bad? Consider the following idea: When a (lamb's) body is subjected to stress, the body releases the helpful chemical "cortisol" in an effort to counteract the negative effects of stress. The male lamb, releases higher levels of this helpful hormone, and thus is better able to react to stress. The female lamb, for whatever reason, is unable to produce sufficient levels of the required hormone. The female's lamb's body under-responds to stress.
Maybe, elsewhere in the literature, they have shown that cortisol is bad, but article didn't make that clear. Consider:
The level of this stress hormone rises as a person feels increasingly stressed. Increased levels of cortisol have been linked with an increased risk of high blood pressure and coronary heath disease. Implied conclusion: cortisol causes health problems.
Contrast it with:
The level of white blood cell count rises as a person feels sick. Increased white blood cell count has been linked to infections. Conclusion: white blood cells cause infections.
Being involved in the scientific field myself, I watch the media take a good scientific study, re-write it in a public publication, drawing false conclusions that the scientific study did not support. Just be careful: when you read about science in a non-science publication, realize the article wasn't written by a scientist!
Pete
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This brings back the annalogy I came across, some time back, as an example of "Spurious Relationships": In all cities, as the number of churches increase so do the number of prostitutes.
The punch-line of course is - churches cause prostitution.
The reality is that the increasing population is responsible for both.
Maybe we should have urban myth and/or new rumour pages. This could be an informal logic section that compares the media to the cited research giving papers a grade on their reportage.
I mean it could be anything we agree is constructive and informing.
Just a thought. I see from these responses that we have some good minds at work here.
Scincerely, I'm not kissing butt here at all
dc
xoxoxox
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According to a wonderful book titled "Raising Boys" by Australian Steve Biddulph male infants at birth have almost as much testosterone as 12 year old boys. This is why little baby boys get erections all the time! I think it is also related to the infant boys having considerably less eye contact with caregivers in thier first 6 months of life which in turn decreases the amount of cuddling and holding the boys receive. Later when boys are about 4 y.o. they get another testosterone surge which pushes them to run and jump and test the tensile strength of their muscles and bones. This of course precedes the jail we place them into that forces inactivity and silence: public schools! Right when they are juiced by hormones they must sit still. Can you belileve it? And the little girls sit there quietly looking like little darlings....
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by Anonymous User on Thursday December 06, @10:27PM EST (#11)
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Disagree. The little girls might not be as active as the boys, but they don't sit there quietly like little darlings! In many schools almost all the kids are on Ritalin, girls and boys both.
It's unreasonable to expect any young child to be able to sit still quietly for long periods of time, which makes the whole Ritalin thing that much worse. These kids are being drugged so that they're perfect little automatons.
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The statement about little darlings was certainly an exageration to make a point. There are many little girls who are exhuberant like the little boys...but in general it is much easier for girls to sit still then it is for the boys at that age. Anyone who has worked with both cub scouts and brownies knows this!
The comment about both boys and girls being on ritalin is a new one to me. From what I have read boys are drugged with ritalin at a much higher rate than girls. I have read that four times more boys than girls are on ritalin. Give us some substantiation for that claim about boys and girls on ritalin please.
Here's a link to a little article that actually suggests little boys enter a different type of school at kindergarten age that is based more on activity. It also gives the 4x's ritalin figure.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/3/2/ 135019.shtml
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I disagree little girls are less active than boys. They are culturally conditioned to be less active. Big difference.
I have volunteered at my daughters school and have also had personal experience being a little girl. I can attest to the fact that boys and girls are conditioned differently with regard to physical activity. I was reprimanded all the time in school for doing, climbing trees, scaling fences, jumping from high places, using the play equipment in ways it was not intended..... etc.
Now, at my daughter's school, she and some female friends have been sent to the principal's office for climbing a trees, thrice. History repeats itself! Only this time the rule against climbing a tree is for both boys AND girls, instead of just girls (for liability reasons not social ones). But then we hear the refrain that such restrictions are harder on boys than girls... resepctfully... B.S. Anyone who wants to climb a tree and is prevented from doing so being harmed IMO.
It is probably true that boys are put on ritalin more often, but at my daughters school it is close to even. And there are other drugs pushed onto kids as well, I know, the schools have been pushing drugs for my daughter since preschool! I have resisted but most parents do not. They don't question the research. They don't question why it is that so many kids need to be on one drugs.
One of my neighbors, a male child psychologist, has his daughter on Ritalin and strongly promotes it's wider use. He is active in school affairs and I believe he is the main reason why so many parents have put their kids on drugs in my kid's school. He has told me I'm hurting my child by NOT putting her on drugs as various school "counselors" have suggested time and time again.
This particular issue, I feel strongly, is much larger than just boys. It is so serious. It is about the way our schools have come to view children.
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Lorianne - It sounds like you and your daughter have a healthy dose of the masculine. Of course masculine and feminine are enjoyed by both genders and our balance of the two is both personal and unique. I have grown fond of my wife's strong masculine. It is a blessing.
Do you have a son? This would surely help you in comparing boys and girls. I have found that parents with both boys and girls have a decidedly different perspective than those with one or the other. Even having both genders though can be deceiving since there is such a wide variation humans...but it does help a bit.
Have you ever taken testosterone supplements? Many women have had to take testosterone as a part of their drug regimen in fighting certain diseases. The women I have spoken to who have had this experience have complained about their "irritability" and the constant thoughts about sex! (We men can relate to this.) They can't wait to get off the stuff!! In fact it is an interesting question for women to ask men: What is it like to have a testoserone surge? Women usually have no idea and often men haven't thought back to when they were young men and experienced the massive floods of testosterone. One researcher says that a boys body after the flood of testosterone starts in puberty doesn't come back to a stable state until he is 25 years old!
Boys and girls are physically different. Period. Nature and nurture are both involved in our lives but we need to see and honor our physical differences and take these into account in our treatment of boys and girls.
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I've never claimed boys and girls are the same. What I have said is that little girls DO NOT in general like to sit still. (That inhumane standard thankfully was shelved circa 1972 I think). Sitting still is not a common characteristic among children. I base my statments on several observations.
1 Being an active girl/woman.
2. Being a camp councilor at at girls camp
3. Being active in my kid's school including volunteering one day a week and playground duty.
4. Being the mother of a girl who has both girl and boy friends who visit our home.
Also I don't agree that an active girl means she has a "healty dose of masculine". She is all girl. That is holding children up to a single (male) standard. This is excatly what the thread starter was complaining about by using a female standard to label infant boys "overstressed" as compared to girls.
However, I don't think you meant it too sound the way it sounded. And I do think there is wide variation. For example, a few of the boys at my kids school would rather read than go to recess. And I've already given the example of my daugher who seems not to have met a tree she won't try to climb.
But I don't like labels. I wouldn't call my daughter more masculine and the boys who are less active feminine. (Tomboy and Sissy are the old names). I see no reason to impinge a kid's sexual identity with such labels.
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Lorianne - We live in a world of opposites. One of those is masculine/feminine. We all have a unique blend of those two characteristics. Neither one is good or bad. As you have pointed out there are girls who tend to have a good dose of the "yang" and boys who tend toward the "yin." We need to learn to love them all as they are, with their own unique gifts. This has nothing to do with men and women, but has to do with one aspect of the natures of both.
OTOH boys tend to have a greater degree of the masculine energy and girls have more of the feminine. Not always though!
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My attitude is the same as my father's was although I was a step up (further along you might say), because I was "raised in the ideology" (I lived in the context). He merely decided to believe in it at some point. This is - we must be as completely gender-blind with and among children as we are completely color-blind (oblivious to racial differences) with and among them. In fact as far as knowledge and skill aquisition go race (and its incumbent language differences), religion, health and sleep play far far greater roles than does gender.
an anecdote
I remember my former wife and I discussing our daughter's clothing before going to the park/play-ground. My daughter presented herself to her mother for inspection as we were gathering our stuff to go out. My daughter was in a cute little-girl's dress (she was about four years old). It was one of those horrid little light colored short things in which any activity displays her little underpants (panties if you prefer). I was commuting about 80 miles a day (one way) to work; we both worked different shifts, so "family" outings were uncommon for us.
I remember being "shocked" that my daughter was dressed like this when she was headed for the play ground. My wife didn't get it; she didn't like it; we argued about it each time.
I wanted my daughter dressed in dark(ish) colored loose fitting pants and shirt. I wanted her to be free to hang upside down or stand on her head or climb up high if and when she wanted to with the same physical privacy or modesty (not to mention safety) that the boys had and like the boys did. She wanted my daughter to be the model of a little lady.
On one other occasion my daughter started to climb this quite high chain link fence. My wife freaked out and started to intervene ordering her to stop and get off of the fence as she was too young and small. I went over and took her off the fence then lifted her up as high as possible and placed her high up on the fence. I told my daughter that she could only climb this kind of fence if she could get back down again.
I stayed with her while she climbed down, praised her a lot for her accomplishment and put her back up there again for skill confirmation and then left her to it (we observed of course). My wife agreed that my daughter was now safer and a little more independent than she was before. The difference between us in our expectations for her was remarkable. A source of real contention. Informed nurture/nature debate still rages furiously on, no doubt, but my own experiences (fraternal and parental) combined with reading and discussion tell me that our outlook, attitudes, and desires are shaped by our families, and that genetics and gender only set very low-level and basic limits.
IMHO
Everyone one has the potential to be whatever they want to be and the potential to want to be anything they have the fundamental ability to be.
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Great story Donald. You sound like a fantastic dad not to mention having a common sense :) It is too bad more kids don't have fathers (and mothers) like you.
Your story made me smile. Some kids are just "climbers". I have one. She learned to climb out of her crib when she was 10 months. When she was 18 months old we were moving. There was a bed boxspring propped nearly vertical against the wall. I left for a moment and when I returned she was sitting at the top 6 feet above the floor! How she got there I'll never know. She's continued to climb everthing in sight since. I can say I've been concerned a few times but I realize I can't stop her from it. I can't tell you the number of times I've been admonished by other parents for letting her climb things at school functions and family outings.
Because of her interest her father enrolled her in a rock climbing class. He goes with her on the realrock excursions. He comes back with stories of how strangers come up to him and admonish him for endangering his daughter by letting her climb. It's too long a story to tell them her climbing history, so he just shrugs his shoulders.
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Thank you for your lovely compliment.
Some people just don't like things being out of place.
He could just tell his critics: (Bill Murry comes to mind her)
"oh noooo! Not to worry, things are just fine now that she has stopped falling off so much; And! From such heights?
or
Well Yeah! but at least she is not scaling the balconies in our highrise anymore. Her poor cat; it used go crazy; then one day, just like that, she starts climbing solo.
or
Oh!???... yeah!??? Well!! ....... "YOU" try getting the elevator cable greese out of her pajamas.
or
Oh my goodness nooooo, you've got it all wrong! You see those Marines over there? Well she's their ... oh sweety that's wonderful! Daddy is so proud of you!
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Interesting. Apparently, "overreact" is defined as males reacting more than females, because that's what the study shows (that males react twice as much as females). So the female level of reaction is apparently assumed to be to the "correct" degree, and the male reaction is deemed either normal, insufficient or "exaggerated" depending on how it compares to the female's reaction.
Interesting.
The whole point of the article? Further proof that males are wildly mal-programmed for the world we live in - which, of course, is intended for no other reason than to convert more men and women who read the article into feminists.
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...if they want to look at how stress affects men they ought to study why we kill ourselves five times more often than women. Nah, that would mean they'd have to DO something about it.
(Rams puts his tongue in his cheek) Wouldn't you be a little more stressed if you had to live with a woman 24 hours a day for nine months?
Aw c'mon! I'm kidding! I'm a kidder!
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by Anonymous User on Thursday December 06, @02:10PM EST (#5)
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I believe I've read that the womb IS more stressful for male fetuses than female fetuses. This apparently is due to the fact that the mother's antibodies "create a hostile environment" for a male fetus. The bath of estrogen that surrounds a male fetus, which relies on testosterone to develop correctly, also hinders development and could easily be construed as creating a stressful environment. I believe I've read these reasons are also responsible for more male miscarriages. If what I've read is true, the fetal environment IS more stressful for males than females. It only makes sense that more cortisol would be released if the environment is causing more stress. In light of this, it seems unfair, assumptive, and a bit of an "overreaction" to say that males overreact to stress, whether it's before or after birth.
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You're exactly right, anonymous.
This apparently is due to the fact that the mother's antibodies "create a hostile environment" for a male fetus.
So... going back to the chivalry debate... perhaps we should demand some retribution and/or leniency in our hositlity toward women for their bodies' detrimental effects on us in the womb?
OK, I'm kidding, too. Rams isn't the only one who does it. ;)
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But can't we draw from this that males fetuses would be more comfortable in a male body? should we not, then undertake some research to see how we can get the adult male body to accommodate childbirth?
I mean, wouldn't that help make the two sexes more alike? That IS what the feminists want, isn't it?
On the other hand, perhaps we should take the women to court in class action for creating a hostile living environment for all male children.
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I wouldn't want that in a Canadian court. A Canadian court would simply tie all that pre-partum stress back to the father anyway. Something, like,
-- you honor women find men hard to deal with even in the womb. No matter how warm and comfortable women try to make it for men the men get all upset anyway. There's no pleasing them your honor.
I agree with the petitioner(plaintive), give that infant male 30 days in the slammer for aggrivated assalt.
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From a logical positivist's perspective, Sarah Schmidt deserves a good flogging. Though her article is indeed trash, it is not atypical by the standards set forth by the daily papers.
On July 3 of this year, I had neurosurgery at the University of Washington's Hospital. I had a 'tumor' removed from my pituitary gland. The disorder is called Cushing's disease. Before the operation, my pituitary gland was producing an estimated 11 times more CORTISOL than normal. I had extreem hypertension, vertigo, no energy, and had gained an uncomely 50 lb's. After surgery, I've lost most all the excess weight and with the help of the University's Endocrinology Dept., my metabolism has returned to almost normal.
Now, I'm an "involutary expert" on CORTISOL.
Studies suggest that the overproduction of CORTISOL is somewhat more common in women and that patients for Cushing's Disease are more frequently women.
Sarah Schmidt could have contacted just about any endrocinologist to discover this bit of information, but she chose to be an irresponsible little shit. (Forgive my French, but it ryhmes with Schmidt)
Sincerely,
Marty Lee
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