A stereotype always has an aspect of truth to it, or it wouldn’t be a stereotype. I am talking about the biological basis behind behaviors that we all know about.It's not the shrunken brain, you know, it's the childcare. But you will have a shrunken brain.
Were there any research findings you were reluctant to include in your book because they could be used to bolster sexist thinking?
Any of this could be taken badly. I worried, for instance, that stuff about pregnancy and the mommy brain could be taken to mean that mothers shouldn’t go to work. The brain shrinks 8 percent during pregnancy and does not return to its former size until six months postpartum....
If women have superior verbal skills, why have they been subservient to men in almost all societies?
Because of pregnancy. Before birth control, in the 1700s and 1800s, middle-class women were pregnant between 17 and 22 times in their lifetimes. All these eons upon eons, while Socrates and all these guys were sitting around thinking up solutions to problems, women were feeding hungry mouths and wiping smelly behinds.
ADDED: Linguist Mark Liberman has been very critical of Ms. Brizendine.
Posts
27 comments:
As everyone now knows that childcare is a dangerous occupation best left to experts (see discussion of FASBOS below), the only proper solution to this problem is regulation by the state, combining breeding licenses with strict enforcement so that only those with brains sufficiently large enough to suffer shrinkage without discernable effect engage in this important activity.
Over at Language Log, this book has been discussed repeatedly, especially the unsupported claim that women talk nearly 3 times as much as men. Most research data shows either men talking slightly more or no significant difference in the amount of communication done. I remember Ann mentioned the discussions at Language Log before, but I think they need repeating:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/moveabletype/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=2&search=Brizendine
Also, I seriously cringed when I read Brizendine's ridiculous comment about placebos being cruel as some sort of excuse to not do clinical research herself (while she mostly cites studies that don't use a placebo). Before I read this interview, I thought she was just a misguided psychologist who was swayed by non-scientific anecdotes, but it looks like disdain for science is more of a theme than an anomaly.
I'd like to see her source for that "17 to 22 times" thing. Sounds like she's got them having one baby right after another.
Maybe if the middle-class women were hiring wet-nurses? I wouldn't rule that out.
But then, they wouldn't be feeding the hungry mouths and wiping the butts.
Bearing, I'd like to see more on that figure, too, but keep in mind, she's talking about pregnancies, not births.
They needed a study to find out women have smaller brains, and talk too much?
Sort of an odd number, though not so much if we're talking pregnancies. Well, but then again...didn't a lot of women die prematurely due to childbirth or complications thereof? Which could mean a significant proportion of their short lives was spent on raising their own kids (following childhoods often spent helping with younger siblings etc.), but militates against that being the average number of pregnancies, doesn't it? Interesting question.
This sort of speculation always makes me think of my maternal great-grandmother, pregnant 22 times (as the family lore has it), who raised just 12 children all the way to adulthood, here and in the Old Country. My mother once described her as the most nervous, distracted person she ever met.
No wonder.
I happen to have a fairly detailed geneology. My great, great, great grandmother helped populate Wisconsin, giving birth to 17 children, starting at age 18. For the first 20 years of child bearing, she appears to have had a baby every 16 months or so. The last 3 were about 2 years apart. I think to have hit 23, a woman would have to have started much younger than 18
Chickenlittle:
1) It was pregnancies, not neccessarily live births.
2) Many women did indeed start prior to the age of 18. It was not uncommon for fourteen year olds to be married.
My GG had her first at around 14 and her last--my grandmother, born 1901--in her 40s. Given nursing, sounds typical.
Am I the only one who really dislikes the term "chatterbox"? Espeically in such close proximity to the word "hormones"?
vh: oxhxyn
reader_iam:
Oh stop being so hysterical!
:}
Garage Mahal said...
"They needed a study to find out women have smaller brains, and talk too much?"
My, what an outstandingly liberal comment, Garage. You're a credit to your party.
In my experience, women--in general-- do indeed talk more. Sometimes a lot more. But so what? I'd also say that in general, men can be a bit too uncommunicative. Neither is better or worse than the other.
Also, I seriously cringed when I read Brizendine's ridiculous comment about placebos being cruel as some sort of excuse to not do clinical research herself (while she mostly cites studies that don't use a placebo).
She clearly states that she recognizes the importance of blind studies, but she would prefer not to do it herself. That's perfectly reasonable. (One can appreciate the importance of firefighting without being a firefighter.)
Before I read this interview, I thought she was just a misguided psychologist who was swayed by non-scientific anecdotes, but it looks like disdain for science is more of a theme than an anomaly.
UCSF has one of the best, if not the best, research medical institutions in the country. I know nothing of the author, or her book, but if she's a professor of neuropsychiatry at UCSF, I'll take her words at face value.
OK, Gahrie (lol): Maybe I was being too subtle and trying not to be sort of vulgar.
It's not that I'm offended,it's that I dislike it, as I said...because chatterbox next to "hormones" keeps making me think of another variation on the word "box."
And so on from there. And I'd just rather not go there, mentally, or to all the one-liners which keep popping, unbidden (and basically unapproved of), into my mind.
Use your imagination.
Has anyone noticed that the leap from one side of the comma splice to the other in this question is outright crazy: "If women have superior verbal skills, why have they been subservient to men in almost all societies?"
Assuming its truth for the sake of argument, what do superior verbal skills have to do with escaping subservience? There are a lot of dissident writers who end up political prisoners. And rarely was it the case that a troubador was a king.
Is Pete Sampras a brilliant orator? Does George W. Bush say "nucular"? Successful actors are rich, persuasive, appealing, charismatic, and beloved, and other people write their lines.
In what world do superior verbal skills guarantee financial success, political power, physical prowess, or knowing the right people?
Because it isn't ours.
Cedarford: Part of the reason Christianity is dying is that people are living.
Wherever did you get the idea that Christianity is dying? It may be all but defunct in Europe, but in the rest of the world it is thriving, more than making up for the losses on the European continent.
And as for the rest of your post, re the "holy zygote", etc, being laughable concepts to early Christians: wrong, again. Early Christians had a perception of "ensoulment" that roughly coincided with "quickening", the time when the mother first felt the child's movements in the womb. This idea was based on the primitive understanding of human reproduction at the time; the existence of human ova remained unknown for a long period after the sperm were identified. If early Christians had understood human reproduction the way we now do, they would've agreed with the ideas you regard as ridiculous.
Stereotypes, like cliches, persist because they have some truth to them. I know I talk a lot, especially to friends and family I never see because we live so far apart. But I also know women who aren't so chatty... the danger with stereotypes is that people use them to classify others without stopping to consider who may or may not fit it.
The late Sonny Liston, the great boxer, whose loss to Cassius Clay made Muhammed Ali a legend, would be about 70-75 years of age today.
He was one of 25 kids and he was said to be unsure of how old he was. I believe Liston was born and raised in the south. Imagine how much talking his mother did in raising 25 kids! Maybe being talkative is just a bio-occupational hazard for a woman.
one of 25 kids
Oh, my. That's TWO baseball starting line-ups, plus three on the bench for each, and an ump.
Wow.
Even if the stereotype about women being chatterboxes is true (which I think it is) - how is that a hinderance in today's information age society? Verbal skills are absolutely key - and I see many women pulling ahead in the corporate ranks because their communication skills are superb.
Don't forget you'll need coaches for each team.
Wouldn't those roles be filled by the parents (mom, dad, or, parental equivalents)? With Cousin Whoever, taking the role of third-base coach (etc.)?
I don't know about the big brain/small brain thing.
I do know that my father, a brilliant man of few spoken (but many written and read words) used to ocasionally remind me, "When your mouth is running, your brain stops working."
That might explain some things.
Shane, 1:23 pm: "Over at Language Log, this book has been discussed repeatedly, especially the unsupported claim that women talk nearly 3 times as much as men. Most research data shows either men talking slightly more or no significant difference in the amount of communication done. I remember Ann mentioned the discussions at Language Log before, but I think they need repeating: [Link]"
Cedarford, 5:13 pm: "t is intuitively obvious that women are simply geared to talk more than men - recent studies showing 3X more verbal activity than men[...]"
Shane, though I admire your patient devotion to truth and perseverance in reposting this fact-checking link, I don't think people are attracted to this topic because they have any serious interest in accurate measures of raw blather rates. The fact that logorrhea is discussed in terms of "chatterboxes" rather than bloviators or gas-baggers tells you something right off.
(Though to be charitable to Cedarford, from his context he may be referring to activity recorded by brain scans, and not to the "3X" factoid relayed by Brizendine that was pulled out of someone's ass somewhere along the chain of reference.)
altoid1306: "I know nothing of the author, or her book, but if she's a professor of neuropsychiatry at UCSF, I'll take her words at face value."
What a tool.
“And nothing existed like the "cult" of the Divine zygote where new sects of Christianity have proclaimed that a fetus at any stage is just as much a person, with a full soul, and just as entitled to all legal rights as an adult. For most of the span of Christianity this would have been laughed off by the devout as craziness.”
Except the cult of the divine zygote doesn’t believe this today. The arguments are simply not concerned with issues of “insoulment” but rather the scientifically correct origins of human life.
As far as the devout are concerned- well if the apostles and early Christians werent “devout” then who was? As a simple matter of history the Didache referenced both infanticide & abortion as intrinsic evils, and the church has always consistently held so.
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/didache.html
Now, if the point is that life was cheap through out most of human history – then point made. No need however to misrepresent consistent moral teaching and understanding. Life remains cheap today (even cheaper) – rather than women bearing children that died in infancy, sexual license and convenience is enough to compel their disposal in vitro.
As for women being chatterboxes, I find it both accurate and endearing.
Wherever did you get the idea that Christianity is dying? It may be all but defunct in Europe, but in the rest of the world it is thriving, more than making up for the losses on the European continent
The percentage of Americans that identify as Christian has also been declining over time.
Overall, Christianity is rapidly losing ground in the developed world, but gaining converts in the third world. Overall numbers of Christians, as a percentage of world population, are thus remaining relatively constant, although the wealth, longevity, and education level of the average Christian are declining.
The only religion that is really "thriving", at an international level, is Islam.
Thanks, Moira. I guess my mistake in formatting the link resulted in the post's point getting ignored by some.
I didn't originally mean to be as harsh as I sounded in my earlier comment towards Dr. Brizendine, but I just think that the comment about placebos was a terrible excuse to not do all research (it would only be a passable excuse if she was saying that she didn't do drug research), especially from faculty at "one of the best, if not the best, research medical institutions in the country."
Ann, thanks for posting to Mark Liberman's most recent post on the issue, which summarizes the robust criticism against one of the claims Brizendine's book.
Post a Comment