3/28/01
Gendered Close Relationships
There are notable differences in the ways women and men, in general, approach close relationships.
Male Deficit Model
The male deficit model maintains that men are not adept at intimacy because they are less interested and/or able than women to disclose emotions, reveal personal information and engage in communication about intimate topics. The solution recommended is for men to overcome masculine socialization by getting in touch with their feelings and learning to communicate openly and expressively.
Personal disclosures are the crux of intimacy; women have more intimate relationships than men; boys' friendships lack the emotional depth of girls' friendships, and males focus on activities to avoid intimacy.
Another theory Alternate paths model - The alternate paths model agrees with the male deficit model that gendered socialization is the root of differences in women's and men's typical styles of interacting.It departs from the deficit model, however, in important ways.
First the alternate paths viewpoint does not presume that men lack feelings and emotional depth,or that relationships and feelings are unimportant in men's lives. Rather, this explanation suggests that masculine socialization constrains men's comfort in verbally expressing some feelings and, further, that it limits men's opportunities to practice emotional talk.
A second important distinction is that the alternate paths model argues that men do express closeness in ways that they value and understand - ways that may differ from those of feminine individuals but that are nonetheless valid.
Scott Swain - men's perceptions of their close friendships. He discovered that men develop a closeness "in the doing" - men engage in activities not as a substitute for intimacy, but, in fact, as an alternate path to closeness.
Men engage in what he calls "covert intimacy." These include joking, engaging in friendly competition, razzing, and being
together in comfortable companionship. Affection is expressed in punching and backslapping, shaking hands.
Men do not generally express intimacy through self-disclosure. Also, There is also increasing evidence that talking about problems may be less effective than diversionary activities in relieving men's stress and enhancing their feelings of closeness.
Differences Between Women's and Men's Friendships
First, Men do things together as the centrality of their friendship. For women being and talking together is the essence of close,personal relationships. Paul
Wright says men's friendships are "side by side." Women's friendship's are "face to face."
Second, Talk between women friends tends to be expressive and disclosive, focusing on details of personal lives, people, relationships, and feelings; talk in men's friendships generally revolves around less personal topics such as sports, events, money, music, and politics.
Third, in general, men assume a friendship's value and seldom discuss it, while women are likely to talk about the dynamics of their relationship.
Fourth, women's friendships generally appear to be broader in scope than those of men. Therefore, these friendships usually are longer lasting and can endure geographic separations.
Because women are socialized to be attentive, supportive, and caring, certain problems may arise in their relationships. Clinicians have pointed out that feminine norms of communication make it difficult for women to deal with feelings of envy and competition. It is not that women do not experience envy and competitiveness but rather that they think it's wrong to have such feelings. Women may repress or avoid talking about envy and competitiveness and thus create barriers and distance. It's also the case that women may find it difficult to override socialization's message that they are supposed to be constantly available and caring. Thus, when women lack the time or energy required to nurture others, they may feel guilty and self-critical.
Gendered Romantic Relationships
The cultural script:
Women should be attracted to men, and men should be attracted to women.
More feminine women and more masculine men are desirable.
Men should initiate, plan and direct activities and have greater power within the relationship.
Women should facilitate conversation, generally defer to men, but control sexual behavior.
Men should excel in status, height, weight, age, education and earning money.
Women should assume primary responsibility of the relationship, the home, and the children.
The conventional heterosexual dating script calls for women to be passive and men to takeinitiative. Although many people, especially women, claim not to believe in these gender stereotypes, research suggests that most heterosexuals conform to them.
There are exceptional to compliance with cultural scripts. Androgynous individuals.
Gendered power dynamics - Generally, both women and men believe that men should be more powerful, and this varies only slightly when a female partner's job equals a male's in prestige and salary. Egalitarian relationships become more traditional with the birth of a child.
Gender and Housework: Who does What?
When it comes to housework, research consistently shows that wives spend more time on these chores than husbands do - as much as five times more hours per week. Apart from the amount of time wives and husbands spend on housework, there are also differences in the kind of work they do around the house. Wives usually do most of the daily chores, such as cleaning and cooking. Men do less regular and less repetitive chores. Wives experience more time constraints because of the types of household chores they do, whereas husbands have more control over when they will do their chores. Wives have less leisure time.
There is no denying that many couples today do strive to be more egalitarian, especially early on in their marriages, with a more equal division of labor between spouses. However, even couples who wish to be egalitarian often find that their effort toward an equal division of labor breaks down they become parents.
Caregiving - Ralph LaRossa, "Fatherhood and Social Change"- There is an asynchrony (doesn't fit)
between the culture and conduct of fatherhood.
Culture of fatherhood (specifically the shared norms, values, and beliefs surrounding men's parenting) and there is the conduct of fatherhood (what fathers do, their paternal behaviors)
Fathers' levels of engagement, accessibility and responsibility were only a fraction of the mothers;and that fathers tended to spend a greater part of their care giving time playing with their children. (Micheal Lamb)
Moreover, he found that the kinds of play that fathers were likely to be involved in were the kinds of activities that could be carried out at a secondary (semi- involved) level of attention (example, watching television) Primary and secondary time (terms that LaRossa's uses)
Fathers have internalized the idea that they should be more involved with their children, but on another level of consciousness they do not find the idea all that attractive.
The consequences of the asynchrony between the comparatively speaking "modern" culture of fatherhood and the "less modern" or "traditional" conduct of fatherhood are the emergence of the technically present but functionally absent father (there in body but not spirit), and increase in marital conflict in childbearing and child-rearing families, and a greater number of fathers, especially in the middle class, who feel ambivalent and guilty about their performance as fathers.
Violence in Families and Intimate Relationships
July, 2000 National Institute of Justice, drawing on a population that was 99% heterosexual,found that 25% of women and 8% of men, were victims of an abusive relationship sometime in their lives.
The official statistics probably underestimate the problem.
About 12% of adult intimates experience at least one incident of physical abuse at the hands of their partners.
Straus's findings suggest that far from being a one-sided attack, partner abuse is usually mutual abuse, an exchange of physical and psychological abuse between partners.
Some researchers have cited findings that appear to show that women assault their male partners as much as men assault women. Women do report using violence against their husbands or boyfriends at about the same or even a slightly or even a slightly higher rate than men report using violence against their wives or girlfriends.
However, what does further digging into the research show? (See Jack C. Straton, "The Myth of the 'Battered Husband Syndrome'") These are the criticisms of work by Strauss and Steinmetz:
Researchers who have identified equal amounts of battering used the "Conflict Tactics Scale" which doesn't discriminate between the intent of the act or the effect of the act. For example in the CTS, there is no difference between a slap that stings ands a punch that causes permanent injury. There is no difference between a woman pushing a man in self-defense to a man pushing a woman down the stairs. There is no difference between a violent who defends her daughter against the father.
The extent of the violence - these studies take a single year rather than a looking over time.
Underreporting of the extent of the violence perpretrated by men. When both partners are interviewed independently, there is great discrepancy. Men tend to underreport and minimize the extent of the violence.
Other criticismThe surveys exclude incidents of violence that occur after separation and divorce, yet these
account for 75.9% of spouse-on-spouse assaults, with a male perpetrator 93% of the time.
The CTS does not include sexual assault as a category although more women are raped by their husbands than beaten only.
Police and court records persistently indicate that women are 90 to 95 percent of the victims of reported assaults.
There is a myth that men don't report the abuse because of shame, etc. But the U.S. National Crime Surveys shows that men who are assaulted by their spouses actually call the police more often than women who were assaulted by their spouses.
87% of men murdered in the U.S. are killed by other men. 3% of male homicide victims are killed by wives, ex-wives or girlfriends. About one third of female homicide victims are killed by husbands, ex-husbands, or boyfriends.
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