One factor which *is* biological, and may or may not be relevant: it's been recently proven that boys and men have much greater disconnects between the two sides of the brain than girls and women do. If a man does a task which involves right-brain activity, while under a CAT scan, his right brain will show usage and his left brain won't; if he does a left-brain task, his left brain will show activity and his right brain won't. Give a woman the same tasks, and in each case, there will be a *little* more activity on the expected side of the brain, but a fair amount on both sides. It's believed that the reason for this is that boys' left brains develop more slowly during the prenatal and infancy periods (which is why boys tend to talk later than girls, on average), and therefore when the connections between the sides are being woven, one side of theirs isn't quite ready yet
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How much of that is based on how even tiny infants are trained and played with and talked to?
I don't doubt there are some real, biological causes for male & female behaviors. But I have to question any study about it... because we don't have (and aren't going to get, I imagine) any gender-role-free setting for the studies.
I'm not disagreeing with the right/left brain mixing analysis, though; women are innately multitaskers. Anyone who's tried to simultaneously talk on the phone to the credit union while making a peanut-butter sandwich for the six-year-old and breastfeeding a three-month-old can believe our brains are made to absorb & mix data in several different ways at once. I'm just not sure how much men's *not* doing this is biological, and how much is just that their biology doesn't directly line them up for those cultural tasks.
Well, some of the information about later right-brain development in boys is fetal; I have a hard time believing that how they are treated in the womb matters that much. But yeah, we can't tell *how* much is that, and how much comes later, and is reinforced by different treatment.
I call Bullshit (politely)! If there is one thing I've learned over the past 30 years (i.e. since I became old enough to be aware of the issue), it's that I can't multitask worth a good goddamn. This is, in fact, one of the major things that went into my decision not to have children, because I KNOW how crazy it makes me to have people clamoring at me to do three or four things at once -- I normally describe it as "having a very short interruption stack". Too much input, and I go up like Vesuvius and start yelling at people to LET ME FINISH ONE THING FORGHODSAKE!
My boyfriend is much better at multitasking than I am, as are a number of other men I've known. I have some coping strategies that help me to a certain extent, but they have limits -- and I wouldn't have them at all if I weren't so acutely aware of the problem. "Innately", my right hind foot.
Women are innately fertile as well... except for the ones who aren't. I don't mean "every single woman on the planet can multitask well" or even "a given woman will multitask better than most men she knows." Just that the biology pushes that way... women who could not pay attention to small kids and accomplish household tasks at the same time, tended not to have kids that survived to adulthood
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Okay, I think we're arguing over connotations. To me, "innately" in this context implies "without exception"; I wouldn't have said it that way, but I'm having a problem articulating how I would say it. "More likely than men to be strong multitaskers", perhaps? That does square with my observations -- most of the people I know who are amazingly skilled at multitasking are indeed female.
Seems to be a bit stronger than a mere frequency statement.
I think elfwreck is saying that there are underlying reasons for women to be able to multitask that don't apply to men. Of course, just because you can create a Darwinian story why a trait should be inherent doesn't mean it is. ;-)
I pulled it out of Michael Gurian's _The Wonder of Boys," and have not read the original study. If you go to the Gurian, though, I think he gives enough information to be able to find it.
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I don't doubt there are some real, biological causes for male & female behaviors. But I have to question any study about it... because we don't have (and aren't going to get, I imagine) any gender-role-free setting for the studies.
I'm not disagreeing with the right/left brain mixing analysis, though; women are innately multitaskers. Anyone who's tried to simultaneously talk on the phone to the credit union while making a peanut-butter sandwich for the six-year-old and breastfeeding a three-month-old can believe our brains are made to absorb & mix data in several different ways at once. I'm just not sure how much men's *not* doing this is biological, and how much is just that their biology doesn't directly line them up for those cultural tasks.
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I call Bullshit (politely)! If there is one thing I've learned over the past 30 years (i.e. since I became old enough to be aware of the issue), it's that I can't multitask worth a good goddamn. This is, in fact, one of the major things that went into my decision not to have children, because I KNOW how crazy it makes me to have people clamoring at me to do three or four things at once -- I normally describe it as "having a very short interruption stack". Too much input, and I go up like Vesuvius and start yelling at people to LET ME FINISH ONE THING FORGHODSAKE!
My boyfriend is much better at multitasking than I am, as are a number of other men I've known. I have some coping strategies that help me to a certain extent, but they have limits -- and I wouldn't have them at all if I weren't so acutely aware of the problem. "Innately", my right hind foot.
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I think elfwreck is saying that there are underlying reasons for women to be able to multitask that don't apply to men. Of course, just because you can create a Darwinian story why a trait should be inherent doesn't mean it is. ;-)
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