Are girls inherently more emotional?
Are girls inherently more able to express emotions?
Why don't boys seem to be able to express their emotions in words?
Are these "innate"?
Or is it an acquired influence?
Psychologists have gradually confirmed through different experiments that regardless of the innate temperament of infants and young children, although the baby has not yet appeared a clear "gender temperament", the main caregiver has different emotional expression and dialogue response tendencies because of the baby's gender.
In 1989, psychologist Malatesta et al. found that after the baby was born, the mother would show more and more intense facial expressions to the baby girl, even if the facial expressions of the newborn babies of different genders were no different. By the end of the first year, baby girls, than boys, will gradually begin to show more diverse and intense emotions. In this study, we can see that the innate emotional expression of infants is gender-free, because the main caregiver has different emotional responses to infants of different genders, which gradually affects the child's emotional expression.
The emotional development of young children is actually a complex dialectical process, which is not only the result of individual changes within infants and young children, but learns through interaction with adults. When parents laugh, infants and young children will also imitate the corresponding emotions of their parents. In addition to body language, language is also very critical.
Studies have found that the way mothers tell their children about past experiences and stories will change to their children's internal thinking patterns for dealing with emotions. When the mother tells the child about a past event, the mother will naturally have an important emotion, an ignored emotion, and this process affects the infant's decision on what is an important emotion and what is not.
Researchers have found that although there is no difference in the emotional vocabulary commonly used by boys and girls, mothers and daughters use more "sad" words; while mothers and sons use more "angry" words; the study also found that children of different genders have no difference in emotional vocabulary. The difference in vocabulary is actually not large, the key is that there is a gender difference in the way and frequency of vocabulary is used.
Why do girls deal with sad emotions more easily?
For the emotion of "sadness", the mother will talk to the girl in a more "guiding" way, such as "you can think in a different way" and often pat her or comfort her at the moment of emotion. When facing boys, mothers often use the "problem" method to discuss sad emotions, and are more inclined to "why sad", which actually gives boys less opportunities to deal with sad emotions directly. Perhaps it is because of the subconscious difference in parenting styles, resulting in differences in the way boys and girls deal with sad emotions.
Can boys be afraid?
In contrast to girls, mothers typically take the time to help boys deal with their fears by stating, clarifying and guiding. This may be related to the mother's gender stereotype that boys should be brave and should not be afraid of anything, afraid of inappropriate behavior for boys. The boy will take the initiative to state "afraid of the dark", "afraid of dogs", "afraid of the fierce aunt" and "afraid of thunder", etc., while the mother's reaction to him is "incredible and confused", wanting to clarify and confirm the cause of his fear, and will also guide the boy to adjust to the fear situation to help him learn to overcome the psychological phenomenon of fear.
For girls, the mother is more able to accept the girl's fear, will not ask, will only give oral or physical comfort, and in the study of scholars found that when discussing the fear of emotion, the girl's emotional vocabulary will be more than the boy, it seems that the mother is more receptive to the girl's fear experience of talking more.
The process of socialization is often subtle and dark, and people are in it without knowing it. Even though we often attribute certain appearances naturally to gender, "Ah, because he's a boy" or "that's because she's a girl." Yet these studies tell us that even in infancy, the way we express our emotions is influenced by the gender perceptions of this society.