The Female Brain | Louann Brizendine

The Female Brain | Louann Brizendine | Scientific Truth vs. Political Correctness

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The Female Brain

	The Female Brain Louann Brizendine Broadway, 2007 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 120 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

verygood

this book is very well written. it addresses many of the major issues surrounding the interaction of the endocrinological and neurological systems. this is a fantastic weekend read. i think that men and women alike will appreciate much of the discussion and conclusions in this book, maybe more so the men. very good book, certainly not a must read for professionals, but excellent for men trying to understand women or for women exploring possible influences to their thinking and behavior.

Scientific Truth vs. Political Correctness

Dr. Brizendine admits, "In writing this book I have struggled with two voices in my head - one is the scientific truth, the other is political correctness. I have chosen to emphasize scientific truth over political correctness even though scientific truths may not always be welcome." It is rare that anyone who is in favor of political correctness openly admits that it conflicts with scientific truth. It is also interesting that she says she has "chosen" scientific truth; this statement implies that it was a choice she had to consider.

At no point in the book does Dr. Brizendine draw politically incorrect conclusions from the scientific data, even when they seem inevitable. She verifies at length that the moodiness and changeability men notice in women is not only real, but neurochemically based. She tap-dances around the inevitable mention of Lawrence Summers' being forced to resign from the presidency of Harvard for mentioning that men more frequently show scientific ability than women do by explaining that it isn't that women can't do math and science, it's just that those things require working alone, and women's hormones make working on their own without constant feedback and guidance from others intolerable for them. (Personally, I'm a woman and a loner, and the idea of working with other people makes me want to jump off a building.) Also, in discussing how women choose men who will be good providers as mates, she says, "Though single motherhood has become fashionable among some sets of modern women, it remains to be seen how well this model will succeed." This is disingenuous; a few minutes of research would have shown her that it has already been seen how well this model will succeed, and that is not very well at all. Children with absent fathers have a far higher incidence of delinquency, behavioral problems, mood disorders, and academic trouble.

Another example comes in the discussion of mothers of infants. Dr. Brizendine reveals that the feelings of withdrawal new mothers feel when they are separated from their babies are hormonally based, and admits that when she herself went back to work when her son was only five months old, she "was a wreck on most days". That is, not only are working mothers of infants not being very good mothers, they're also not being very good workers. Naturally she doesn't suggest that maybe, just maybe mothers should at least wait until their children are past babyhood before skipping back to the office, not even when she goes on to detail the deleterious physical effect on the "trust and security circuits" in the brains of children whose mothers are inattentive, an effect that lasts for a lifetime, nor when she details the behavioral troubles exhibited by the children of mothers who work full-time. Instead, she tries to claim that having someone else take care of your children is okay because female monkeys sometimes leave their babies with other monkeys. What she glosses over is that these other monkeys are the babies' aunts or grandmothers - relatives with a genetic motivation to take good care of the babies. So yes, if there's a grandmother or aunt or other close relative to babysit your baby while you work, that will work well. But many of us don't live that near relatives who are willing to babysit, and dumping your toddlers off at daycare to be raised by strangers making minimum wage isn't remotely the same thing.

However, for Dr. Brizendine, simply admitting that the differences between men and women are biologically based and not social constructs was probably going frighteningly far, and for that, she deserves credit.

The book verifies that boys are not only larger, but also more aggressive, more disruptive, and less mentally mature than girls of the same age, but doesn't follow through to the obvious politically incorrect conclusion that maybe co-education isn't such a great idea. Hey, why not lock up a bunch of helpless little girls with unsocialized children who are larger, stronger, more aggressive, less mature and less self-controlled than they are? Even when she explains that teenage girls spend hours in the bathroom together because "It's the only private place at school we can go to *talk*!", the author does not seem to notice that she is building a case against co-education.

One of the most intriguing passages in this book was when the author explained that the proverbial "fight or flight" response is actually the male response to danger; females, prevented by their smaller size or by the need to protect their young from fighting or flying, are more apt to respond with "tend or befriend". She cites the example of a teenage girl she knew, Elana, whose best friend started insulting another girl who Elana had once been friends with. Even though Elana didn't like this behavior, she meekly let it pass without a word of protest because she was too frightened of losing the friendship. According to Dr. Brizendine, a great deal of female behavior is motivated by this fear of loss of a relationship. This doesn't speak well for women's ability to stand up for their friends or fight for a principle in the face of opposition, but, well, that's why we have men.

For the most part, the science in this book is pretty solid, but there are a couple of areas where Dr. Brizendine accepted common wisdom rather than examining it. For example, there is a chapter detailing the hormonal changes that allegedly explain turbulent adolescent behavior, an idea that has gained widespread acceptance in the media and in water-cooler conversations. The problem is, the entire concept of adolescence, as well as the notion that this is a time of inevitable stormy emotion and behavior, didn't exist until the 20th century and is peculiar to the industrialized West. The turbulence is caused by the artificial prolonging of childhood into the years when humans should be working and starting a family, not by hormones. Try expecting someone in his or her thirties to follow rules made for children and see if the result isn't some storminess.

Another problem area was when Dr. Brizendine tried to prove that men are virtually incapable of noticing changes in other peoples' expression. According to her, their brains just don't register it, whereas women's do, and this is where we get the idea of women's intuition. Unfortunately for her, I just read a book (Everyday Mind Reading: Understanding What Other People Think and Feel) that thoroughly debunks the idea of women's superior intuition. In fact, men are just as adept as reading people's faces as women. Which didn't surprise me; if men were really as inept at this as Dr. Brizendine claimed, novels written by men would be devoid of mention of characters' expressions, and no male spy would last for more than a day before getting himself killed.

There is a regrettably short appendix about sexual orientation, which verifies the common belief that Lesbians are more likely to display masculine characteristics than straight women. According to the book, prenatal exposure to testosterone is one of the causes of both homosexuality and unconventional gender behavior in women.

The blurb claims that men who read this book will "develop a serious case of brain envy". I doubt that; I'm a woman, and this book made me devoutly wish I could get a retroactive sex change operation.

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Aside from the penchant for Male Bashing...

As a practicing clinical psychologist there is only one major objection I have to this book; the male bashing. "The Female Brain" (Paperback)by Dr. Louann Brizendine is otherwise a useful for tool for the lay person. It is very readable and highlights some of the issues and concerns many of us should be considering in our relationships.
It essentially comes down to this. Brizendine says there are real differences between the sexes and these differences are in some ways connected to the endocrine system (hormones) that operate differently through the lifespan in men and women. By becoming more aware of these differences one is armed to think differently and approach problem solving differently because of a hightened respect for the sexually based differences. While I have no problem with her as a female advocate she fails herself and the reader by allowing male bashing to sneak into what could otherwise be, academic objections withstanding, a useful icebraker for real discussion and understanding. Perhaps an edited version with more discipline is in order but I would still recommend exposure to her work as an awareness enhancement tool.

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