The Female Brain by Louann Md Brizendine Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Female Brain
Book Review: She is claiming urban myths as fact. Very unprofessional and misleading.
Summary: 1 Stars
What she got wrong is a lot. Here is just a glimpse: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/09/24/sex_on_the_brain/
I recommend the entire article, as well as doing more research. Here is a snippet:
``Most studies reported either that men talked more than women, either overall or in some circumstances, or that there was no difference between the genders in amount of talk." The research since that review, including counts from my own research, follows the same pattern.
I haven't been able to find any scientific studies that reliably count the entire daily word usage of a reasonable sample of men and women. But based on the research I've read and conducted, I'm willing to make a bet about what such a study would show. Whatever the average female vs. male difference turns out to be, it will be small compared to the variation among women and among men; and there will also be big differences, for any given individual, from one social setting to another.
Unfortunately, this is just one of several cases in recent books on sex and neuroscience where striking numbers turn out to be without apparent empirical support. On page 36 of ``The Female Brain," Brizendine writes that ``Girls speak faster on average-250 words per minute versus 125 for typical males." In support of this assertion, her endnotes cite Bruce P. Ryan, ``Speaking rate, conversational speech acts, interruption, and linguistic complexity of 20 pre-school stuttering and non-stuttering children and their mothers," Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 14(1), pp. 25-51 (2000). Alas, in Ryan's paper, you won't find the 250 vs. 125 numbers, and in fact, he gives no data at all that breaks down speaking rates by sex.
The truth is out there, however, in many studies over the years that do give figures for speaking rates of females and males of various ages. The most recent data comes from a paper presented at a conference this month, in which Jiahong Yuan, Chris Cieri, and I looked at various measures of speaking rate in thousands of English and Chinese telephone conversations. We found that in both languages, the males spoke about 2 percent faster, on average, than the females. This effect was small compared to the variation among female or male speakers, and it was also small relative to the effect of situational factors. For example, people talking with family or friends spoke about 10 percent faster than people talking with strangers.
These numbers might be unrepresentative or otherwise mistaken, but we've documented the procedures we used and the data we analyzed. And we used conversations that have been published as digital audio, along with time-aligned transcripts and demographic data for the speakers, so others can check our work if they want to.
This ability to check or replicate research is central to scientific progress. It doesn't stop people from disagreeing about facts and theories, but it helps organize the arguments and keep them on track.
The authors of self-help works, as a group, don't seem to have any particular standards of accuracy. Journalists, meanwhile, generally take them at their word in reviews and interviews, and publishers are happy as long as the books sell well.
It's a shame to see this approach to the facts spreading into the growing genre of books about the neuroscience of sex differences, where the facts can have real consequences.
Book Review: Scientific Truth vs. Political Correctness
Summary: 4 Stars
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.
Book Review: verygood
Summary: 5 Stars
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. Book Review: Answers the age-old question: What do women want?
Summary: 5 Stars
I have recommended this book to every female in my life. It answers so many questions I have had about myself and my body. Louann Brizendine even answers questions I didn't know I had. Everything is very well explained and has anecdotal examples of how and why women are the way they are. Excellent book. If you are on the fence, buy it. You won't regret it.Book Review: highly informative
Summary: 4 Stars
Excellent information, thoroughly researched, acessible to the layman. I learned so much about the reasons behind women's motivation and behavior. Fascinating. I especially found useful the chapter about the "mommy brain" and as a high school English teacher, the chapter on the teen brain. I recommend to all women of all ages who sometimes question their hormonal swings. Very empowering and the author supports with a lifetime of research. The only flaw, but minor, is some redundancy.