[quote author=Rx]
I don't want to take this away from all of the men out there who identify with this pattern but I don't think you can apply it to one gender either.
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Hi Rx,
Indeed, men do not have exclusive right on covert depression. From clinical observations of therapists like Terrence Real, men appear to occupy a statistically higher percentage of the covert depression spectrum. A possible reason explaining this observation lies in the social and cultural forces shaping the development of men. In his book "I don't Want to Talk About It", Real cites multiple studies to provide evidence for this claim.
[quote author=I don't Want to Talk About It]
Current research makes it clear that a vulnerability to depression is most probably an inherited biological condition. Any boy or girl, given the right mix of chromosomes , will have a susceptibility to this disease. But in the majority of cases, biological vulnerability alone is not enough to bring about the disorder. It is the collision of inherited vulnerability with psychological injury that produces depression. And it is here that issues of gender come into play.
The traditional socialization of boys and girls hurts them both, each in particular, complementary ways. Girls, and later women, tend to internalize pain. They blame themselves and draw distress into themselves. Boys, and later men, tend to externalize pain; they are more likely to feel victimized by others and to discharge distress through action. Hospitalized male psychiatric patients far outnumber female patients in their rate of violent incidents; women outnumber men in self-mutilation. In mild and severe forms, externalizing in men and internalizing in women represent troubling tendencies in both sexes, inhibiting the capacity of each for true relatedness. A depressed woman’s internalization of pain weakens her and hampers her capacity for direct communication. A depressed man’s tendency to extrude pain often does more than simply impede his capacity for intimacy. It may render him psychologically dangerous. Too often, the wounded boy grows up to become a wounding man, inflicting upon those closest to him the very distress he refuses to acknowledge within himself. Depression in men, unless it is dealt with, tends to be passed along.
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Some social study results
[quote author=I don't Want to Talk About It]
We begin sending boys the message that they have fewer emotional needs than girls in the very first moments of life. One research team studied parents’ responses to newborns in the first twenty-four hours after delivery. The researchers selected new-borns that matched in weight, length, alertness, and strength, so that there were no significant differences between boys and girls. Nevertheless, both mothers and fathers perceived newborn sons as: “more alert, stronger, larger featured, more coordinated, and firmer.” They saw baby daughters as “less attentive, weaker, finer featured, less coordinated, softer, smaller, more fragile and prettier .”
In a classic study in the field of gender research , John and Sandra Cundry videotaped the reactions of a nine-month-old infant to various stimuli: a teddy bear, a jack-in-the-box, a buzzer, and a doll. They played the ten-minute tape for 204 male and female adults who were asked to interpret what they had seen. Some were told the baby was male, others in the group were told it was female. The adult subjects saw the crying “girl” baby as frightened, but when they thought they were watching a boy , they described “him” as angry. “ If you think your child is angry ,” the authors ask, “would you treat ‘him’ differently than if you think ‘she’ is afraid? … It would seem reasonable to assume that a child who is thought to be afraid is held and cuddled more than a child who is thought to be angry.”
Such research on parental response teaches us that we see what we expect to see— and we react to what we see. Researcher Jeanne Block used extensive cross-cultural data to suggest a number of important differences in the ways parents treat boys and girls. Block found that both mothers and fathers stressed achievement and competition in their sons, encouraged boys to control their emotions, emphasized independence, and developed a tendency to punish boys. Fathers in particular were stricter with boys, and mothers revealed concern that their sons conform to external standards. Both parents characterized their relationship to their daughters as warmer and physically closer than with their sons. They expressed greater confidence in girls’ truthfulness and encouraged girls’ introspection. At the same time, mothers were appreciably more restrictive with girls, monitoring them more closely than their sons.
Researcher Beverly Fagot confirmed many of Block’s observations in a study that examined parents’ responses to stereotypical versus unconventional play in their children. Fagot found that parents gave significantly more favorable responses when their children conformed to “same-sex preferred” behavior and actively discouraged “cross-sex preferred” behavior. Girls, for example , elicited negative responses from their parents when engaged in large motor activities— running, jumping, throwing— and positive responses when they asked for help. Boys were encouraged to play by themselves and discouraged from staying close to the parent. Boys were praised for independent accomplishments and tacitly dissuaded from helping the parents with chores.
One of the most interesting findings is that these parents, all of whom demonstrated significant force in shaping their children’s conformity saw themselves unequivocally as treating their sons and daughters alike. The discrepancy between the parents’ own report of even -handed treatment of both sexes and the parents’ actual behavior was vast. With remarkable understatement, Fagot concludes: “These data suggest that parents are not fully aware of the methods they use to socialize their young children.”
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There are more studies like this conducted at other age levels which display similar trends. Real's conclusion from the data
[quote author=I don't Want to Talk About It]
Little boys and little girls start off with similar psychological profiles. They are equally emotional, expressive, and dependent, equally desirous of physical affection. At the youngest ages, both boys and girls are more like a stereotypical girl. If any differences exist, little boys are, in fact, slightly more sensitive and expressive than little girls. They cry more easily , seem more easily frustrated , appear more upset when a caregiver leaves the room.
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Gradually both boys and girls grow into their respective socially mandated gender roles.
[quote author=I don't Want to Talk About It]
Until the age of four or five, both boys and girls rest comfortably in what one researcher has called “ the expressive-affiliative mode. ” Studies indicate that girls are permitted to remain in that mode while boys are subtly— or forcibly—pushed out of it.
Australian sociologist Bob Connell argues that bland-sounding sociological terms like “gender role acquisition” do not convey the emotional experience of those who are the ones being pushed. In his yearlong study of elementary-school boys, Connel encountered a profound impetus not referenced in earlier research—violence. The conventional view of socialization portrays boys as only too willing to “learn” the male role. All of the emphasis has been on those unfortunate few who lacked fathers or other “male role models” to mimic. No one thought to question the assumption that boys’ squeeze into manhood was anything but eager. The results of his field study convinced Connel that the usual picture of boys hungrily digesting “the masculine role” only works “by playing down conflict and ignoring violence.” Not all boys march off so willingly into manhood. Whether by active violation or passive nonresponsiveness, the rituals by which boys are taught to conform are often unpleasant.
Connel writes: “‘Agencies of socialization’ cannot produce mechanical effects in a growing person. What they do is invite the child to participate in social practice on given terms. The invitation may be, and often is, coercive— accompanied by heavy pressure to accept and no mention of an alternative.” “Mama’s boy,” “faggot,”“pussy,”“wimp”— no boy I know of has escaped the experience of such ridicule. No man I have treated has fully eluded the taste of the lash one receives if one dares not accept masculinity’s “invitation.”
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This leads to the question of self-view - what makes a man .. a "man" or woman a "woman"?
[quote author=I don't Want to Talk About It]
For most boys, the achievement of masculine identity is not an acquisition so much as a disavowal. When researchers asked girls and women to define what it means to be feminine, the girls answered with positive language: to be compassionate, to be connected, to care about others.
Boys and men, on the other hand, when asked to describe masculinity, predominantly responded with double negatives. Boys and men did not talk about being strong so much as about not being weak . They do not list independence so much as not being dependent. They did not speak about being close to their fathers so much as about pulling away from their mothers. In short, being a man generally means not being a woman. As a result, boys’ acquisition of gender is a negative achievement. Their developing sense of their own masculinity is not, as in most other forms of identity development, a steady movement toward something valued so much as a repulsion from something devalued. Masculine identity development turns out to be not a process of development at all but rather a process of elimination, a successive unfolding of loss. Along with whatever genetic proclivities one might inherit, it is this loss that lays the foundation for depression later in men’s lives.
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