Domestic Violence and Early Childhood Gender Difference Learning?

Understanding the effects of Gender Differences in Emotional Expression

We’re going to explore how we learn to behave emotionally based on whether we are born female or male.
By the age of two, we generally have our emotional responses well perfected, influenced by the messages we’ve received.
Let’s dive into this fascinating topic.

Core Emotions:
There are four basic human emotions: happy, sad, frightened, and angry.
All other emotions, such as jealousy, rage, depression, and anxiety, are combinations or different intensities of these core emotions.
From a very early age, we receive specific messages about how to behave emotionally, which shapes how we express these emotions.

Gender-Specific Emotional Learning:
Girls and boys receive very different messages about emotional expression.
Girls are given permission to act frightened or sad; it’s considered acceptable and ladylike.
However, expressing anger is generally discouraged and seen as unladylike.
As a result, girls learn to substitute anger with fear or sadness, which can manifest as depression in adulthood.
On the other hand, boys are taught that expressing anger is manly and acceptable, but showing fear or sadness is seen as weak or sissy.
By the time boys are two, they have learned to act angry when they feel frightened or sad.

Impact on Adult Behaviour:
In adulthood, these early messages have significant impacts.
Women who have repressed anger over the years often experience depression. Scratch the surface of this depression, and you’ll find unexpressed anger.
For men, the repression of fear and sadness leads to increased anger and potential aggression. If you scratch the surface of a man’s anger, you’ll often find fear and sadness underneath.

Cycle of Emotional Miscommunication:
This cycle of emotional miscommunication can be particularly damaging in relationships.
Imagine a man who feels frightened or sad at work but expresses it as anger at home.
His partner, who may not be allowed to express anger, responds with fear or sadness, which in turn triggers more anger in him.
This cycle escalates, leading to increased levels of violence and aggression in men and passive or depressed behaviour in women.

Consequences of Repressed Emotions:
Over time, this repression of emotions leads to significant consequences.
Many violent men report feeling out of control and increasingly dangerous as they get older.
Women in violent relationships often say that the violence escalates over time.
This cycle of escalating violence and aggression is like a thermonuclear device waiting to go off.

Breaking the Cycle:
To break this cycle, both men and women need to be given permission to express the full range of human emotions assertively. This means communicating anger when you’re angry, but not abusively, and expressing fear, sadness, and happiness appropriately. Clear and assertive communication of emotions is essential for meeting our emotional needs.

Conclusion:
In conclusion, the way we learn to express emotions based on gender has profound impacts on our behaviour and relationships.
By recognizing and addressing these patterns, we can work towards healthier emotional expression and better meet our needs.
We hope this information has provided some valuable insights.

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