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“Boys grow up in a world inhabited by a narrower range of emotions”

―Dr. June Gruber and Dr. Jessica Borelli

In a study examining conversations between mothers and young children, mothers interacting with daughters employed emotion vocabulary of greater density and depth, whereas conversations with sons tended to focus primarily on a single emotion(anger)

Regardless of whether gender differences in adult behaviour arise from conscious or unconscious psychological processes, one thing is clear: Boys grow up in a world inhabited by a narrower range of emotions, one in which their experiences of anger are noticed, inferred, and potentially even cultivated. This leaves other emotions, particularly the more vulnerable emotions sorely ignored or missing in their growing minds.

This is all the more concerning given that research from Harvard Medical School shows that boys are in fact more emotionally expressive than girls. This begins as early as infancy and lasts through early childhood. So it is possible that boys might actually begin with at least comparable, if not more, intensity and range of emotional expressions. This suggests that something is happening in these early years when children are the most receptive to messages their parents give them about emotion displays, that might very well have a longer-term impact on their emotional development.

CREDIT: SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN