Gender Differences…One
Perspective
Until
the past few decades, little attention was paid to gender as a factor
in grief and grieving. "Normal"
grief was assumed to incorporate certain elements (mostly related
to emotional state and social behavior),
and to follow a particular pattern. A much more varied perspective
on grief has
evolved and the question of the context of grieving has become paramount.
Gender and gender role
expectations are now recognized as important factors in grief.
Although
this increased interest is encouraging, drawbacks do exist. There
are only two genders and this
fact easily leads us to dichotomize our view and to think in terms
of "women's grief" and "men's grief."
This view of two extremes may present us with a comfortable, "balanced"
picture of two distinctly
different groups. It rarely reflects the reality in which people live.
More realistically, what exists is
gender-based tendencies. So, rather than referring to "men's
grief" and "women's grief," a more accurate
statement would be that "Men, in generally, tend to be more....
while women tend, in general, to be
more..." I would like you to keep that in mind while you read
this piece.
What Research Has Shown Us
In
Judith Stillion's chapter, entitled "The Experience of Bereavement
and Grief," from her book Death and the Sexes, she pays particular
attention to the grief of widows and widowers. In this section, I
will pay more attention to parental grief, looking at the characteristics
of the grief of mothers and fathers. I would also like you to consider
our tendency to think of the social and emotional grief as "normal"
grief and the relevance of that view for the research you read about
in Stillion's chapter and in this summary.
Peppers
and Knapp (1980) found a great deal of similarity in the intensity
of mothers' acute grief after the death of a child in pregnancy or
infancy, regardless of the type of loss. Alternatively, paternal grieving
(as reported by their wives), was very specific and individualized.
One suggestion they made to explain the difference was that mothers
bond with the child during the pregnancy while the father only bonds
after the child's birth. Peppers and Knapp also coined the term incongruent
grieving to describe the sense expressed by the women that they and
their husband responded with forms of grief that were "out of
synch" with each other.
I
would like to urge caution in considering their findings, however,
as Peppers and Knapp interviewed only
the women and asked them about their own and their husband's grief.
My own interviews with bereaved
marital partners suggest that there is a surprisingly large degree
of conflict between the intent of one
spouse's behavior and the interpretation of that behavior by the other.
It is possible that the differences
in perceived grieving were more a function of the contrast between
expectations and observation on the
part of the wives than of actual behavior on the part of the husbands.
Others and I have seen much
support for their idea that incongruent grieving is the norm among
couples. In addition, this concept is
one that many couples find very useful to them in understanding their
relational struggles after the death
of their child.
General
patterns have emerged to differentiate the grief of men and women:
- Men have been seen as more likely to avoid going through the grieving
(i.e., emotional) process
than women (Frantz, 1984), to be less willing to talk about the loss
(DeFrain, 1991) and to experience
a less intense grief that is resolved more quickly than mother's grief
(Osterweis, Solomon and Green,
1984).
- The grief of fathers is seen as less intense and resolved much sooner
than the mother's (Osterweis,
Solomon & Green, 1984, Benefield, Lieb & Vollman, 1978).
Men are more likely to take on a managerial role, intellectualize
their emotions, increase their
involvement outside the home and express a strong desire for future
children (Mandell, McAnulty and
Reece, 1980).
- Women are seen to express more sorrow, depression (DeFrain, 1991),
and guilt (Peppers & Knapp,
1980) while men indicate that they feel more anger, fear and loss
of control (DeFrain, 1991).
- Men control their emotions (Schwab, 1992), suppress their feelings
(Hughes-Page & Lieberman), and
use denial more than women (Bohannon, 1990-1991; Smart, 1992).
- Men limit their show of grief to a greater extent than women, feeling
that they need to be strong
for their wives (Benefield, Lieb & Vollman, 1978). Interestingly,
their stoicism may not be seen by
their wives as strength; rather, it may be seen as coldness and evidence
that he did not truly love
the child (Gilbert & Smart, 1992) and women report anger at the
father's lack of expression
(Schwab, 1992).
- Women express their feelings early after loss (Dygrove & Mattheisen,
1987; Stinson, Lasker, Lohmann
& Toedtler, 1992), , and reach out for social support (Dygrove
& Mattheisen, 1987, Stinson; Lasker,
Lohmann & Toedtler, 1992; Feely & Gottlieb, 1988) , seeking
help from their social group, friends, or
family (Smart, 1992; Smith & Borgers, 1988-1989).
- Bereaved mothers are seen as having a closer relationship with their
deceased child, confront a
daily world without their child, and visualize or feel a strong presence
of their child. Fathers, on the
other hand, manage others' grief as well as their own and restrict
their grief to times when they are
alone (Cook, 1983).
- Husbands and wives have exhibited different interpretations of appropriate
gender role behavior in
grieving, with men more likely to speak of performing their role as
"man of the family," to engage in
avoidant coping behaviors, to focus on and feel overburdened by their
wife's needs, and to speak of
their lack of a male support system. Women have been more likely to
perceive their grief as their
right, and to look for ways to support their husband's limited emotional
expression (Gilbert & Smart,
1992).
A recent study (Carroll and Shaefer, 1994) was consistent in agreeing
that men are less expressive
than women, but suggested that this is not denial as traditionally
thought. They argue that men feel
grief, they simply just not public about it. Because of their more
private role, men then become
dependent on their partner for information about the loss and about
the nature of grief.
An important issue for marital partners is that both partners have
intimacy needs, but each may be
unable to see it in the other. Essentially, men and women are different
in this regard and this
difference is difficult to see and recognize. Lang and Gottlieb (1993)
explored the intimacy needs of
spouses coping with baby death and found that, for women, intimacy
means have opportunities to talk
about events and share ideas with their partner. For men, on the other
hand, intimacy is emotional
and social, sexual and recreational. A particularly complicated issue
is sexual intimacy. Sexual
intimacy is associated with yearning for comfort by women while men
find comfort in sexual
intimacy. They also express a sense of being stigmatized by their
wife for wanting sexual intimacy.
The researchers suggested that the men may also feel "less of
a man" because of their inability to
fulfill the role of husband (i.e., protector), leading to their feeling
less adequate sexually, too.)
These
patterns of gender differences are consistent cross-culturally, with
women generally more
expressive of their emotions and men more restrained, within the context
of their culture (Haig, 1990;
McGoldrick, Almeida, Hines, Rosen, Garcia-Presto & Lee, 1991).
By that, I mean that regardless of how
expressive a society is, women tend, within the context of the culture,
to be more expressive than the
men.
Gender
Issues -- Differences ? / Influences?
When
trying to come up with an explanation for gender differences observed
in research, it is important
to consider what might lead to these differences. For example, we
might ask, "What is the effect of
being 'programmed' genetically and socially, to behave in a certain
way?" What if we are told from very
young childhood that, in order to accurately reflect our gender, we
should behave in a particular way?
What if we are told, at a time of great confusion and emotional stress,
that our normal way of behaving is
not "right" and, in fact, reflects badly on our ability
to engage in intimate relationships? This is particularly
an issue for men, since, as I indicated earlier in the course, our
understanding of grief was normed on the
grief of women. It may be that the differences we see between men
and women in their grief is not a
reflection of men's lower involvement in relationships and women's
greater investment in them. It may be
that what we see is more of reflection of the fact that men and women
are not the same.
Interestingly,
as I was developing this unit, I had a conversation about gender differences
with a close
male friend of mine. He told me, "For a man, expressing your
emotions gets socialized out of you. You
don't like it, but there it is. 'Cause, if you show your emotions,
you lose your edge. If you lose your edge,
you can't win. If you don't win, you're not a man. It's as simple
as that."
An
Alternative Perspective
Our
understanding and definition of grief has been normed on women and
have, as
such, used a "feminine" model of grief. Judith Cook (1988)
took a very different perspective while
investigating the grief of bereaved fathers, following the death of
their child to cancer. The normative
model, which Cook referred to as "women's grief," involves
the following: the social expression of the
emotions of grief, including crying; a sense of continued connection
with the deceased; minimization of
distractions; seeking out others during periods of intense unhappiness
for the purpose of speaking of their
loss; and helping others as an expression of connection with the deceased.
She went on to suggest that
men commonly find themselves caught in a "double-bind" in
that they have been taught from childhood to
contain their emotions "like a man," yet, after a loss,
they find themselves expected to express their
emotions ("like a woman"?). Regardless of how they respond
to loss, Cook proposed, men will experience
the feeling that they are acting inappropriately.
Although
it was not the case for all of the men in her study, Cook found that
the men tended to evidence
a more solitary, cognitive form of grief than the normative, "women's"
model. What she referred to as
"male grief" was found to include: efforts to manage and
control the emotions of grief; the use of reason
and reflection to work through their emotions; the use of involvement
in other activities, including work,
as distractions; self-isolation during periods of intense unhappiness;
and the helping of others as a means
of managing their grief. Overall, their need to isolate themselves
and use rationality to control and
manage emotions caused their grief to sharply contrast with the affective,
social grief considered to be
normal and healthy.
Although
I believe Cook's study was ground breaking, particularly in that it
took a men's studies
perspective, divorcing her view of the men's grief from preconceived
ideas of "good" and "bad" grief. I'm
uncomfortable in referring to these two classes of grief as "men's
and "women's" grief, particularly after
applying her categories to the parents from whom I have collected
data. What I found was a significant
minority of women who "grieved like men" and men who "grieved
like women." As a result, I prefer to
think of these two types of grief as cognitive and solitary and social
and emotional. Interestingly, I have
noticed in the interviews I have done, that men who were more emotional
in their grieving (and, in some
cases, more emotional than some of the more cognitive women) still
expressed a need to spend time
alone (something rarely expressed as a need by any of the women).
Women who had a more cognitive
grief style also were more social than the men, although women used
their social network as tool for
confirming the reality of their loss ("I made them look at those
ultrasounds. I wanted them to know that
baby in there was real."). I also noted that no one was purely
cognitive and solitary or social and
emotional. Rather, each person evidenced a tendency toward on type
of grief or the other and, across
time, shifted between the two and that, overall, men tended toward
cognitive and solitary grief and
women tended toward social and emotional.
Another
thing I have found to be interesting is that the men show a greater
need for regaining control,
especially of their emotions. They talk about their need to regain
a structure, and evaluate their wife's
attempts to meet this need for structure in a positive light. Men
seem to focus on order rather than
"making sense of the chaos." They might establish a set
time to think about the loss or to emphasize the
need "to think about the good things, let the good things shine,"
rather than dwelling on what they see as
non-productive negative emotions. Women, on the other hand, show a
greater need to confirm the
reality of their loss through conversation about their loss with others
and to validate the legitimacy of
their emotions through social contact. In addition, women are more
likely to attend support groups (with
or without their spouse), to keep a journal or to write a chronology
or poetry as ways of working through
their grief. The essential difference seemed to be that men seemed
to focus more on regaining control
while women focused on a more detailed understanding.
The
word "control" often is seen in a negative light and the
need bereaved men seem to have for control
often is looked on as wrong-headed. We all have a need for control
and predictability -- I need to know
that, when I go to pick my foot up, it will lift off the floor and
when I put my foot down on the floor, the
floor will be there. This is a need for control and predictability
at a very basic level, but is on the same
continuum as the need felt by bereaved men. Also, if you look at the
typical gender role of men, as a
strong, quiet, take-charge problem solver, the desire to create order
in their lives by exerting control
makes perfect sense.
At
the same time, the need for women to develop a fuller understanding
of the situation, with all of the
nuances and fine details, facilitates her ability to carry out her
typical role of social manager, listener,
caregiver and nurturer. In this context, the need to talk her view
through with others allows her to
confirm that their view is consistent with hers and, then, allows
her to determine who she can turn to for
assistance in working through the loss and for her to determine who
might need her help.
Are We Running Risks by Emphasizing Differences?
As
I indicated above, concern has been expressed by various people working
in the area of grief about the
institutionalization of a single way to grief being seen as the healthy
way to grieve. Now, with our
increased interest in grief, concern has been expressed about the
"institutionalization of gender
differences." Do we run the risk of simply shifting one narrow
view of healthy or appropriate grief to
another that simply spits the population in half and ascribing one
set of acceptable behaviors for one half
while another set of acceptable behaviors applies to the other half?
How do we avoid this? Should we
avoid it?
This
presents us with an interesting dilemma, and is not a suggestion that
we ignore differences, but that
we look for alternative explanations. In the paper you read by Karen
Martin, she urges caution on
considering gender as a factor in grief and presents an interesting,
alternative view. I would like you to
pay particular attention to the four "grief management or mourning
styles" she described on pages 5-6.
Consider how you would use these four styles while also taking gender
into account. In personal
conversation with her, she has shared her concerns that we may be
using gender awareness as a
stereotyping mechanism, and that we may lose sight of important information
by simply focusing on
gender.
Copyright
1996-98, Kathleen R. Gilbert, Ph.D.
