My observation on gender communication

 

As I observe my parents daily as they go about with their days, I seem to take notice of their little affectionate gestures and conversational patterns with each other. Women and men have different conversational patterns and chronological sequence, as well as different varying topics that both like to talk on.

It’s a wide generalization that men talk lesser than women, from what I’ve seen in my parents, that is true and I can confirm it. As for the topics on which both chat on, my mother usually fixates on topics that center around her childhood, friends, fantasizing about her children’s bright futures, home décor, celebrities, food, music and big headlined news only. My mother’s conversational style is very one-sided and narrative-like instead of discussion-like. My father on the other hand tries to evoke more of discussion-based topics like politics, general news, currency rates, history, policies, etc. To make this observation clearer, I will pick the example of the topic of The deadly Covid-19 virus. Both of them equally cared about the number of deaths worldwide and in Oman, however my mother then diverted her concern to travel and visits, while my father was more worried about the business and marketplace. Another trait that I’ve noticed is that my mother is more responsive to my father’s convos than he is to her narratives. Granted that my father’s topics are more discussion-based, but is it right to only reply when there’s a discussion rather than a narrative? That’s another branch that I’d like to investigate more on.

 As for the interaction between my parents and us children, my mother opts to open up more emotional topics than practical ones, and talks about the same topics as mentioned above along with advising. Our father tends to instill a passion of learning about the world more in us by randomly giving us information about new events, new exchange rates, eye-catching headlines and industrial changes.

The generalization that women like to talk more, and men prefer action than words, is not a claim that I can relate to or shrug off. Mutual communication is important firstly in a couple, and my parents perfectly apply that by communicating with each other before taking actions, for example, missing grocery, buying a new house piece, sealing off business deals. Both believe in talking about it to each other instead of just acting on impulse. The only time that they do take actions on impulse is when the other isn’t available or when they’re mad at each other. Talking helps to clear out so many misunderstandings and is an important asset in any functioning and healthy relationship.

As for the other stereotype of women showing more emotion than men, in this case, it is indeed true. For the emotion of anger, my mother is more hot-headed than my father. In playfulness, my father is the one seen being more jolly on a daily basis, My mother although does have her moments of playfulness and goofiness on certain occasions. In terms of sadness, both of them do equally get sad but my mother is more prone to showing it than my father, which goes hand-in-hand with women showing more emotions, because of the pressure on men to be more indifferent to emotions in order to appear manlier.

All in all, gender communication has been a subject of study for years, and whether it’s formed by nurture or nature is still being debated. Societal pressure acts upon different individuals of the society, though in this era, many have broken free of it and do as they please, this will allow sociologists to have a much more concise and accurate experimentation on gender studies.