The ground breaking research by Taylor and her colleagues that I touched on in part one of this series explored the ways in which women respond to stress.
It suggested that during stressful times, females are more likely than males to mobilise their social support networks, a phenomenon observed from female adolescence through to adulthood. Not only do women galvanise more social support, they also focus on support from other females.
This does not seem to change if a woman is married either. A husband may turn to his wife for support during stress, but a wife is less likely to, preferring to seek out their female friends and family.
It all makes sense in everyday experiences too. I don’t know about you, but I can’t really imagine chatting at length to my Dad rather than my Mum when in the middle of a nasty break-up. No offence blokes, but no.
Taylor et al. also discuss quite an extraordinary possibility. They propose that it is possible that a woman’s “tend-and-befriend” response to stress may in fact reduce women’s vulnerability to a range of stress-related disorders, dependence on stress-reducing substances (e.g. alcohol and other drugs) and patterns of cardiovascular reactivity that represent risk factors for cardiovascular disease.
The different health implications of the “tend-or-befriend” stress response may even be a factor in the increased longevity of women compared to men.
Could it be that our unique stress response and the social ties with females that this involves is improving our life expectancy? Perhaps we should forget the search for an anti-ageing pill and try catching up with our girlfriends instead.
Given the gift of longevity that our female friends and family provide us, it’s doubly sad that in reality when life gets busy, often our relationships with the wonderful women in our lives are what suffers.
According to Dr Ruthellen Josselson, co-author of, “Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of Girls’ and Women’s Friendships”, this is the real problem. Dr Josselson affirms female friendships as a source of strength and nurturing and a space that allows for that special kind of girl talk that we all know (at least us girls anyway) only exists within these unique female bonds.
References available on request