Big Boys Don't Cry

 

Big Boys Don’t Cry

 

Women cry, on average, five times more than men and for twice as long each time. Would it surprise you to find that this is not a biologically defined gender difference, but rather, a social construct?

Probably not!

While it’s true that hormones play a part in the production of tears, testosterone inhibits crying and prolactin promotes tears, cultural expectations are at the heart of the differences in the frequency of men’s and women’s tears.

Boys are conditioned to not cry from a very young age. Little boys are told that big boys don’t cry, that they need to be brave, that it’s girly (and by inference, weak) to cry, and as teenagers, to ‘man up’ if they allow their tears to well up. Boys and men are expected to contain their emotions and it is seen as unmanly to shed tears in public.

This wasn’t always the case. The Bible is full of men weeping openly, all the way from Genesis

to Revelations. The Greek heroes of Homer’s Iliad were famous for having a good gurn, Achilles’  tears are as prevalent in the poem as his military exploits. When he’s not fighting, he’s crying. Of course, the Iliad is not a historical account, but we have to consider that it was written in the context of Greek society, so it’s reasonable to assume that it is a fairly accurate reflection of the expected behaviour of heroes.

In Roman literature, great generals were reported to weep openly, politicians shed tears to emphasise their sorrow or contrition. However, by the time the Roman republic had reached its end, the display of tears by men in the public sphere was beginning to be considered either duplicitous or weak.

By the Middle Ages, men were weeping again. This was especially the case with those in high positions in society. In historical accounts and literature great warrior knights burst into tears regularly. In the C11^th French epic poem ‘The Song of Roland’, news of the death of Roland is met by the ‘Lords of France weeping bitter tears,’. In another medieval romance, ‘The Knight of the Cart’, Sir Lancelot is brought to tears at the thought of leaving Guinevere for a short time, and he cries again because he thinks he can’t go to a grand tournament.  You might mutter ‘big girl’s blouse’ under your breath, but in the great halls of medieval Europe men did not hide their tears, they were considered admirable.

In the following centuries things changed, men stopped their public tearfulness. There was no legal or religious edict, no point at which men were prohibited from crying but by the mid-1700s, they just did.

One societal change that could have had an effect was the Industrial Revolution. Up until this time most people, rich or poor, lived in very close proximity to the people they grew up with, they knew maybe 100 people, many of them were related so had an intimate connection. When people began to move to large towns and cities, the intimacy of society disappeared. There weren’t familiar shoulders to cry on. Managers of the factories where most men worked, actively discouraged emotion as it interfered with production. Workers couldn’t down tools to be comforted or to comfort others so crying resulted in being shouted at rather than being comforted. And crying alone just doesn’t have the same effect as being comforted by those close to you.

In the past 30 years or so there seems to have been a shift back towards encouraging men to share their feelings and shed a tear or two. In 1990, English footballer, Paul Gascoigne burst into tears when he was booked in the 98^th minute of a semi-final World Cup game. Seeing Gazza, part of the ’lad’ culture of English football crying openly and very publicly, went a long way to changing attitudes.

Research has shown crying to be therapeutic, tears flush out stress hormones and release endorphins which ease both emotional and physical pain.  As Charles Dickens put it:

"It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away."  

Big boys really should cry!