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Stress and the Sexes

The Nurturing Instinct

By Jeanie Lerche Davis
WebMD Feature

Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

When trouble's brewing, a guy will battle it out -- or grab a cold one and sulk. Women will likely reach for the phone, talk it out with a friend. Men and women just don't deal with stress in the same way.

If you've taken a psychology course in the past 50 years, you're familiar with the concept of "fight or flight" -- the supposedly automatic human stress response that has been linked to all sorts of health problems, including heart disease.

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But new research -- drawing on psychology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience -- shows that there are distinct differences in how men and women react to stressors or aggressors. While men will fight -- or simply hide -- women have a stronger instinct to "tend and befriend," says Shelley E. Taylor, PhD, a psychology professor at UCLA and author of The Tending Instinct.

A woman is biologically hard-wired to nurture, provide comfort, and seek social support in times of stress, Taylor writes. Our hormones, brain chemistry, and response to the world around us all reflect this natural instinct. Men have this instinct too, but to a lesser degree because of hormone differences and personal choices, she says.

"I'm proposing a different way of looking at human nature, one that orients us away from selfishness, greed, and aggression, one that looks at the multiple ways that people tend to each other's needs," Taylor tells WebMD.

We can see it in recent tragedies, she says. "We look at Sept. 11 and see proof of aggressive nature, but you can also see substantial proof of our tending nature as well. The ways in which people took care of each other was really very striking."

Providing care, befriending others -- it's a drive that can be found in the earliest cultures, says Taylor. Evidence also exists around the world today and in other species, like rats and monkeys, that women naturally bond, especially in times of stress.

"It's a female's instinct to protect our offspring from harm, to get food," she tells WebMD. In the most primitive hunter-gatherer cultures, "women who turned to women friends for help probably accomplished those two vital tasks better than those who did not."

The long-held tradition of babysitting is a good example, she says. "Taking care of another's offspring is a very, very old tradition among women. Primarily, you left them with female relatives, but you also left them with friends. And if you're going to leave your children with someone, you need to know as much as you can about them."

The tendency to befriend begins early in childhood, Taylor adds. "Whereas boys are playing action-oriented, aggressive games in large groups, girls are playing in small groups. They sit close together, they touch each other more, they are together ... establishing intimate friendships."

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