Why Woman are the Comfort Givers (http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=4646)
Whitley Strieber's Unknown Country (http://www.unknowncountry.com/)
06-Jun-2005
Newswise -
[imgleft]https://www.susans.org/friends.jpg[/imgleft]Women are the comforters in our culture and they are not forgiving of other women who lack comforting skills. They're much more tolderant of men who lack the skills to be comforters. Communications specialist Brant Burleson says, "We think these women are paying [more] attention to the gender of the person giving the message [than to] the content or effectiveness of the message." Now that men are taking jobs that involve comforting others, in areas like nursing and teaching young children, we need to shed the old-fashioned perception that men have less empathy than women... [Read More] (http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=4646)
* Art credit: http://www.freeimages.co.uk
lollis, i like the advert at the end of the article. heh heh, gave me a good chuckle, that one. kinda like saying "now look here, this is a very serious topic and i want you to all listen very carefully. oh and by the way, buy cola!! mmm, cola. delicious."
that aside, having read the short article, i don't know exactly what they precisely meant by good and bad comforting. at first, they seem simply to serve as labels for two different styles of comforting that were being tested - fair enough - but then, they jump from labels to meanings by saying things like "better at comforting". with that, i'm not sure of their definitions of "good/bad" comforting to begin with. certainly, one is conventionally more positive, whilst the other conventionally more negative.
but it's quite simple to think of ways in which simply telling somebody "there there, it'll all be okay" is a very careless and destructive thing to do. and equally, it's quite simple to think of ways in which telling somebody "you're better off without him/her" is a considerate and positive thing to say.
all that aside, i agree with the thinking that people need to get away from all these ancient gender stereotypes... amongst them, the mentioned one about women being "the gentler sex".