Because you may not know the term, I’ll start by defining it: “alexithymia” is a reduced ability to display and discuss emotions. As you’d guess, this is more associated with men. The seemingly-seminal paper on this is called “Are men emotional mummies?” and came about 22 years ago. It contains this paragraph, which I think would be logical for a lot of people reading it:
Research on children from infancy through the school years shows how this can happen, he said. Mothers, for instance, expose baby girls to a wider range of emotions than baby boys, and work harder to control their sons’ emotional volatility. Fathers step in to socialize their toddlers along gender lines at around 13 months, verbally rough-housing their sons and talking in more emotional terms with daughters. As kids get older, both parents foster this rift by discouraging sons from expressing vulnerable emotions and encouraging such expression in daughters.
Indeed.
It’s also covered somewhat in this video:
When you add “normative” to the front of it, it means that said behavior has become, well, the norm. I see this a lot in how males interact, absolutely.
I’ve written a lot about masculinity over the past couple of years.
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