Michael Gurian, Boys and Girls Learn Differently

page for the book

The Gurian Institute
Michael Gurian's homepage

On the declining enrollment of men in colleges: Disappearing Act

CNN interview from 1999
AnnOnline
Hug the Monkey interview

HUG: Girls have a more intense need for connection at a time in their lives when they naturally start to become more independent from the family, and a time when parents often begin to look outward from the family. How does this affect teen-aged girls?

GURIAN: The intimacy imperative is so very strong, due to the estrogen, progesterone, oxytocin and serotonin interactions, that it creates such a strong need for intimacy and to develop the self through intimate relationship. Simultaneously, the psychology of human development is that children must separate from their parents.

Both males and females hormonally need each other and want connection. Teenage males in general tend to want more sex and less intimacy, and females tend to need more social intimacy. As she's trying to separate from mom and still has a deep need for intimacy, she will project a lot of it onto friends and males.

With boys, there will be romance and sexuality mixed in, which further complicates things. She's trying to bond with the boy and at same time trying to understand how to have a self. The malleability of her hormonal, social and emotional base often leads to her to nearly give up herself just to get intimacy. Often we will see a girl during the teen years fighting the urge to obtain intimacy at the expense of self. Part of her internal destiny is to see how to give a self without giving up a self. And she fights that fight with the male.

The males are smart. They'll say, "I love you, I love you," get the sex from her and never call her again. When a male has sex and orgasms, he gets that hit of oxytocin that takes him to a level similar to hers, so he will exacerbate the problem by saying, "I love you you're the best." His oxytocin goes down in a couple of hours, as testosterone floods in and mitigates the oxytocin level.

But she has this oxytocin that rages for days and days, and she thinks he's in love with her. I think that's why we have so much depression after these romantic and sexual breakups.