The Female Brain by Louann Md Brizendine Read Free Book Online Page A

average twenty times more aggressive than women, something that a quick look around the prison system will confirm. I almost left aggression out of this book, after being lulled into a warm glow of communicative and social female brain circuits. I was nearly fooled by the female aversion to conflict into thinking that aggression simply wasn’t part of our makeup.
    Cara and Charles didn’t know what to do about Leila’s bossiness. It didn’t end with telling her father how to play dolls. She screamed when her friend Susie painted a yellow clown instead of a blue one as she had ordered, and heaven forbid if a conversation at the dinner table didn’t include Leila. Her female brain was demanding that she be part of whatever communication or connection was taking place in her presence. Being left out was more than her girl circuits could bear. To her Stone Age brain—and face it, we’re all still cave people inside—being left out could mean death. I explained this to Cara and Charles, and they decided to wait out this phase instead of trying to change Leila’s behavior—within reason, of course.
    I didn’t want to tell Cara and Charles that what Leila was putting them through was nothing. Her hormones were steady, they were at a low point, and her reality was fairly stable. When the hormones turn back on and the juvenile pause comes to an end, Cara and Charles won’t have just Leila’s bossy brain to deal with. Her risk-taking brain will have the stops pulled out. It will drive her to ignore her parents, entice a mate, leave home, and make something different out of herself. Teen girl reality will explode, and every trait established in the female brain during girlhood—communication, social connection, desire for approval, reading faces for cues as to what to think or feel—will intensify. This is the time when a girl becomes most communicative with her girlfriends and forms tightly knit social groups in order to feel safe and protected. But with this new estrogen-driven reality, aggression also plays a big role. The teen girl brain will make her feel powerful, always right, and blind to consequences. Without that drive, she’ll never be able to grow up, but getting through it, especially for the teen girl, isn’t easy. As she begins to experience her full “girl power,” which includes premenstrual syndrome, sexual competition, and controlling girl groups, her brain states can often make her reality, well, a little hellish.

TWO

Teen Girl Brain
    D RAMA, DRAMA, DRAMA. That’s what’s happening in a teen girl’s life and a teen girl’s brain. “Mom, I so totally can’t go to school. I just found out Brian likes me and I have a huge zit and no concealer. OMG! How can you even think I’ll go?” “Homework? I told you I’m not doing any more until you promise to send me away to school. I can’t stand living with you for one more minute.” “No, I’m not done talking to Eve. It has not been two hours, and I’m not getting off the phone.” This is what you get if you have the modern version of the teen girl brain living in your house.
    The teenage years are a turbulent time. The teen girl’s brain is sprouting, reorganizing and pruning neuronal circuits that drive the way she thinks, feels, and acts—and obsesses over her looks. Her brain is unfolding ancient instructions on how to be a woman. During puberty, a girl’s entire biological raison d’être is to become sexually desirable. She begins judging herself against her peers and media images of other attractive females. This brain state is created by the surge of new hormones on top of the ancient female genetic blueprint.
    Attracting male attention is a newfound and exciting form of self-expression for my friend Shelly’s teenage daughters, and the high-octane estrogen coursing through their brain pathways fuels their obsession. The hormones that affect their responsivity to social stress are going sky high, which is where they get their