Question #1:

Health and Relationships

Choose ONE of the following (same directions as all previous discussions

• Gender Bias: Provide information and examples regarding health care professionals’ bias against men, women, non-binary.  Do they diagnose the same? Treat the same? More likely to find pathology in one group than the other? Minimize pain? Dismiss symptoms? Provide support. This is not an attack on health care professionals; we know it happens without their malicious intent.  
• Marital Satisfaction: Look up a journal article on the differences between men and women (or any gender) in regard to marital satisfaction and the benefits of marriage. Report the findings and elaborate on your reasoning for the findings or the implications of the findings. Support your ideas. 
• Internalization/Externalization: Research the difference between internalizing behaviors and externalizing behaviors in regard to female and male coping and its relationship to mental illness/issues/problems. Be specific.
• Preventative Health: Describe differences between males, females, trans, or those non-binary in regard to seeking preventative health measures, seeking formal health care (both physical and mental), and the obstacles for care facing both genders. You may even note how limitations worsen for people who are transgender or intersex.  
• Your choice: Make a discussion topic of your choosing as long as it applies and is relevant to the readings assigned this week. I’m very lenient with this topic choice, but do it well!  (Examples: Male vs. Females perspectives of marriage, Jealousy in males vs. females, Reasons for infidelity for males vs. females…. the list can go on! )
• Health Issues: Identify and elaborate on two major health issues facing women or men. Explain the influence of gender in regard to cultural norms, access to resources, power, stress  etc. that influence the health issue. Be specific. Support your findings.
• (If you haven’t done this already in previous week) Superwoman Syndrome/Second Shift: Women are often reported to suffer from something called the “Superwoman syndrome.” Your readings discuss the concepts of “second shift” and of womens’ “psychological responsibility” in regard to womens’ roles. Briefly explain these concepts and elaborate on their implications regarding women’s physical and mental health. Discuss what pressures we put on men and how it impacts them too. 

Sources you can use: 

Below are the required learning resources for this week.

Gender Roles in Relationships

• This article explores gender roles within three common relationships — romantic, family, and friendship. Evidence points to the fact that the roles are tied to the power differential between the genders.

http://ezproxy.umgc.edu/login?url=http://knowledge.sagepub.com/view/humanrelationships/n240.xml

A Gendered View of Physical Health

• This chapter explores the interaction between gender and markers of physical health.

http://ezproxy.umgc.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e025xna&AN=1139924&site=eds-live&scope=site&ebv=EK&ppid=Page-__-327

Health and Relationships

• Uchino and Reblin’s article explores the link between the quality and quantity of an individual’s social relationships and his or her physical health. Factors such as pathways and intervention approaches are analyzed. What are the implications of the data for improving men’s or women’s health?

http://ezproxy.umgc.edu/login?url=http://knowledge.sagepub.com/view/humanrelationships/n253.xml

Question #2:

This week asks you to look at many different institutions in our society specifically as gendered institutions. Referring directly to the learning resources for this week, as a response to this post, take a moment to synthesize what you have learned:

1. What are some of the major threads that connect these institutions in terms of gender, gender expectations, or effects on gender?
2. Are there any common problems that need to be solved?
3. Why is it important to consider intersectionality whenever we look at gender in institutions? Give at least two examples from the learning resources.
4. Is the role of gender in politics connected to finding those solutions? If so, how?
5. Finally, choose one or two of the gendered institutions we learn about this week (education, politics, criminal justice, military, healthcare, religion), and dive deeper into these questions:
   • How do expectations about gender affect that institution?
   • How does that institution affect gender?
   • What are the major hurdles to achieving gender equality in that institution?
   • What would gender equality look like in that institution?
   • And, what do you see as the major work that institution needs to do to achieve gender equality?

Sources you can use: 

• The Breakdown of Women in STEM
• “Gender Issues and Schooling,” by Mary Lundeberg & Lindsey Mohan from 21st Century Education: A Reference Handbook
• Explore the website for the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers
• “”So, Did the ‘Year of the Woman’ Really Change Anything?”
• “Medicine, Health, and Reproductive Justice” from the textbook Introduction to Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies, by Kang, et al.
• LGBT Healthcare Training Video: “To Treat Me, You Have to Know Who I Am,” NYC Hospitals training video
• “Military Masculinity,” by Daniel Burland from Encyclopedia of Gender and Society
• “Military, Women Serving in,” by Lory Manning from Encyclopedia of Gender and Society
• TIMELINE: A History Of Women In The US Military
• “Women in Federal Law Enforcement: The Role of Gender Role Orientations and Sexual Orientation in Mentoring,” by Barratt et al. ,Sex Roles, 71(1-2)
• “Criminalization of Transgender People,” by Alexis Forbes from The SAGE Encyclopedia of Psychology and Gender
• “The Common Experiences of Women Who Leave Extreme Religions,” by Bethanne Patrick
• UN Women. (2021, March 10). Women in politics: New data shows growth but also setbacks
• New York Times Upfront. (2013). Timeline U.S. women in the military

Question #3: 

Teaching Your Teen to Drive

_______________________________________________________________

The Assignment:

This discussion is about teaching your teen to drive. It begins with a wonderful video a student brought to my hybrid Parenting class one summer: It is titled The Backwards Brain Bicycle. The link:  

Please type these exact words into your browser: 

youtube the backwards brain bicycle.

This video is about riding a crazy bicycle, and the man who made the video does not connect it to neural development, but neural development is the key to understanding this video and also to understanding what has to happen before your teen is a safe driver.  There are no other readings, just viewing the video, and reading my “lecture notes” attached here.  

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Instructor’s lecture notes on the neurology of the Backward Brain Bicycle:

_____________________________________

Introduction:

Procedural memory is a part of long-term memory that is responsible for knowing how  to do things, also known as motor memory. As the name implies, procedural memory stores information on how to perform certain procedures, such as walking, talking, ice skating, skiing, swimming, riding a bike, and driving a car. 

The interesting point is that once something is stored in procedural memory, you do not have to pay conscious thought to do those things; they have become automatic.

Procedural memory is a subset of implicit memory, sometimes referred to as unconscious memory or automatic memory or motor memory. Implicit memory uses past experiences to remember things without thinking about them. It differs from declarative memory or explicit memory, which consists of facts and events that can be explicitly stored and consciously recalled or “declared”. 

Examples of procedural memory: Musicians and professional athletes are said to excel, in part, because of their superior ability to form procedural memories. Procedural memory is also important in language development, as it allows a person to talk without having to give much thought to proper grammar and syntax. 

The point? Once something is learned really well, it no longer is completely under conscious control. Many of the “little programs” to ride a bike (or, to drive a car) are automated and placed in a different part of the brain (probably in the “motor strip” of the brain) where they are accessed without our knowledge. That frees conscious attention from having to pay attention to too many things at once.

Adult and very experienced drivers all have automated the driving function.  When someone is driving and seems to be failing to stop at the right time, have you found your “brake foot” slams down on the floor of the car?  That is your auto-pilot working unconsciously for you. Perhaps you drove somewhere today and you don’t even remember part of the familiar road; you were on “autopilot”  because your brain used that motor memory/procedural memory package to help you drive.

In the backwards bicycle video, the task demanded of the rider is something that is stored in procedural memory, so the bike rider begins effortlessly to ride as he always has, and falls off, over and over, for the “program” for riding the bike no longer “works.” When he finally is able to ride the crazy bike, it takes him some time to switch back when he tries to ride a normal bike again.   This illustrates that riding a bike, and driving a car, are very complex “programs” that need to be automated in the brain to free up some attention for things like other cars, or squirrels in front of the car, or red lights. Your teen is not a safe or competent driver until he or she has fully automated those skills and that takes a very long time with tons of what we call distributed practice.

Distributed practice is many, practice sessions with time between each, to consolidate learning in the brain. A student in this course last term trains helicopter pilots and rescue swimmers for the U.S. Navy.  He reported that only after 1,000 flights is a “newbie” helicopter pilot considered to be a standard pilot.  For those 1,000 flights the “newbie” has a crew of several pilots observing and commenting on the “newbie’s” actions all during those training flights.  One of the four or five observer pilots is another “newbie.”  A thousand flights!!!   

Back to us and training our teens to drive:  So, no radio, no phone, no other teens in the car with you and your teen, no texting, and so on, and LOTS and LOTS of practice before getting that driver’s license. You can now see that a few lessons at a driving school and a few more at high school cannot possibly “automate” the driving functions for your teen so that your teen can free enough attention to be a really safe driver.

Teaching your teen to drive: Learning to drive is an example of developing procedural memory. You have to give your teen enough experience that driving ability becomes automated in the brain. Until that happens, your teen is not a safe driver. This is one of the most serious responsibilities you have to your adolescent. A few driving lessons at school or at a driving school will not suffice to make a safe driver in urban traffic. To go to work in California I exited a freeway at a point where there were eleven lanes of traffic in a single direction! How can one help their teen become capable of handling this challenge skillfully? 

Teaching my own teens to drive: Here was what I did to teach my kids to drive in very dense urban traffic in San Francisco and Palo Alto, California. From the day the our kids got their learner’s permit, they drove 30 to 45 minutes every single morning under my supervision, before school, every day, for one year. (365 training “flights!) Toward the end of the year my son drove us from San Francisco to the Sierras in snow on a ski trip. Toward the end of her year of training, our daughter drove us from San Francisco to Los Angeles. They both had driven in San Francisco with rain, steep hills, and cable cars in the way. They have driven across the Golden Gate Bridge, and inside multilevel parking garages (those were the very worst!). (Just this last year (2020) our son, whose training is described here, has taught his daughter to drive here in Maryland and she now has her license. It is great to see my “lessons” passed on to the next generation!)

By the way, we did no night driving until after they had their licenses.  It just seemed to be too many things just to get the basics in broad daylight in the crowded California setting. I understand that night driving hours are necessary training before getting the driver’s license here in Maryland where our grandkids live.

We began in empty shopping center parking lots, where there is lots of room and space to learn to steer and run the controls of the car. Then we began to go around the shopping mall, learning to stop and look both ways and use turn signals. Then, to very quiet, flat streets. Then to streets with hills. Then to a highway that had two lanes. And, then to neighborhood streets. And, then, to freeways. Finally, defensive driving on freeways. All this took one year because I wanted to make only small changes in difficulty so that my “student” never became scared or overwhelmed.

What used to be done to train drivers in the olden days: What did my parents do to teach me to drive in the late 1950s? They let me drive in forward and in reverse down our long driveway a few times in their stick shift car. That was all! It was many years before I became comfortable with driving and, I am sure, before I became a safe and confident driver.  I never felt comfortable driving, but never had an accident.  However, I did back up and take out the neighbor’s mailbox!  

Parental role in this: This is an example of a parental responsibility to your own teen. Do not wait to punish or ground your teen when he or she has an accident. Instead, recognize your own responsibility as a parent and help ensure your teen becomes a safe and confident driver.  

Final message:

The challenge for parents: Teaching a teen to drive is a real challenge to all adults!  If you are nervous or become annoyed, or if your “student” becomes nervous or annoyed, or if an argument breaks out, find another relative or friend who can be calm and very positive and supportive.  There never should be an argument during the lessons. Learning to drive and becoming a skilled driver is a very happy and positive goal already for a teen and good and kindly teaching has many opportunities for praise and laughter between the teacher and the student when they have a warm and very respectful relationship.

Why bother? Last term a student emailed that he just had Driver’s Ed at school and then a few lessons and got his license and didn’t need to have that whole year of practice and he and his friends are fine!  How could I explain that I was driving to work with 11 lanes of traffic in ONE direction in urban California, and he was a resident of a rural area on the East Coast.  It is not necessary to take this much time and effort to protect your teen, but I felt it was worth it, just as the Navy Rescue Swimmer/Helicopter Pilot trainer felt 1,000 hours of practice with supervision of 5 other pilots is needed to make a properly trained pilot. 

Guiding questions for this discussion:

• What is procedural memory and how is it related to learning to drive?
• How does automating a function like driving a car enable a person to be a better driver? Please explain how the brain helps you drive. Hint: Discuss attention and the limits to attention!!!
• Why does the instructor call learning to drive a parental responsibility and not a teen responsibility?