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Isaac Antonio Ruiz
Lifespan Human Development
Extra Credit Book Review
6/30/2008
Sheehy, Gail (1998). Understanding Men's Passages: Discovering the new map of Men's. New York: Random House.
Summary
In Understanding men's passages, Gail Sheehy says that women have menopause and it produces a change of their lives; nevertheless, men lack of this physiological change but experience a change in their lives during a five to ten year period, which Gail Sheehy calls to this "manopause", when men experience hormonal fluctuations attached with accelerated physical and psychological changes. Sheehy maintains that because men are unprepared for this post-forty passage, and regard change not as growth, but as loss and failure, men are less able than women to cope with stress. Men often feel dread in facing midlife, and resist change. They don't often talk about their doubts and their dreams.
Gail Sheehy also mentions in her book some scientific evidences about actual changes in brain chemistry in men and women as they age. She says that the physical structure of the brain changes. the male brain develops rather asymmetrically, then as he ages the right brain decreases in size and the brain structure becomes more like that of a female. The reverse is true for women. They become less symmetrical and the right brain increases in size. It suggests that there are very, very basic physiological and neurochemical changes in men and women, from what they were when younger. One of the most hopeful messages in the book, she thinks, is the documented evidence that the brain can continue to grow, even an older and developed brain, provided it remains in a highly stimulating environment.
Gail Sheehy also spends a lot of time talking about the rich and the famous, and what happens when they're downsized. And in some of her other examples she describes what the course is for middle-management types.
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