Non-traditional Gender Roles and Coping Skills

There is research that suggests women and men who are non-traditional in their gender orientation adjust better and more quickly to a marital breakdown.  The explanation for this is that androgynous women and men have better coping skills with which to handle the trauma of divorce than do women and men who behave according to traditional gender role expectation.  This latter point has major implications for how we socialize children to prepare them for adult roles.  These individuals are accustomed to coping with the challenges of being different.  This is a stressor and experience with stressors makes navigating stress both easier and harder.   Practice may make perfect, but constant long-term stress is a horse of a different color.