Why Do Women Talk So Much?

Back in the day, several decades ago, when feminism was insinuating its way into the American mind, the word went out. Women needed to advance their careers, even if this meant that they would be spending less time with their progeny.

The formula du jour asserted that quality time, not quantity time mattered the most.

And then, along came a University of Chicago physician, by name of Dana Suskind, who wrote a book in 2015 explaining what she called the 30,000,000 word rule. 

Suskind’s research showed that a child’s cognitive development depended in some part on the number of works he heard, especially spoken words that were directed at him. Ideally, that meant 30,000,000 words through age three. Children who heard significantly fewer words ended up cognitively limited.

Development does not take place in a vacuum. It requires stimulation from spoken words. But it does not require the child to be able to understand the words being spoken. Presumably, this does not include the radio or television. It requires human beings talking to infants and babies.

If Suskind is correct-- we have no reason to think she is not-- some recent research becomes more cogent. The research shows that women tend to talk more than men, that they tend to utter far more spoken words than men do.

Perhaps this is a maternal instinct, not limited to dealings with babies, but cultivated within the age range when women are likely to have children or grandchildren.

David Nield reports for Science Alert:

The study found that between the ages of 25 and 64, early to middle adulthood, women average 3,275 more words per day than men – or 20 more talking minutes. Across the other age ranges, the figures were more or less the same.

For instance, in early and middle adulthood, women were found to say between 1,500 and 3,600 more words per day compared to men. That's quite a large spectrum, with the bottom range representing just 10 minutes or so of normal-paced talking and the upper range representing 23 minutes. 

Now, we have a new theory. Women talk more than men because they are exercising a maternal instinct. The more they talk the more their small children will have normal cognitive development.