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There are plenty of women who are tone deaf to social nuances and insensitive to others. But usually women are more emotionally intelligent than their 107 husbands for one simple reason: They've had an enormous head start in acquiring these skills. Observe children at any playground, and you'll see that head start in action. When young boys play (usually run-and-chase games) their priority is the game itself--not their relationship with each other and their feelings. But for little girls, feelings are paramount. A cry of "I'm not your friend anymore" will stop a game cold. Whether it starts up again will depend on whether the girls make up. Even when a boy and girl play with the same toy the gender difference is apparent. When four-year-old best friends Naomi and Eric shared her baby doll she wanted to play that the doll was their baby and they were going to show it off to their friends (relationshipbased play). He went along with this for about ten minutes, and then the game roller-coaster into boy territory: "Hey Naomi, this baby is dead!" he announced. "We have to get it to the hospital right away!" He climbed into a pretend ambulance and away he went, "Brrrrrrrrr." Naomi urged him not to drive too fast. Suddenly they both became surgeons and saved the baby's life. (Eric wanted Naomi to be the nurse, but she objected that girls can be surgeons too, so some things have changed!) After the baby's life was saved, they went back to playing Naomi's way—showing off the baby to friends. The play styles of Naomi and Eric are equally charming and delightful. But the plain truth is that "girlish" games offer far better preparation for marriage and family life because they focus on relationships. As a general rule, boys don't even include games with relationship and domestic themes in their repertoire. Think about it: While no preschool dress-up corner would be complete without bridal costumes, you never see tuxedos for little pretend grooms! Where does this difference in play styles between boys and girls originate? Because it occurs in virtually every culture, I suspect that it is caused mostly by biology rather than by socialization. But whether nature or nurture is the cause of these differences, their effect is undeniable. Because their play emphasizes social interactions and feelings, girls undergo an extensive education into emotions by childhood's end. Boys learn how to pitch overhand. A boy's experience at playing cooperatively and quickly resolving conflicts will be an asset later in the boardroom or on the construction site, but 108 it will be a liability in marriage if it comes at the expense of understanding the emotions behind his wife's perspectives. This difference in training is heightened by the fact that as they get older, boys rarely play with girls, so they miss the chance to learn from them. Although about 35 percent of preschool best friendships are between boys and girls (like Naomi and Eric), by age seven that percentage plummets to virtually 0 percent. From then till puberty the sexes will have little or nothing to do with each other. This is a worldwide phenomenon. Many explanations have been given for this voluntary segregation. One intriguing theory, by psychologist Eleanor Maccoby, Ph.D." at Stanford University, dovetails with my findings on accepting influence. She found that even at very young ages (1/2 years), boys will accept influence only from other boys when they play, whereas girls accept influence equally from girls or boys. At around ages five to seven, girls become fed up with this state of affairs and stop wanting to play with boys. From that age until puberty, our culture (and virtually all others) offers no formal structure for ensuring that boys and girls continue to interact. By the time Naomi and Eric are grown, the difference in their knowledge of homemaking will be apparent. Once a couple move in together or get engaged, the groom-to-be is suddenly immersed in what is probably an alien world. In the Broadway play Defense of the Cave Man, a man says that when he was first married, he saw his wife cleaning the bathroom and asked her, "Are we moving?" In his bachelor days, that was the only time he and his roommates bothered to clean the bathroom. Many young husbands discover they have a lot to learn from their wives about maintaining a home.