LONDON (Reuters) - [size=-1]British men are abandoning their stiff upper lips but still do not wear their hearts on their sleeves like Americans, a new survey showed on Tuesday. [/size]
[size=-1]When it comes to raw emotion, the once buttoned-up Brits are now happy to shed tears quite openly -- but Italians can still "out-sob" them. [/size]
[size=-1]"Thirty percent of all British males have cried in the last month. That is a very high figure," said Peter Marsh, director of the Social Issues Research Center which took the emotional temperature of Britain. [/size]
[size=-1]"Only two percent said they could not remember when they last cried," the head of the independent research group said. [/size]
[size=-1]Long gone is the "No Tears -- We're British" era when emotion was considered distinctly bad form. [/size]
[size=-1]"In our poll of 2,000 people, very few people in their forties or fifties had seen their father cry. Now it is twice as many," he told Reuters. "Seventy-seven percent of men considered crying in public increasingly acceptable." [/size]
[size=-1]Almost half the British men opened the floodgates over a sad movie, book or TV program. Self-pity got 17 percent crying. Nine percent sobbed at weddings. [/size]
[size=-1]"You can see what is happening over the generations. Role models burst into tears at the drop of a hat -- people like (England soccer captain) David Beckham with his New Man image. [/size]
[size=-1]"He had a little cry when he took his son Brooklyn to school for the first time," Marsh said. [/size]
[size=-1]Women's battle for equal rights has certainly had an effect -- both in the workplace and at home. [/size]
Full Story
[size=-1]When it comes to raw emotion, the once buttoned-up Brits are now happy to shed tears quite openly -- but Italians can still "out-sob" them. [/size]
[size=-1]"Thirty percent of all British males have cried in the last month. That is a very high figure," said Peter Marsh, director of the Social Issues Research Center which took the emotional temperature of Britain. [/size]
[size=-1]"Only two percent said they could not remember when they last cried," the head of the independent research group said. [/size]
[size=-1]Long gone is the "No Tears -- We're British" era when emotion was considered distinctly bad form. [/size]
[size=-1]"In our poll of 2,000 people, very few people in their forties or fifties had seen their father cry. Now it is twice as many," he told Reuters. "Seventy-seven percent of men considered crying in public increasingly acceptable." [/size]
[size=-1]Almost half the British men opened the floodgates over a sad movie, book or TV program. Self-pity got 17 percent crying. Nine percent sobbed at weddings. [/size]
[size=-1]"You can see what is happening over the generations. Role models burst into tears at the drop of a hat -- people like (England soccer captain) David Beckham with his New Man image. [/size]
[size=-1]"He had a little cry when he took his son Brooklyn to school for the first time," Marsh said. [/size]
[size=-1]Women's battle for equal rights has certainly had an effect -- both in the workplace and at home. [/size]
Full Story
