The Feminine Sense of Time

So engaged in conversation with friends in a Hoboken pub was she, my daughter, that she allowed barely enough time to get to the Newark train station to pick up her boyfriend at 5 PM. Unexpected traffic delays caused her to be a half hour late. He was not happy. Women run late; men like to be on time. This womanly tardiness is rooted in two moral strengths. First, women are more deeply engaged in the moment, in the current task or conversation; they are more "incarnated" and surrendered to the flow of the "now." The male has a more pronounced tendency to abstraction and thus more easily distances himself, emotionally and cognitively, from the moment in order to relate to schedules, appointments and timetables. My wife normally runs late because she is so involved in the cooking, gardening, cleaning, shopping or child care that she loses track of the more abstract schedule and timeline. A second moral strength is that the female is more involved and invested in other people: getting the kids ready, cleaning and cooking for the family, shopping for presents, and so forth. The male is more selfish, isolated and individualistic. The father can't understand why the mother can't get herself and their four kids ready on time; he has no such problem. Feminine tardiness is rooted in two moral strength: a deeper, more intense involvement in the moment and a broader investment in the needs and concerns of others. The male is abstracted and self-centered and therefore gets to that meeting or mass on time, most of the time. And so, we have a more masculine and a more feminine sense of time. It is not that one is superior to the other: they are different and destined to compliment each other. But in our industrial, technological society, the masculine is privileged. Industrial or mechanical time is measured precisely by the clock, by numbers; more primitive societies work out of a more organic sense of time. The one privileges control and efficiency; other is more creative, nurturing, flexible, fluid and contemplative. Cultures, like individuals, differ on this spectrum: Hispanic cultures are notorious (among us Angolos) for their loose and light sense of time. UPS, my employer for many years, was the epitome of punctuality: you just did not arrive for a 9 O'clock meeting at 9:01; if the plane's wheels rolled one second after scheduled time there was hell to pay. President Bush once locked the door on Colin Powell who arrived a few minutes late for a cabinet meeting. Nor are all men punctual and all women late. In my own family of origin, for example, my father, who was born on a farm (organic), worked as a union organizer for the UAW, a very industrial setting. We ate dinner every night at 6:00 PM, not 5:59 or 6:01; he arrived at 8 O'Clock mass at 8:00, never 7:59 or 8:01. He was quietly inflexible on this and my mother was entirely deferential. My own sisters emulate this habit and are reliably punctual or masculine in their timing. I have not been successful in eliciting from my wife the deference my mom granted dad. My daughter's boyfriend stands even less chance than I did in winning this battle. Sometimes, the wiser course is to recognize and surrnder to the moral strength of the other.