It seems that levels of prolactin drop at about the time a young boy enters adolescence. This physical difference tells us that a man will be less likely to access his tears in grief due in some part to physiological reasons. I can remember the distance I had from emotional tears as an adolescent. I can now understand this in a different way, knowing that a part of that change was probably physiological. This difference can be seen around the world in various cultures and is not limited to North America.
Men tend to cry less following a loss.
Another physical difference is provided by research which indicates that men and women have significant differences in brain structure. One of these differences was reported in Time magazine in an article which described the corpus callosum as thicker in women's brains than in men's. The corpus callosum is a structure that connects the two hemispheres of the brain. One hypothesis theorizes that this difference gives a woman a greater connection between her verbal capacity and her feelings, and leaves a man less able to verbalize feeling states. If this hypothesis is true, it would help explain why men tend toward activity in engaging their grief.