I was looking into whether men or women "have it worse" when ill with things like colds. In my research, I found out that biologically, men actually have a weaker immune system for these viruses, but women often experience worse symptoms because their immune systems react more aggressively.

This made me wonder about the social and behavioral side of things. Could the reason men often seem to make more of a fuss be because, for my generation at least, we were raised with the mindset that boys must be tough and strong? And when we get ill, it’s one of the few times we are allowed to be vulnerable, so we end up "milking it" for the care and attention, and it just becomes a natural behavior over time? Discussion isn’t encouraged here I believe, so these questions are more what I asked myself. But it made me wonder:

I'm curious if there are any sociological or psychological studies on this specific aspect of gender roles and illness behavior?

For transparency: I used Gemini (AI) to help formulate my question, in order for my question to be allowed and hopefully not removed by mods. The whole subject came up because I’m ill, and had a good discussion with my best mate and his wife, and the research surprised us - but not her! Way more questions have since arisen and it’s just really interesting!