This seems rather politically incorrect. From The Telegraph:

And almost a fifth of women say they feel no sympathy at all for their partners' "man flu".

But men, by contrast, say they are prepared to take time off work to care for their suffering wives or girlfriends, cooking meals and cleaning the home.

A poll found that women were far less likely to sit by their man's bedside mopping his brow than the traditional stereotype suggests.

More than half (52 per cent) of women polled said that they lose sympathy with their husband or boyfriend within five minutes of his first complaint about feeling under the weather.

Some 18 per cent said that they start from an unsympathetic point of view, according to the survey carried out for carried out for the makers of Lemsip Max Stength.

But men claimed to be far more sympathetic with 64 per cent saying they would offer to cook dinner and 70 per cent said they would be sympathetic.

Thoughts:

1. It may be a shoddy poll. Of course, you can say that about anything until you look into it.

2. This may be indicative more of the attitude in Britain than the US.

3. The men and women may simply be lying, or wrong, about how (un)sympathetic they would be.

4. It may also be approximately true.

If I had to guess: I think people often exaggerate for polls and surveys (women, for example, downplay number of sexual parters, while men tend to maximize the number), but probably don't lie outright to the same degree. Here, I suspect that women today have an incentive not to be seen as doting on a man, whereas men will be lauded for caring about their women. So it may be that they still uncovered a real trend, but not nearly as pronounced as those surveyed indicated.

Yet my own experiences don't indicate any such experience: I've certainly gone far out of my way to help sick girlfriends, and they have been every bit sweet, kind, sympathetic and caring (if not more so, in some cases) towards me under similar circumstances. (Of course I believe I have, quite honestly, been extremely fortunate in regards to the character of the women I have dated, so my sample may not be representative of the women they polled.)

Last night, my girl & I were watching "Bend It Like Beckham", and she remarked, casually, that British girls slept around a lot. I asked her how she knew this, and if this was an unfair characterization. She pointed out she'd spent a year among them. So perhaps this is a real trend in Britain, which is far more "progressive" in certain ways than the US. (And where, she tells me, the guys often spend more time in bars, etc -- and thus may also come across as deserving of less sympathy, I wonder?) There are huge social, political, and religious differences between the groups, which may be a factor here.

Any other observations?