Are boys and girls different? Obviously. But is this because of inborn differences or is it because girls and boys are socialised differently?
This is not an esoteric matter, but a policy issue that affects children’s lives. For that reason, parents should know something about this debate, especially if they need to counter some of the malign effects that come from it.
If, however, you read any of the scientists who study this topic, you will find nearly all of them saying that the question, as I have posed it, is a bogus one. Genes interact with environment and, most of the time, it is difficult if not impossible to tease out which factors affect which trait. American psychologist Diane Halpern in her book Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities, bends over backward to avoid taking a stance on this question, asserting that “each of the various perspectives on the complex issue of sex and cognition is both right and wrong.”
The problem with this attitude, which is a specious open-mindedness, is that it does not provide any guidance to best practice in either parenting or pedagogy. In The Trouble with Boys, journalist Peg Tyre opens her book with a story of the mother of a six-year-old boy whose teacher was having trouble with him. The teacher complained that the boy, Chance, had to be asked twice when called to circle time, spoke without raising his hand, didn’t like to write for long, and didn’t always pay attention. Her solution was to have Chance put a sticker on a chart whenever he did something wrong, say what he did, and the teacher would write out a daily list of his wrong-doings for his mother to sign.
The mother agreed to this. But, writes Tyre, three weeks later her son came home and handed her the teacher’s note and “collapsed on the ground, convulsed in sobs. Her showed her the list of misdeeds the teacher had written out. ‘Mommy,’ he cried, “I just can’t be good!’”
This anecdote showed me the importance of a teacher knowing what she was doing, especially in relation to boys. In the kindergarten my daughter Jinaki goes to, the boys who want to are allowed to stand and even wander around as they do their various tasks. The school’s owner, who has a five-year-old boy herself, believes that boys typically need to be more active than girls to learn effectively. So I will most likely also enrol my son Kyle, who is now eight months old, there.
In a sense, it doesn’t matter whether male-female differences in children are genetic or social: the reality is what teachers have to deal with in order to teach properly. But the belief can affect how a teacher approaches girls and boys, but especially boys: a teacher who think such traits are social would more than likely try to make boys adapt to her teaching style; a teacher who believes that boys are different from birth would adapt her style to them.
Like I said, the research provides little guidance on this issue and, until Kyle was born, I was prepared to be agnostic. Jinaki is already an atypical girl who likes Spiderman as well as Cinderella, while her brother so far is a typical boy except for being a very placid child. Still, I now know what I will be doing to ensure that both my daughter and my son are true to their inclinations.
