Preschool

Twenty-five years ago, everybody was worried about girls. They didn’t have the same opportunities as boys. They had self-esteem problems. We underestimated their physical and intellectual abilities. Those concerns were legitimate and we made great strides in improving our treatment of girls. Now they outnumber males in higher education. They are playing “male” games like rugby and hockey, and most parents see their daughters as capable of almost anything previously thought of as the domain of boys and men.

These days our collective concern has shifted to boys, particularly with respect to education (see Learning Curved), but in a more general sense as well. Authors have raised the alarm with books such as The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons from Falling Behind in School and Life by Michael Gurian and Kathy Stevens, and Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood by William Pollack. Indeed, statistics show that many typical childhood problems are more common in boys. Boys are more likely to be injured, physically assaulted, murdered, diagnosed with a childhood psychological disorder or to run afoul of the law. News stories about school shootings or gang violence, usually perpetrated by young men, are often accompanied by concerns about how some of our boys are turning out.

It’s a boy thing

But here’s the rub. The discussion about the girl problem was unabashedly positive, at least in terms of how we viewed the girls themselves. Girls didn’t need to be fixed; we were going to make the world better for them.

With boys, we have to fight a tendency to think that there is something wrong with them that needs to be fixed. It’s not black and white, but let’s face it: We find it harder to celebrate certain attributes associated with males. Competitiveness, for example, is not highly valued in children. Aggressiveness has been blamed for problems such as spousal abuse and war. Even the word testosterone is used pejoratively at times.

This negativity creeps into our descriptions of boyish behaviour, says Michael Reist, a teacher at Robert F. Hall Catholic Secondary School in Caledon East, Ont., who has extensively researched boys’ developmental and learning needs. “We use words like ‘fidgety’ and ‘hyper’ to describe the natural behaviour of boys,” he says. “The average girl is about a year and a half ahead of the average boy in terms of biological, social and cognitive development. As a result, we tend to think of boys as immature. But, actually, 12-year-old boys who can’t pay attention and sit still as well as girls are not immature, they’re just on a different developmental timeline — one that is completely normal for them.”

This is not to suggest that society is totally stacked against boys. Many young guys out there are doing very well. But there is less talk of celebrating the natural state and energy of boyhood. We don’t hear phrases like “You go, boy!” or “Boy power!” The risk is that boys may think we see them as not good enough, that there is something wrong with their natural tendencies and urges.

Originally published in Today's Parent, November 2007