SKIP TO CONTENT

Top Navigation
EXPLORE
Parents

Profile Menu
Your Account 
Login
SUBSCRIBE

1. HOME

2. Toddlers & Preschoolers

3. Development

4. Behavioral Development
5. What Science Really Says About the Differences Between Boys and
Girls

What Science Really Says

About the Differences
Between Boys and Girls
We’ve been told our little boys are naturally more active and aggressive, our girls
innately more caring and cooperative—but some experts beg to differ.
By Gail Cornwall 
October 03, 2018
ADVERTISEMENT
SavePinFBMore
CREDIT: ZOE ADLERSBERG

One chilly morning my 3-year-old son bounced off the walls of our small
home, as well as the couch and the dining-room chairs. In fact, the mini
trampoline bought just for channeling such urges was the one piece of
furniture on which he did not jump. When his shock of orange hair flew
down the hall toward our sleeping newborn, I gave chase. He abruptly
reversed direction and collided with me, stretching my pinky toe out at a
90-degree angle. My brain registered an audible pop just before the icy
fire of pain.

The next day, my foot was so swollen it could hardly bear weight. My son
greeted me with his customary tackle-hug, inadvertently stomping on my
toe and once again eliciting a snapping sound. I turned to my husband,
waved “all done” in baby sign language , and hobbled back to bed. When I
woke, the agony had miraculously vanished. The doctor’s diagnosis: My
son had accidentally dislocated and then relocated my toe.

Even during the most frenetic moments of her “terrific twos,” his older
sister never hit such heights of activity. But she’d climbed inadvisably,
revered dinosaurs, and ogled construction sites with such fervor that I’d
long resisted the “boys will be boys” mentality. However, now that I was
seeing a real gender difference, I wanted to call a spade a spade and join
my friends and family in thinking it all inevitable. Seeing my son’s
rambunctiousness as God’s plan and buying a “Tough like Daddy” T-shirt
sounded much more pleasant than scrutinizing my own behavior and
engaging in hard conversations about gender.

 RELATED:  Boys vs. Girls: How to Tailor Your Parenting Techniques

But I couldn’t gulp down the pink and blue Kool-Aid just yet. After all, my
sample size of two clearly lacked scientific rigor. So I started reading.
Conventional wisdom debunked

The first thing my online search found was a gaggle of experienced

educators asserting that boys and girls act differently. Many of them used
illustrative anecdotes, like that time a 4-year-old girl lovingly swaddled a
dump truck while her male peer wielded a doll like a weapon. Then I
found studies backing them up, with measurable disparities in young
boys’ and girls’ activity levels, play interests, and more. So I knew my
kids weren’t outliers, but I needed more science to figure out if their
gendered behavior was biologically predetermined. I turned to books.

The easiest ones to find told me just what I’d hoped to hear. Popular
authors like Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D., therapist Michael Gurian, and
psychiatrist Louann Brizendine, M.D., say male and female brains are
hardwired to be different, with girls entering the world better equipped for
empathy and communication. In Why Gender Matters, Dr. Sax tells
parents to “work with your child’s innate, gender-based propensities,” like
boys’ naturally superior understanding of systems.

Belief in this traditional narrative is so prevalent that a national child-care

provider sent me and other enrolled parents a newsletter declaring,
“Some behaviors do indeed seem to be hardwired—boys, says the
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), are likely to be physical and
active; girls more likely to be verbal and calm.” There’s just one hiccup:
The AAP article cited actually describes “gender-specific patterns,” not
innate differences. And therein lies the problem.

The power of parenting

I found a separate crop of books offering an alternative perspective and

reached out to some of the authors. Lise Eliot, Ph.D., professor of
neuroscience at Rosalind Franklin University, in North Chicago, and the
author of Pink Brain, Blue Brain, explained the concept of “neural
plasticity” to me. We tend to think of human brains as developing from
birth to grave according to a biological blueprint, but each day our
experiences lead to growth in some circuits and synapses while letting
others lie fallow. This means that when neuroimaging technology shows
gender differences in adult brains, those differences could be biologically
destined to be there, but it’s just as likely they’re because men and
women have had different experiences over the course of their life.
Confusing “brain” with “nature,” she said, is both common and
troublesome.

To tease out what’s chicken and what’s egg, scientists have looked at
very young children, figuring we can more confidently blame differences
on genes and hormones, rather than environment, when they appear in
fetuses or newborns. A pattern emerged from this research, and once it
shifted my mindset, I saw it on the playground and on my living-room
floor.

One study didn’t find any gender discrepancy in newborns’ eye contact,
but when the experiment was repeated four months later with the same
infants, girls had quadrupled their eye contact while boys had only
slightly increased theirs. Ultrasounds during pregnancy show no gender
differences in activity level before birth, and none of the motor milestones
are different between boys and girls in the first two years. But from age 3
and up, the average boy is more active than about two thirds of girls.
Research on toy preference and mental rotation skills tracks the same
course, with a gender gap appearing only after several months of life.

 RELATED:  Who's Easier: Boys or Girls?

What’s going on? Some scientists would say “innate propensities” take a
little while to manifest themselves, but there’s a competing explanation.
Another body of research—in which adults are misled about diapered
genitalia—proves that people treat children differently based on gender,
starting at birth. One study involves parental estimation of babies’
crawling prowess. Mothers who were asked to set up the slope of a ramp
on which their baby could crawl were nearly accurate in predicting boys’
ability but significantly underestimated girls’.

“If parents think girls are less able than boys, they’re not going to present
them with the kind of environment that would enable them to develop
those skills,” says Rosalind Barnett, Ph.D., a senior scientist at the
Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, in Waltham,
Massachusetts, and coauthor of The Truth About Girls and Boys. In other
words, when we tell little girls to “be careful” but comment, “What a boy!”
when our sons attempt the same feat, the stereotype becomes a self-
fulfilling prophecy.

One study discovered that mothers speak to and interact more with infant
and toddler girls, even though the boys are no less responsive. Other
research has found that dads speak more openly with daughters about
sad feelings while using more achievement-oriented words (such
as proud, win, and top) with sons. Dads also sing to girls more, and both
moms and dads spend less time with their boys reading and storytelling,
which are known to build empathy.

Second-guessing old assumptions

Does that mean that the only differences between girls’ and boys’ brains
are the ones we create through socialization? Well, yes and no.
“Neuroscientists have not nailed down any structural or neural-activity
differences except that boys have larger brains proportionate to their
larger average body size,” says Dr. Eliot. Although male brains are
exposed to higher levels of testosterone before and after birth, scientists
disagree about how much that matters. Some cite research suggesting
more testosterone leads to a preference for “boy toys.” But girls who
have practice rotating objects in three dimensions—a skill reinforced by
building sets and video games—can close the gender gap.

How, then, can some experts make such definitive claims about boys’
and girls’ differing brains? Most theories are based on a kernel of truth
but are extrapolated far beyond what scientific standards allow, says Dr.
Eliot. Some studies have too few participants or don’t involve humans.
Others can’t be replicated, or you’ll have five studies saying one thing
while another five suggest the opposite.

Take the well-known “newborn gaze” study conducted at the University of

Cambridge, in England. A researcher presented babies with a mobile and
a human face and reported that male babies spent more time looking at
the mobile and female babies at the face. Many treat the study as clear
evidence of inborn “systemizing” in males and “empathizing” in females,
but others point out flaws, including the fact that the “face” was a
researcher who knew the gender of some of the babies beforehand. Dr.
Eliot offers another example: “Leonard Sax wove a whole theory about
differences in boys’ and girls’ vision based on a study about the retinas of
rats.” But we don’t know this when we see a book entitled Why Gender
Matters  at Barnes & Noble.

The bottom line Where does all this studying of studying leave us? “It
would be a mistake to say there are definitely no innate differences
between boys’ and girls’ brains,” Dr. Eliot says, but the fact that we
haven’t detected any clear ones means they must be extremely subtle. At
the same time, research has shown that social norms—bolstered by
distorted science—act as self-fulfilling prophecies, forcing our kids into
pink and blue boxes.
  RELATED:  Study: Parents Quicker to Identify Gender Diversity in
Boys Than Girls

We worry about our daughters falling behind in the STEM fields, but
treating boys as if they’re hardwired to have trouble expressing emotions
and developing relationships also does them a great disservice, says
Judy Y. Chu, Ed.D., author of When Boys Become Boys.

After digging into gender science, I’m not willing to call my son a spade
and his sisters diamonds, because there’s no proven reason to treat
them differently. So I’ll speak up the next time my friend’s boyfriend
refers to my older daughter as “sweetheart” and my son as “bruiser.” And
I won’t bite my tongue when a mom at the park points to my younger
daughter, saying to her son, “Be careful. She’s a girl.” After all, the
children are listening.

This article originally appeared in Parents Magazine as 'What Science

Really Says About Boys and Girls.'

Parents Magazine

 By Gail Cornwall

Popular in Behavioral
Development


Pin

Opening Up to My Daughter About My History With Drugs and

Alcohol Saved Her From a Fatal Overdose

  Article

Pin

Help Stop Your Kids From Regressing Milestones During the

Pandemic

  Article


Pin

How to See Things From Your Kid's Point of View

  Article

Pin

22 Chore Ideas for Every Type of Kid

  Video

Pin

Why Chores Matter

  Article


Pin

Second-Born Children Are More Likely To Be Rebellious,

According To Science

  Article

Pin

Decoding Your Child's Dramatic Declarations

  Article

Pin

Should You Pump Colostrum?

   Video

Pin

Why Your Toddler Does Not Need to Share With Others

  Article

Pin

I'm a Mom and a Professional Organizer: Here's How I Get My

Kids to Keep Their Stuff in Order

  Article

Pin
 Why Toddlers Always Say "No!"

  Article

Pin

'My Princess Boy': An Interview with Cheryl Kilodavis

  Article

Pin

8 Things I Won't Miss About the Toddler Years

  Article

Pin
 Second-Year Surprise

  Article

Pin

Dr. Alan Greene on Gender Identity Issues

  Article

Pin

What Your Child Learns By Imitating You

  Article

Pin
 Whine? Not! Four Ways to Deal with Whining Children

  Article

Pin

Wacky Toddler Behavior: Thumb-Sucking

  Article

Pin

Managing Toddler Battles

  Article

Pin
 11 Weird Things Your Toddler Does, Explained

  11 Slides

All Topics in Behavioral Development

 FEAR

 DEVELOPMENT PROBLEMS

 MANNERS

 SIBLING RIVALRY

 LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

 BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT

 WRITING

 FRIENDSHIP

 
 MILESTONES

 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT

Comments (1)
ADD COMMENT
Anonymous
November 6, 2019
for heaven's sake, yes little boys and little girls are different. Do we still
really need to talk about this? Ridiculous. it's funny to me how you'll talk
about worrying about the girls falling behind in stem, and yet no one is
worried about the boys falling behind in nursing, or in becoming teachers
and educators. This article reads like nonsense propaganda.
ADVERTISEMENT

Parents
Magazines & More

Learn More
 About Us

 Subscribe this link opens in a new tab

 Customer Service this link opens in a new tab

 Cozi Family Organizer this link opens in a new tab

 Advertise this link opens in a new tab

  Content Licensing this link opens in a new tab

 From Our Sponsors this link opens in a new tab

 Affiliate Program this link opens in a new tab

 Sitemap

Connect
Follow Us
   
Subscribe to Our Newsletter
OTHER MEREDITH SITES
Parents.com is part of the Parents Network. © Copyright 2021 Meredith Corporation. All Rights
Reserved.Privacy Policy this link opens in a new tab Terms of Service this link opens
in
a new tab Ad Choices this link opens in a new tab Web Accessibility this link opens in
a new tab
this link is to an external site that may or may not meet accessibility
guidelines.