Are Boys the Weaker Sex? ; ( U.S. News & World Report) 
Anna Mulrine; 07-30-2001. 

Sandy Descourouez worries about her sons. The eldest, 18-year-old Greg, was never the chatty type, but he became positively withdrawn following his parents' nasty divorce a decade ago. Last year, Greg's problems erupted into the open: He was arrested for stealing a golf cart and caught smoking marijuana. David, 13--loving, messy, and disorganized- -struggles with borderline grades and attention deficit disorder. Sandy's baby, 2 1/2-year-old Luke, is a one-boy demolition derby. But his reckless energy isn't her main cause of concern. While the toddler strings together sound effects with reasonably good results, he rarely utters a word. 

Sandy initially took Greg's silence for male reserve--that is, until she happened on his journal. The teenager's
diary roiled with frustration and pain. Perhaps to positive effect: Greg wrote a letter to his absent father and
reached out for help. "I don't know how to talk about these things," he wrote, "and I know you don't either,
so maybe we can help each other." 

Sandy's "boys will be boys" sighs gave way to bewilderment--and fear. The Aurora, Ill., real-estate broker
realized that all three sons had problems very distinct from those she had encountered in her daughter, a
champion speller; problems that needed attention.

The travails of the Descourouez family mirror America's struggle with its sons. "We are experiencing a crisis
of the boy next door," says William Pollack, a clinical psychologist at Harvard University and author of Real
Boys. Across the country, boys have never been in more trouble: They earn 70 percent of the D's and F's that teachers dole out. They make up two thirds of students labeled "learning disabled." They are the culprits in a whopping 9 of 10 alcohol and drug violations and the suspected perpetrators in 4 out of 5 crimes that end up in juvenile court. They account for 80 percent of high school dropouts and attention deficit disorder
diagnoses. And they are less likely to go to college than ever before. By 2007, universities are projected to
enroll 9.2 million women to 6.9 million men.

Truth to power. That's not what America expects from its boys. "Maybe because men enjoy so much power and prestige in society, there is a tendency to see boys as shoo-ins for success," says child psychologist Michael Thompson, coauthor of Raising Cain. "So people see in boys signs of strength where there are none, and they ignore all of the evidence that they are in trouble." 

But that evidence is getting tougher than ever to overlook. Today, scientists are discovering very real
biological differences that can make boys more impulsive, more vulnerable to benign neglect, less efficient
classroom learners--in sum, the weaker sex. "The notion of male vulnerability is so novel, but the biological
facts support it," says Sebastian Kraemer, a child psychiatrist in London and author of a recent British
Medical Journal article on male fragility. "We' re only just now beginning to understand the underlying
weakness of men, for so many centuries almost universally projected onto women." 

What's more, social pressure often compounds biological vulnerability. "Boys today are growing up with
tremendous expectations but without adequate emotional fuel or the tools they need to succeed in school or
sustain deep relationships," says Eli Newberger, a pediatrician at Boston Children's Hospital and author of
The Men They Will Become. Girls now outnumber boys in student government, honor societies, school
newspapers, and debating clubs. A recent study found girls ahead of boys in almost every measure of
well-being: Girls feel closer to their families, have higher aspirations, and even boast better assertiveness
skills. "I regularly see girls who are both valedictorian and captain of the soccer team, but I almost never see
that in boys," says Leonard Sax, a family physician and psychologist in Poolesville, Md. 

Schools are taking note, too--and they are beginning to act. Early childhood specialists, concerned with ever
accelerating curriculum demands, are advocating delayed entrance of boys into kindergarten, to give them
time to catch up with girls developmentally. Other districts are experimenting with single-sex classrooms
within coed schools, in the hopes that all-boy classes will allow boys to improve standardized test scores in
reading and writing, much the way girls have narrowed the gap in math and science. (Currently, the average
11th-grade boy writes with the proficiency of the average eighth-grade girl.) In response to charges of the
"feminization" of the classroom--including, critics argue, female teachers with too little tolerance for the
physicality of boys--schools are beginning to re-examine their attitudes toward male activity levels and even
revamp disciplinary techniques. 

The measures aren't without skeptics. "Isn't it ironic that it's only been in the last two decades that we've
really considered making schools equitable for girls," says David Sadker, an American University professor
and pioneer in research on girls' treatment in the classroom. "And now people are already saying, `Whoa, too much time on girls. Let' s get back to boys.' " 

Pole position. Yet the latest research not only documents boys' unexpected vulnerabilities but indicates that
they can be traced back to the womb. While more boys than girls are conceived (the speculation is that sperm carrying the male's Y chromosomes swim faster than those carrying the larger X), this biological pole position doesn't last long, says Kraemer. Perhaps to offset the speed advantage, when mothers experience stress, male embryos are more likely to perish. The male fetus is at greater risk of peril from almost all obstetric complications, including brain damage, cerebral palsy, and premature birth. By the time a baby boy enters the world, he is trailing the average girl, developmentally, by six weeks. 

Male newborns are also more emotionally demonstrative than females- -a fact that has been shown
experimentally despite the cultural stereotype to the contrary. When asked to rate photos for expressiveness, adults who had not been told the children's sex were far more likely to dub boys "more intensely expressive" than girls. And when researchers intentionally misidentified the boys as girls, adults gave the boys presumed to be girls the highest expressiveness marks. In other words, their actual perceptions trumped the stereotypes. 

What's particularly interesting, says Thompson, is that while there is evidence that boys may feel more stress
in emotional situations, they routinely show less. When placed within earshot of a crying baby, boys have
higher increases in heart rate and sweatier palms than girls. But their behavior belies their biological reaction:
Their typical response is to turn off the speaker broadcasting the crying. 

Judy Chu, a researcher at Harvard University, has also noted how boys' behavior often masks emotional
inclinations. "Boys are a lot more attuned and a lot more sensitive than people give them credit for, " she
says. Chu spent two years having conversations with a group of boys in a preschool classroom outside
Boston. At age 4, the boys candidly discussed their feelings about subjects that ranged from sharing toys to
hurt feelings. "They were insightful in ways I hadn' t expected--so articulate and attentive," says Chu. Over
time, however, as the expectations of parents, teachers, and peers compounded, the boys' behavior changed. "They became inattentive, indirect, and inarticulate, " says Chu, "and self-conscious about what other boys thought." Chu recalls one child who was friends with a preschool group of kids who had dubbed themselves "the mean team." "I'm friends with all of the girls," he told Chu. "But if Bill [the unofficial leader of the team] finds that out, he'll fire me from the team." As the result of these observations, Chu firmly believes that boys lose their voice, much as girls do in adolescence, and begin to camouflage feelings and behaviors that might put them in conflict with other boys. 

Their friendships also begin to change. "We associate girls with the sharing of secrets, the emotional
intimacy, and boys with the sports and activity-oriented friendships," says Niobe Way, a professor of
psychology at New York University. "But what's interesting is that these very tough boys talk about wanting
friends to share their secrets with, to confide in." 

She recalls Malcolm, great in sports, admired by the other boys. One day, Malcolm learned that one of his
closest friends had been talking about him and began to cry. "The conventional wisdom is that gossip and
arguments with friends don't affect boys or that they'll just `fight it out,' then let it roll off their backs," says
Way. But that' s often a misconception. In Malcolm's case, he announced that he was giving up on his
friends ("They won't keep your secrets, and they' ll stab you in the back")--an attitude he maintained
throughout high school.

When boys get emotional, parents and other adults often encourage them to tone it down. "People come to
me time and time again saying, `My son, he's so sensitive,' " says Thompson. "What they don't realize is that
it's not the exception. It's the norm." And so, parents react differently to upset daughters and sons. "The
actions can be as subtle as asking a girl what's wrong when she's crying but patting a boy on the head and
saying, `You're OK; now get back out there.' " The result can be emotional isolation that starts in boyhood
and plagues men in middle age, often with emotional, and even physical, consequences. "Every now and
then I catch myself saying things to my sons that I wouldn't say to my daughter--like `Be tough, don't cry,' "
worries Descourouez. "Now I'm trying not to say anything to them that I wouldn' t say to my daughter. They
can decide what they want to cry about." 

Action figures. But despite the evidence of boys' sensitivity, not all of the old stereotypes are unfounded. As
much as day care provider Marcy Shrage encourages sensitivity in her boys, she has noticed how they crave
action. At her home in Lawrenceville, N.J., she cares for five boys under the age of 4. She piles them all into
her minivan and takes them on drives. She'll stop for senior citizens in crosswalks to model good behavior
and take them on long walks through the woods. But, the karate black belt admits, the boys do get most
excited when she teaches them martial-arts moves. And though she doesn't allow toy weapons in the house,
"There are plenty of days when they'll bite their sandwiches into the shape of guns and start firing away at
each other." 

It is the unexpected combination of physical aggressiveness and emotional vulnerability that now fascinates
scientists at the University of Pennsylvania's Brain Behavior Laboratory, who are looking for explanations in
the neurons. According to center director Ruben Gur, they have found some intriguing differences in brain
structure--anatomical disparities that make it harder for boys to process information and even read faces but
easier for them to excel at gross motor skills and visualize objects in three dimensions. 

Women's brains are, on average, 11 percent smaller than men's, says Gur. And while there appears to be a
subtle correlation between brain volume and IQ, he adds, there is no difference in the IQs of males and
females. "So we have to ask how women manage to have the same IQ in a proportionally smaller brain." The answer is that female brains are not simply a smaller version of male brains. From a strictly evolutionary
standpoint, the female brain is a bit more finely developed, says Gur. Brains are composed of gray matter
(where information processing is done), white matter (long fibers covered in fat that, much like rubber-coated wire, transmit electrical impulses from brain to body), and spinal fluid (which acts as a buffer from the skull). The most recent research shows that males have less gray matter and more white matter than do females. And the right and left hemispheres of the brain are linked by a bundle of nerves that helps the two sides of the brain communicate. In women, this bundle--the corpus callosum- -is thicker. It's the difference, researchers explain, between a narrow path in the woods and a two-lane highway.

As a result, says Gur, female brains tend to be more facile when it comes to verbal skills. This may explain
why girls utter their first words earlier, string together complete sentences first, and generally surpass boys in
tests that involve verbal fluency. "The female brain is an easier brain to teach," says Michael Gurian, a family
therapist and author of Boys and Girls Learn Differently. "It's harder for the male brain to learn." It may also
explain why, when Sandy Descourouez subscribed to a "developmental milestones" E-mail update from a
babyfood site, she learned her son Luke was, like many boys, a "late talker." 

Males do have more white matter, however--with longer, more complex nerve networks from their brains to
the tips of their toes--allowing boys like Luke to excel at gross motor skills. And their greater volume of spinal fluid, says Gur, also means that male brains are built to sustain blows. "Thank goodness for that," says
Descourouez, recalling Luke's penchant for spinning in circles near the fireplace.

Reptilian feelings? There appear to be brain-related differences in male and female emotions as well. The
latest research suggests that the emotional brain is "more primitive" in men. Women make use of an
emotional processing center adjacent to the speech areas of the brain, which makes it easier for them to link
emotions to speech. The female brain is also "architecturally finer--a later arrival in evolution," says Gur. Men make use of an older limbic system "present in more primitive creatures," often known as the reptilian brain. Which means that male emotion is often more closely linked with action.

These are just the sort of details that the "Raising Sons" seminar participants at the Parenting Center in Fort
Worth are gathering to learn. Moms and dads circle their chairs and share their fears, trying to come to some sort of agreement on what constitutes "normal" boy behavior: Why is their son struggling in school? Why won't he listen? Is he too sensitive? Too taken with guns and violent video games? 

Pam Young debates with fellow "Raising Sons" classmate Brian Rice about her sons' penchant for wrestling.
"They seem to know what drives me crazy," she says, conceding that it's also their way of bonding with dad.
Rice, by contrast, worries that his son doesn't wrestle enough.

Another parent wonders aloud where his son's high spiritedness ends and brattiness begins. "I'm curious
about the back talk," he inquires. "I want my son to be an independent thinker, but I also want him to have
respect." Young leans in, nodding in agreement. "Yes," she says. "My son is very independent, then very
dependent for approval." 

In class, parents learn about the selective "pruning" of brain cells that scientists believe can lead to
impulsivity--and that is thought to occur more rigorously in adolescent boys than girls. "It would explain why
my son acts like a windshield wiper sometimes," says Young. "He's on, then he's off. He gets it, then he
doesn't." 

Later, a facilitator asks, "What's the only emotion that it's OK for boys to have?" The class pauses for a
moment, then answers virtually in unison: "anger." Maybe that's why we have so many angry boys, the
facilitator suggests. And so the parents learn how to teach their sons to match words with feelings, to build a
vocabulary for the emotions that they often have trouble expressing.

Let's get physical. The teachers at Thomas Edison Elementary School in St. Joseph, Mo., have begun to put
some of the brain science to the test. Three years ago, when third-grade teacher Denise Young asked the
boys in her class a question, she would get frustrated if they didn't respond, and simply move on. Today, she
gives them at least 60 seconds to "process" the question. "They need more time to stop, switch gears, and
respond," says Young. "But they didn't have it, and I think that's why a lot of boys have gotten into trouble
in the past." She also gives them "stress balls" to squeeze while they' re reading or working out a problem. "It seems to help them engage when they're also doing something physical," she says.

On a typical day, her children stand by their desks as they complete work sheets and work on projects. That's because there is now a greater understanding, says principal Debbie Murphy, of the activity level and
physicality of their school's boys. "There was a child who just couldn't sit still in music class, and we
decided, well, if it's not going to bother anyone, it's fine if he stands at the back of the room." 

Murphy also tried something new during her disciplinary chats with the boys. "I will not make the children
talk when they're angry, for starters. Boys, in particular, just have trouble verbalizing when they're upset."
Once they've cooled down, Murphy takes them for a stroll. "I find boys have an easier time talking if they're
walking, too--it seems to tap into something in their brains," she says. In three years, Edison Elementary has
watched its test scores skyrocket from what Murphy calls "ghetto statistics" to among the top 10 percent in
the state. Incidents of in-school suspension have decreased from 300 to 22 this year.

The controversial drugging of boys also appears related to fundamental temperamental differences. Family
physician Sax became alarmed when, increasingly, he was asked to prescribe Ritalin to otherwise healthy
boys who simply couldn't sit still through long lessons. But the fact that boys are prescribed medicines and
still fail at twice the rate of girls has given him pause. One of his patients, Andrew Yost, was a bright
8-year-old but uninspired by school and constantly getting into spats with his teachers. Sax suspected ADD
and suggested Andrew' s family consult with a child psychiatrist from the National Institutes of Health. The
specialist confirmed the diagnosis and prescribed Ritalin.

When Sax encountered Andrew again several years later, he had indeed shown dramatic improvement. But it was not the result of the drugs. The difference, according to Andrew's parents, was that they had enrolled
him in an all-boys school. "The teachers just seem to understand boy behaviors," says his father, David.
"We tried so much before that, but now, I think he's where he should be." Andrew no longer takes any
medications and, he adds, "I don't worry as much about what girls think." 

Other school districts are experimenting with voluntary single-sex classrooms within coed schools. "Parents
are showing up in droves to sign up for the classes," says Anthony Basanese, middle school principal in
Pellston, Mich. This fall, fully half of the sixth-grade class will be enrolled in single-sex classes, meeting
throughout the day for coed lunch periods and extracurricular activities. "Parents like it because they see
their kids doing better in school."

While American University's Sadker worries about the declining presence of male teachers--"down from 20
percent when I was a boy to 15 percent of all elementary school teachers now"--he is also wary of single- sex education. "Why aren't we fixing coed classes instead of running away from them? If we want a democracy that lives and works together, don't we also want one that learns together?"

Too much too soon. But many boys may need a substantial boost in schooling, say Sax and other specialists
advocating a later start in kindergarten for boys. "The early curriculum is more accelerated than ever before, " says Sax. "Boys are expected to do too much too soon--their brains aren't ready for it." The result, he adds, is too often a lifelong struggle with school. "They begin their school careers in `the dumb group.' They're frustrated with their lack of ability, they start disliking school, and they begin to avoid it. We're seeing that more than ever now." 

The extra year before kindergarten would allow boys to catch up. " Not all girls are precocious, and not all
boys are delayed," says Sax. "But I've come to the conclusion that later enrollment would solve 80 percent of the problems we see with boys and school today." 

Descourouez is considering holding Luke back from kindergarten. "His speech isn't up to speed," she
worries, "and I don't want school to be a miserable experience for him." School is no pleasure for her son
David, but she's determined to nurture the tenderness she sees in him. "He designs computer screens that
say, `I love you.' I can' t remember the last time Greg said that to me." And she vows not to disregard the
silence of her sons. "When they can't find the words for their emotions, I try to help them," she says. As they
find the words, she hopes they will break the old patterns--and become husbands and fathers who talk. 



Boys earn 70 percent of the D's and F's doled out by teachers.

Boys make up two thirds of learning-disabled students.

Girls outnumber boys in student councils and debate clubs.

Boys are the culprits in 9 of 10 alcohol and drug violations.

Boys are twice as likely as girls to be held back a grade in school.

By 2007, girls may outnumber boys in college nearly 3 to 2.



For more information

Real Boys Workbook by William Pollack. Outlines "Some Do's and Don' ts With Boys." Also specific tips for talking to sensitive sons.

Speaking of Boys by Michael Thompson. Raising Cain coauthor answers "the most asked questions about
raising sons," delving into topics such as male puberty and underage drinking.

The Men They Will Become by Eli Newberger. A thoughtful look at the emotional tug-of-war within boys.

Boys and Girls Learn Differently! by Michael Gurian. The latest on boys' and girls' thinking styles.

Anna Mulrine; ; Anna Mulrine, Are Boys the Weaker Sex?. , U.S. News & World Report, 07-30-2001, pp 40.