I received a newsletter from the website: childtrends.org which piqued my interest considering it is a much talked about subject in my family. Basically we ask, “what the heck is going on with boys”. Well Child Trends took a stab at it and analyzed a 2010-2011 National Survey of Children’s Health and supplemented the data with additional findings from scientific literature on gender disparities in children and youth. What they came up with were 5 explanations for the “issue with boys”. Below are the summaries, to view the complete explanations of each of the summaries and find some good resources you can click here to visit the Child Trends page.
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From a health perspective, being male is associated with a number of vulnerabilities, relative to females, from birth onward.
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Males perform less well, academically, than females, at least up until post-secondary schooling.
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Hispanic and black boys and youth, with some exceptions, generally experience worse outcomes than their male white counterparts.
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In some cases, the gender gap is wider, or narrower, among children and youth in one racial/ethnic group than it is among children and youth overall.
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Families, schools, and neighborhoods have opportunities to improve boys’ outcomes.
I wonder if having more men teachers and other areas where men can be role models…libraries; etc. How much do we really support boys’ growth as great human beings …who will listen, guide, teach, not just follow some ‘macho’ image that is thrust upon them all the time…..it’s amazing to see that every high school and college “girl” wears the same hair do (long and straight). the same outfit (jeans and high boots), et al. I wonder how much of that comes from having been raised on MTV and raising the art of being a fashion model to being a role model for young girls….the Barbie doll idea. So what do we do to raise good boys….? ARE WOMEN THE ONLY PEOPLE QUESTIONING : What do we do about boys?
I tried to get my retired husband to consider volunteering in elementary schools by just spending 1/2 a week listening to a little boy read out loud….this would be in the OFF-GOLF season…..and he just laughed at me. To me, having a warm, interested, responsive ‘granpa’ helping me to improve school skills would be the greatest!