...These are the kinds of questions asked by anxious parents and, increasingly, academic researchers. Boyhood studies—virtually unheard of a few years ago—has taken off, with a shelf full of books already published, more on the way, and a new journal devoted to the subject. Much of the focus so far has been on boys falling behind academically, paired with the notion that school is not conducive to the way boys learn. What motivates boys, the argument goes, is different from what motivates girls, and society should adjust accordingly.

Not everyone buys the boy talk. Some critics, in particular the American Association of University Women, contend that much of what passes for research about boyhood only reinforces stereotypes and arrives at simplistic conclusions: Boys are competitive! Boys like action! Boys hate books! They argue that this line of thinking miscasts boys as victims and ignores the very real problems faced by girls.

But while this debate is far from settled, the field has expanded to include how marketers target boys, the nature of boys' friendships, and a host of deeper, more philosophical issues, all of which can be boiled down, more or less, to a single question: Just what are boys, anyway?

Labels: adolescence, boys, childhood, children, culture, gender, gender differences

posted by Eve at 4:05 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

A ground-breaking series of studies, published next month, show liberal attitudes towards the make-up of the family, religion and cultural integration among the modern generation of girls and young women.

The survey, which questioned a representative sample of 1,109 seven to 21 year-olds across the UK, found that a third of girls in the younger age group thought they would be "grown up" by the age of 15, while 90 per cent of 16 to 21-year-olds regarded themselves as "grown up".

Girls were generally positive about marriage but less than half thought it should come before parenthood. One in four thought it was "OK to get married several times", rising to a third in the 16 to 21 age range.

One finding suggested that some teenagers actively plan to become single mothers. Of the girls questioned who had left schools and were unemployed, almost half (45 per cent) expected to have a baby before they were 21.

Labels: adolescence, childhood, children, culture, family structure, Marriage, out-of-wedlock births, remarriage, United Kingdom

posted by Eve at 3:28 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Boys are up to three times more likely to be treated for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as girls; and the prescription of antipsychotic drugs to children — mostly boys — has gone up by 600 percent in the last few years, says psychologist Anthony Rao.

Has boyhood become an illness?

Mr. Rao, author of "The Way of Boys: Raising Healthy Boys in a Challenging and Complex World," thinks we're treating it as such.

"The problem really isn't the boys," Mr. Rao says. "It's our expectations of them."

Young boys need frequent breaks for physical play and release; they often read and write better standing up than sitting down; many find eye contact threatening; and they naturally prefer "doing" and "seeing" over "listening" and "talking," he says.

But little of what they crave in terms of learning styles and physical needs fits into the traditional preschool or school day, where physical education and active recess time are at an all-time low. ...

"Ours has become a culture where we medicate a range of behaviors even in kids as young as 2 and 3 years old," says Dr. Jerome Groopman, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a staff writer for the New Yorker.

Labels: childhood, children, gender differences

posted by Eve at 1:42 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...Education policy makers will find more cause for embarrassment in "NurtureShock." Drop-out programs don't work. Neither do anti-drug programs. The most popular of them, D.A.R.E (Drug Abuse Resistance ­Education), developed in 1983 by the Los Angeles ­Police Department, has become a more familiar sight in ­American schools than algebra class. By 2000, 80% of American school districts were using D.A.R.E. materials in some form. Now, after extensive study, comes the news: The program has no long-term, and only mild short-term, effects. Oh, and those tests that school districts use to determine giftedness in young ­children? They're just about useless. According to Mr. Bronson and Ms. Merryman, early IQ tests predict later ­achievement less than half the time. Between ages 3 and 10, about two-thirds of children will experience a rise or drop of 15 points or more.

You might assume from these examples that the ­authors want to make a point about our national ­gullibility in the face of faddish science. Unfortunately, they deconstruct yesterday's wisdom at the same time that they embrace today's—even when research is on the order of "do-we-really-need-a-$50,000-study-to-tell-us-this?" or of dubious practical value. Kids lie, they ­inform us. In fact, 4-year-olds lie once every hour. Still, Mr. Bronson and Ms. Merryman are impressed by ­research showing that "lying is an advanced skill," ­supposedly demonstrating both social and cognitive sophistication. ...

Given how often last year's science has become ­today's boondoggle, Mr. Bronson and Ms. Merryman's analysis would have benefited from a dose of ­skepticism. Yes, social science has become more ­rigorously empirical in recent decades. A lot of the findings described in "NurtureShock" might even be true. But that doesn't mean that we have the remotest idea how to translate such findings into constructive parental behavior or effective public programs.

Labels: adolescence, childhood, children, parenting

posted by Eve at 5:13 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Here is an experiment you don’t want to try at home.

Show a toy — a doll, say, or a model boat — to a toddler and explain that it it’s something special you’ve had since you were little. Ask the child to be “very careful” with it. Hand over the toy, which appears to be in fine condition, except that you’ve secretly rigged it to break spectacularly as soon as the child handles it.

When your precious toy falls apart, express regret by mildly saying, “Oh, my.” Then sit still and observe the child.

The point is not to permanently traumatize anyone — the researchers who performed this experiment quickly followed it with a ritual absolving the child of blame. But first, for 60 seconds after the toy broke, the psychologists recorded every reaction as the toddlers squirmed, avoided the experimenter’s gaze, hunched their shoulders, hugged themselves and covered their faces with their hands.

It was part of a long-term study at the University of Iowa to isolate the effects of two distinct mechanisms that help children become considerate, conscientious adults. One mechanism, measured in other experiments testing toddlers’ ability to resist temptations, is called effortful self-control — how well you can think ahead and deliberately suppress impulsive behavior that hurts yourself and others.

The other mechanism is less rational and is especially valuable for children and adults with poor self-control. It’s the feeling measured in that broken-toy experiment: guilt, or what children diagnose as a “sinking feeling in the tummy.” ...

In Dr. Kochanska’s latest studies, published in the August issue of The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, she and colleagues found that 2-year-olds who showed more chagrin during the broken-toy experiment went on to have fewer behavioral problems over the next five years. That was true even for the ones who scored low on tests measuring their ability to focus on tasks and suppress strong desires to act impulsively.

Labels: childhood, children, culture, parenting

posted by Eve at 4:30 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Jon Rowe argues against both me and Robert P. George in favor of a libertarian position in which no-one gets married but civil unions are available for all. I sure understand the theoretical reasoning for this, but I have two objections.

The first is simply that there are some minimal tangible social goods associated with marriage that I believe would be enormously beneficial for gays and straights: the institution encourages stability and commitment in an emotional and sexual world which often pulls us away from that. It encourages shared sacrifice; it instills the disciplines of shared living; it promotes thrift; it integrates gay people into their own families and society; it harms no-one. In that sense I'm a weak libertarian, believing in a minimal state that can nonetheless encourage core shared values and social goods and treats the equal inclusion of minorities as something worth sacrificing for. That's the social conservative side of marriage equality - and the evolution of gay culture even in the past decade shows how that could occur, especially as the first generation of gay kids grows up knowing in advance that marriage is an option.

In fact, a great deal of this symbolism has to do with gay kids more than adults.

Labels: adolescence, childhood, civil unions, gay marriage, government interest in marriage, Marriage

posted by Eve at 7:11 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...Many parents don't quite get this theory. Last summer in the New York Times, Tina Kelley reported how camp officials and counselors are besieged by nervous, high-maintenance parents, calling about bunk placement, private lessons and special cereals and vitamins for their children. It is not uncommon, according to the article, for parents to smuggle cellphones to their sons or daughters against the rules of a camp. Clearly, some parents don't know how to let go.

Much of this has to do with the modern mania for minimizing risk. A Girl Scout leader in California recalls how, as a child, she broke her arm on two separate occasions. Now, because parents become outraged and litigious at the crunch of bones, the Girl Scout camps where she works forbid even the climbing of trees.

Parents, however, deserve some sympathy. They are making adjustments of their own. At first, the absence of children at camp seems like a reminder of married life before children arrived -- a time of dates, movies and unmonitored friskiness. But soon it dawns that the absence of children is not a reminder but a preview -- the glimpse of a time when children no longer come home. In an empty house, it quickly becomes clear how much of a couple's conversation weaves around their children -- how much of their own lives has become an investment in the lives they produced. ...

So this is the independence we seek for our children -- to turn our closest relationships into acquaintances. Of course, I knew this getting into parenthood. But the reality remains shocking. For a time, small hands take your own -- children look upward, and you fill their entire universe. They remain, to you, the most important things in the world. To them, over time, you become one important thing among many. And then an occasional visit or phone call. And then a memory, fond or otherwise.

Labels: childhood, parenting

posted by Eve at 3:03 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

If you Google the phrase "America's worst mom," the first hit is Lenore Skenazy '81, who in 2008 let her nine-year-old son, Izzy, take the subway in Manhattan by himself. Skenazy wrote about the decision in her column for the New York Sun -- and then found herself on the Today show, parrying criticism from a clinical psychologist. After she let Izzy ride the Long Island Rail Road alone this year -- and a conductor who noticed him called the police -- she drew on the experiences for a book about her parenting philosophy. Emily Bazelon '93, '00JD, an editor at the web magazines Slate and DoubleX, interviewed Skenazy.

Y: Why did you call your book Free-Range Kids?

S: We are so consumed with making sure kids are safe that we are keeping them cooped up like chickens. We're preventing them from enjoying their lives. Of course, people ask me what a free-range kid tastes like. ...

Y: One reason parents are loath to take small risks with their children, I think, is that when a child gets hurt, the assumption is that the parents are to blame.

S: Yes, yes, the guilt and the blame! The child of a friend of mine broke her arm on a swing. Other parents asked, "Why weren't you there?" In fact, my friend was pushing her daughter on the swing. Her child fell because sometimes bad things just happen, and it's no one's fault. But we don't believe in accidents anymore.

Labels: childhood, culture, motherhood, parenting

posted by Eve at 12:18 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

The princess industry has been booming in the past few years -- not just the Disney dolls and scratchy toy-store ball gowns that are a rite of passage in most American girlhoods, but a brazen new breed of princess products that target a far wider age range and tap into less seemly attitudes. The hot-pink, leopard-print princess backpacks, T-shirts, purses and bedspreads that girls are now buying (or, rather, their parents are buying for them) have little to do with indulging sweet princess fantasies and everything to do with catering to over-indulged princess egos.

Take the popular tween retailer Justice. At malls nationwide, it carries multiple "Princess" tops and accessories that look a lot more like Paris Hilton's attire than Snow White's. No surprise that part of its marketing slogan is "Love yourself."

For only $44 at Nordstrom, you can dress your toddler in a tank top that declares her to be a "Juicy Couture Princess" -- that is, someone whose parents can afford to buy designer shirts that will end up stained with ketchup or jelly. And until recently, numerous Saks stores maintained Club Libby Lu, a spa for 5- to 13-year-old girls offering princess makeovers with tube tops and miniskirts that left girls looking more like Real Housewives than Cinderella. The ailing retailer closed the tween operation in May, but it grossed $60 million in 2008.

Call it trickle-down narcissism. Today, even as the economic crisis continues, many middle-class parents aspire to give their daughters the best of everything, "the best" meaning the most expensive. A quick tour around suburbia will show princess-themed bedrooms (the rhinestoned-and-feathered kind, not the cartoon-character kind) and ostentatious birthday parties, as well as pedigreed dogs being toted in designer bags by 10-year-olds. Maintaining a diva daughter has become one more way to one-up the Joneses.

Labels: childhood, culture, parenting

posted by Eve at 8:45 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Labels: adolescence, childhood, culture

posted by Eve at 1:32 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

The prepubescent children of days gone by have given way to a cooler kid — the tween — who aspires to teenhood but is not quite there yet.

Tweens are in-between — generally the 8-to-12 set. The U.S. Census estimates that in 2009, tweens are about 20 million strong and projected to hit almost 23 million by 2020. ...

Tweens have "their own sense of fashion in a way we didn't have before and their own parts of the popular culture targeted toward them," says child and adolescent psychologist Dave Verhaagen of Charlotte. How will this shape their personalities? "Time will tell. We don't know."

Research has shown that middle school is where some troubles, particularly academic, first appear. Also, a 2007 review of surveys in the journal Prevention Science found that the percentage of children who use alcohol doubles between grades four and six; the largest jump comes between fifth and sixth grades.

BETTER LIFE: Links between self-esteem, grades and obesity

"They're kids for a shorter period of time," adds psychologist Frank Gaskill, who also works with tweens in Charlotte. "More is expected of them academically, responsibility-wise."

Many parents, including Beth Harpaz, 48, of Brooklyn, are well aware of this short-lived time. Her older son is 16 and a high school junior; her younger son is 11 and in fifth grade.

"I'm trying really hard to save his childhood. I want him to enjoy little-boy things and don't want him to feel that he has to put on that big hoodie and wear the $100 sneakers and have that iPod in his ear listening to what somebody has told him is cool music," says Harpaz, author of 13 is the New 18.

Labels: adolescence, childhood, consumerism

posted by Eve at 11:53 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT