Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences - Hardcover

Sax M.D. Ph.D., Leonard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 038551073X ISBN 13: 9780385510738

Publisher: Doubleday, 2005

Synopsis

Are boys and girls really that different?

Twenty years ago, doctors and researchers didn’t think so. Back then, most experts believed that differences in how girls and boys behave are mainly due to differences in how they were treated by their parents, teachers, and friends.

It's hard to cling to that belief today. An avalanche of research over the past twenty years has shown that sex differences are more significant and profound than anybody guessed. Sex differences are real, biologically programmed, and important to how children are raised, disciplined, and educated.

In Why Gender Matters, psychologist and family physician Dr. Leonard Sax leads parents through the mystifying world of gender differences by explaining the biologically different ways in which children think, feel, and act. He addresses a host of issues, including discipline, learning, risk taking, aggression, sex, and drugs, and shows how boys and girls react in predictable ways to different situations.

For example, girls are born with more sensitive hearing than boys, and those differences increase as kids grow up. So when a grown man speaks to a girl in what he thinks is a normal voice, she may hear it as yelling. Conversely, boys who appear to be inattentive in class may just be sitting too far away to hear the teacher—especially if the teacher is female.

Likewise, negative emotions are seated in an ancient structure of the brain called the amygdala. Girls develop an early connection between this area and the cerebral cortex, enabling them to talk about their feelings. In boys these links develop later. So if you ask a troubled adolescent boy to tell you what his feelings are, he often literally cannot say.

Dr. Sax offers fresh approaches to disciplining children, as well as gender-specific ways to help girls and boys avoid drugs and early sexual activity. He wants parents to understand and work with hardwired differences in children, but he also encourages them to push beyond gender-based stereotypes.

A leading proponent of single-sex education, Dr. Sax points out specific instances where keeping boys and girls separate in the classroom has yielded striking educational, social, and interpersonal benefits. Despite the view of many educators and experts on child-rearing that sex differences should be ignored or overcome, parents and teachers would do better to recognize, understand, and make use of the biological differences that make a girl a girl, and a boy a boy.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

It has long been assumed that the difference between the behavior and attitudes of boys and girls can be traced to the way they are treated by parents, teachers, and friends. But an avalanche of recent research has made it clear that gender differences are a biological reality and that they play a significant role in the development of personality traits and intellectual and social skills.

In WHY GENDER MATTERS, Dr. Leonard Sax explains in clear, accessible language how the brains of boys and girls differ and shows parents why recognizing these differences is an important step in raising happier, healthier children. Addressing a wide range of issues, including discipline, learning, risk-taking, aggression, sex, and drugs, Sax discusses the impact of hardwired biological factors on kids' reactions to parental questions, opinions, and advice. Parents of preteens and teenagers will appreciate his straightforward guidelines for using a gender-appropriate approach in counseling children about such highly charged matters as drug use and sexual activity. His argument in favor of single-sex education, based on studies showing that creating separate classrooms for boys and girls yields enormous educational, social, and interpersonal benefits, is bound to provoke lively debate about one of the most controversial issues in education today.

WHY GENDER MATTERS encourages parents to take advantage of the latest information about gender differences without embracing old-fashioned, limiting stereotypes. Integrating theory and solid how-to advice, it is vital reading for all parents, regardless of their child's age or gender.

About the Author

LEONARD SAX, M.D., Ph.D., is a physician and a psychologist and the founder of the National Association for Single-Sex Public Education. His scholarly work has been published in a wide variety of prestigious journals including American Psychologist, Behavioral Neuroscience, Journal of the American Medical Association, Journal of the American College of Nutrition, Journal of Family Practice, Annals of Family Medicine, Journal of Sex Research, and others. He has been a featured guest on CNN, PBS, Fox News, Voice of America, NPR’s Talk of the Nation, and many other news programs, discussing the importance of sex differences in how children learn.

Edition details

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 038551073X
• ISBN 13: 9780385510738
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320