December 2009  How gender stereotypes can be self-fulfilling ere’s an interesting study. When some mothers were asked how steep a slope their 11 month olds could crawl down, the moms of boys pretty much got it right by about one degree while the moms of girls underestimated what their daughters could do by nine degrees. You can see how this might limit the physical activities they will encourage their daughters to do in the future. How we perceive our kids—as talkative or remote, as daring or cautious—shapes how we treat them and the experiences we provide for them. For her new book Pink Brain, Blue Brain, Lise Eliot, Ph.D., a professor of neuroscience at The Chicago Medical School, has combined an extensive review of the research with her own work in the field of neuroplasticity to shatter some of the prevailing myths about gender differences. She found that scientists have identified few reliable differences between men’s and women’s brains and almost none between those of boys and girls. Some gender differentiation is programmed into human brain development, but the motor skills of infant boys and girls are the same. Older boys are not “better at math” but at certain kinds of spatial reasoning. Girls are not naturally more empathetic than boys. They’re just allowed to express their feelings more. Eliot provides valuable information for parents of children at every age such as ideas for interacting with babies (see front page feature). When kids get older, the author says, “Parents and teachers should not let boys’ tendency to talk less about their feelings convince them that they actually feel less.” She suggests that boys learn to type early as a way to help them express their thoughts—and that girls learn to use software to encourage their creativity and to play video games to help strengthen their spatial skills. Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps—And What We Can Do About It (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, hard cover $25) is available online and in bookstores. Front Page Feature | Interchange | Research Review | Elder Issues | Parenting On the Job | We Recommend | A Healthy You | Home

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