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 were due mainly 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.

JoAnn Deak, Ph.D*., author and speaker has spent more than twenty years as an educator and psychologist, helping children develop into confident and competent adults. The latter half of that period has focused on working with parents and teachers in their roles as guides for children. On her website is a quote that best describes her perspective on her work: "Every interaction a child has, during the course of a day, influences the adult that child will become."

Studies on spatial awareness show that by four days of age, girl babies hold eye contact with their care-giver for longer than boys, while boys are already responding to movement and activity. Studies on vocabulary show that for every 20,000 words a girl uses, a boy uses between 7,000 and 10,000. Girls tend to learn verbal literacy at younger ages than boys, and boys tend to be more spatially and kinesthetically able at younger ages than girls. Biological and brain differences favor more boys than girls in gross motor abilities at very young ages.

"It's pretty hard being a girl nowadays. You can't be too smart, too dumb, too pretty, too ugly, too friendly, too coy, too aggressive, too defenseless, too individual, or too programmed. If you're too much of anything, then others envy you, or despise you because you intimidate them or make them jealous. It's like you have to be everything and nothing all at once, without knowing which you need more of." Nora, twelfth grade.

Looked at from one perspective, it would appear that girls have it all today. Studies confirm that girls developmentally are generally more emotionally literate, verbally expressive, and socially facile than boys. At an early age, they tend to have good "school brains" that enable them to experience success in the school setting. They revel in relationship and emotional connectedness, the foundation of good mental health. In every facet of their lives, their choices have grown as society moves slowly toward gender equity.

Unlike girls a generation ago, girls have access to sports and educational programs that were once for boys only. In many other ways, girls' lives today are illuminated by freedom of choice and unlimited aspirations.

Girls are growing up in the company of girls and women whose natural talents are finding full expression in athletics, business, the arts and academia, and leadership and activism, as well as in family life. They see stay-at-home dads and corporate moms, and in countless other ways are witnessing transformations.

* JoAnn Deak, Ph.D, author of Girls Will Be Girls - Raising Confident and Courageous Daughters, is an international speaker, educator and school psychologist. She says girls are beginning to realize their financial power, both as earners and spenders, and their political clout, both as citizens and leaders. Website: The Deak Group

A major study of coed and single sex schools reported that for girls in coed schools, the important issue in self-esteem was appearance; in all-girls schools, self-esteem was a complex product of school performance, social experience, family income and other factors Girls are more likely to take courses such as computer science and physics in girls-only schools than in coed schools The rate of teenage pregnancy is lower in all-girls schools than it is at nearby coed schools, both public and private, even in schools that were once coed and changed to a single-sex format. Students in low income families are six times more likely than their peers in high income families to drop out of high school.

"When we cheat students, we cheat the state of Texas.
We cheat the economy and we cheat ourselves, too."
- Irma Rangel