The Danger with “Boys Will Be Boys”: Why this phrase should be banned from our vocabulary

Elizabeth Meyer, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California.

I’ve had a couple different conversations with the teachers at my child’s preschool about some of the aggressive behaviors a few of the children have been exhibiting. It has been most alarming to wake up in the morning and have my three-year-old say to me, “I am a robot, I’m going to eat your brain and peel off your skin.” I was also concerned to learn that when a child brought in a Ninjago book, the teachers read the book to the children even though Common Sense media reports that this series is best for children 7 and over and has 0/5 educational value, 2/5 for violence and 5/5 for consumerism. When I have expressed my concerns about some of these issues, every conversation has ended the same, with the teacher saying, “Oh you know, boys will be boys.”

That statement effectively has ended the conversation because it has left me too stunned and flabbergasted to respond. I bite my tongue each time because I don’t want to be THAT parent who is viewed as oversensitive and disengaged from reality. I also want to have a productive dialogue that will allow the preschool to hear my concerns in a way that may allow them to shift their thinking about how they address these issues. This blog is my attempt to organize my thoughts and gather some relevant research in order to help other parents and teachers who may find themselves perplexed by the same situation. So why is “boys will be boys” dangerous?

1. It prompts students to construct gender stereotypes. A recent Psychology Today blog post discussed the impacts of gendered language in elementary schools and how teachers who simply said things like “good morning boys and girls” vs. teachers who said “good morning children” led students to engage in more gender stereotypical thinking such as “only women can be kind, gentle and take care of children” or “only men should be a doctor or construction worker.” These gender stereotypes are limiting for everyone. One of the most damaging impacts is a phenomenon called “stereotype threat.” This is the impact of internalizing stereotypes about your group and having that impact your academic performance that has been documented in the research of Steele & Aronson (1995) and Aronson & Williams (2004). Aronson explains “when social conditions threaten basic motives—our sense of competence, our feelings of belonging, our feelings of control—this can dramatically influence our intellectual capacities.” He goes on to say, “These studies shed considerable light on how stereotypes suppress the performance, motivation and learning of students who have to contend with them and they suggest what educators can do to help.” For example, students of color underperformed in similar measures when students were asked to mark their gender or their race on their test paper, and in cases where students were not "reminded" of this group membership and as a result, the associated stereotypes, students performed much better. Another study confirmed that girls performed better in math assessments where stereotype threat was reduced (Quinn & Spencer 2001). Another Psychology Today blogger wrote eloquently about research showing how this impacted children as early as 1^st grade and their attitudes toward math and language arts.
 

2. Gender stereotypes allow unconscious biases to form and proliferate. Unconscious bias is a term that describes internalized attitudes about a particular group of people that then can shape our interactions with that group. In Jean Moule’s 2009 article, Understanding unconscious bias and unintentional racism, she calls this "blink of the eye racism," which in this case would be "blink of the eye sexism." These sorts of unexamined and deeply embedded beliefs are powerful in shaping how we make decisions in hundreds of everyday interactions, which can impact students’ educational opportunities. David Sadker outlines many examples of how this impacts students in his 2002 article, An Educator’s Primer to the Gender War. He explains that teachers give more attention to the "more active" boys and less academic contact to the "quieter" girls, and although more girls are identified for gifted programs in elementary schools, by high school fewer girls remain in gifted programs—particularly African American and Latina girls. These stereotypes also reinforce the myth of the gender binary and "sex differences" which I discuss more in point four below.
 

3. It is misinformed thinking and oversimplifies the problem. This expression attempts to explain away aggressive behaviors that a small number of children exhibit by linking it with "natural" or "biological" impulses without examining other reasons for the aggression. By linking aggressive behaviors with a child’s sex assigned at birth it ignores all the other environmental (family, media influences, messages at school, etc.) and individual factors (personality, nutrition, body chemistry, etc.) that might be influencing behaviors. It creates an easy excuse to fall back on so adults don’t have to examine other reasons for such aggressive behaviors. It is also often used to justify schoolyard bullying—often very extreme cases that are violent and homophobic in nature—and causes many adults to accept negative behaviors as "natural." The principal in the famous Nabozny v. Podlesny case where a student was hospitalized after being beaten up for being gay justified the assault using such terms. This phrase allows harmful behaviors to persist unchecked and possibly worsen over time. It also reduces the likelihood of adults intervening in interactions that can be really harmful.
4. It limits the full expression of children. By saying “boys will be boys” it teaches children that certain behaviors are endemic to masculinity and exclusive to boys only. This form of thinking reinforces rigid binaries that cause us to develop more engrained “either/or” attitudes that allow our culture to ignore the true spectrum and variety of behaviors that individuals can exhibit. Janet Hyde from the University of Wisconsin, Madison has carefully critiqued the “science of sex differences” research by doing an extensive analysis of studies of sex differences. This meta-analysis of hundreds of studies showed that most reported differences between sexes are quite small. As a result she has developed the gender similarities hypothesis that humans are more alike on most factors than "common sense" would have you believe. The Psychology Today editors wrote about this study in a blog post in 2008 that summarizes the study quite concisely. Other books have been published that try to perpetuate this belief that males and females are very different, and the media are ready to repeat these stories because they are comforting and familiar to their audience. However, they are not supported by the majority of research and we need to be able to talk about children’s behavior in more complex and nuanced ways that don’t confine them to socially constructed pink and blue scripts.

I want my child to grow up in a world that allows him to explore his strengths and express his personality in ways that are true to him, not ways that society believes boys are supposed to behave. I hope by sharing some of this research here, other parents and teachers may be able to work more actively to combat this misinformed approach to working with children and allow our kids to explore and express themselves in ways that are authentic and healthy for them. This will hopefully minimize some of the academic gaps reported on here, as well as reduce some of the violence that many young men engage in, and allow gender-creative and transgender youth to be affirmed and supported in their home and school environments.

This post is a response to The Way We Talk About Gender Can Make a Big Difference by Christia S. Brown, Ph.D.

Love,

Abby

Parenting Adolescents and the Dance of Detachment

In an earlier blog, “A Detachment Theory of Parenting Adolescents,” (12/9/13), Carl Pickhardt, Ph.D. talked about the challenge of moving from Attachment Parenting with a child (focused on Holding On to create a secure trust in parents) to Detachment Parenting with an adolescent (focused on Letting Go to foster the young person’s secure reliance on self.) With a child, parents teach rules for social conduct; with an adolescent, they emphasize increased self-management.

I think of detachment parenting with an adolescent as a process through which a young person “takes on” the more grown up world in two ways that empower independence.

One way is through parents releasing freedom for the young person to act older. Here they allow and encourage the teenager to “take on” more grown up life responsibilities that contribute to greater independence. This release can feel scary for parents who fear risks of new freedom may be discounted or ignored –like when starting to drive or to attend parties, for example.

A second way is through parents respecting resistance to their influence. Here the teenager asserts power to “take on” parental authority for more independent control of personal decision making, social association, and self-definition. This resistance can feel offensive to parents who consider speaking up in disagreement a form of talking back – like when questioning or arguing with what they say, for example.

Both ways in combination comprise a very complicated and challenging “dance,” the “Detachment Two-step” you could call it, that parents must try to lead and follow during adolescence as the teenager’s push for independence grows. The dance is a more reluctant partnership than in childhood and more awkward when parent and adolescent tread on each other’s toes and collide, as they frequently do, often inclined to blame the other when collisions occur.

By the young person’s early to mid-twenties, the dance is mostly over. With a free standing separation between them, there is no further release of freedom for the parent to give, and no further resistance to parental authority for the adolescent to mount. Functional independence has brought the dance of detachment to a close.

Now, consider the two steps of detachment in a little more detail, first releasing freedom, and then respecting resistance.

RELEASING FREEDOM

There are freedoms that adolescents request, freedoms that adolescents take without asking, and freedoms that parents assign, each kind providing more room for responsibility to grow.

Freedom requested and freedoms taken put adolescents at the mercy of their own decision-making which is why from here on the choice/consequence connection must be honored. Now, after-the-fact education and learning from hard experience counts for at least as much as before-the-fact education and formal preparation. Thus any costs for parking tickets, moving violations, or fender benders, for example, are the young driver’s to pay. “You must face the outcomes of your decisions – crediting the good, confronting the bad, learning more responsibility from both.”

Freedom assigned fulfills the parental agenda for adult preparation, training the young person in assuming more self-management responsibility. Thus during the 48 short months of high school, parents are training and turning over more life management functions so that upon graduation and moving off, the young person is equipped with necessary knowledge, skills, and experience (budgeting, banking, and bill paying, for example) to support the demands that come with living more on one’s own. “You will have to depend on your own organization, motivation, and self-discipline when you leave our care.”

RESPECTING RESISTANCE

Resistance against what parents want, are used to, or can easily accept is part of adolescent growth. Consider three engines of growth for independence that tend to cause the most strain. There is opposition and actively and passively pushing against parental authority to operate more on one’s own terms. There is separation and pulling away for more social distance from family and more affiliation with friends. And there is individuation and playing with an increased variety of interests and images to develop a fitting personal identity. In each case, the young person asserts more independence, causing conflict when what the adolescent wants to do, who the adolescent wants to be with, or how the adolescent wants to be defined departs from the parental agenda or exceeds their tolerances.

These kinds of resistance should be seriously respected by parents because at stake is going up against the most powerful people in the adolescent’s world to assert independence of them. Therefore, do not discount these efforts or in any way diminish the adolescent for making them. Independence of the resistant kind takes more adolescent courage than most parents usually appreciate. “I hate getting on my parents’ wrong side, but sometimes that’s what I have to do!” So set expectations for your willingness to deal with resistance. For example, you might declare something like this. “When we disagree with what you want, or you disagree with what we want, please know that we stand ready to hear everything you have to say. That done, will be firm where we feel we have to and explain why this is so. And we will be flexible where we feel we can, willing to work out what you want.”

Parents must accept and anticipate the reality that to some degree, in service of detachment, they will have to release more freedom and encounter more resistance to help their adolescent gather more power of independence.

So, one formula for detachment parenting is this: DETACHMENT = RELEASE + RESISTANCE. Parents must allow themselves to release more freedom to their adolescent and they must encounter more resistance to their authority. In consequence, parents can’t detach without undergoing more anxiety from letting go control when they release, and experiencing more frustration in conflict when they encounter resistance by resisting back. This is why parenting adolescents can be stressful for parents.

This is also why steadfast parenting adolescents is crucial as well. Through constant communication, caring, and cooperation they must stay connected with their teenager while this dance of detachment is growing them apart.

;)

Abby