by Carolyn Kortge of The Register-Guard
When little boys wear T-shirts that boast “Slugger,” “Here comes trouble,” or “I’m Grandma’s bad boy,” they are learning social expectations of male behavior that could cause real trouble when they are older, a Eugene psychologist says.
Eight times as many boys as girls are brought to children’s counseling clinics for professional help with behavior problems, says Beverly Fagot, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Oregon. The ratio of boys to girls in teen correction institutions is 100 to four.
Adults expect boys to be more active than girls, more aggressive and harder to control, says Fagot. As a result, boys get in trouble more than girls.
“Childhood tends to be a more comfortable time for girls than boys,” says Fagot who spoke recently at the UO’s fifth annual “Pathfinders in Human Personality” symposium. “Boys are forced into a much harder road to development as children. We force them to ask questions and to struggle for answers.”
But both boys and girls, she says, struggle at some time in their lives with issues of behavior and identity that are produced by parental attitudes toward male and female children. For girls, however, the struggle tends to show up later in life–by the mid 20s, the ratios are reversed with women far outnumbering men in counseling programs.
In recent years, women have blamed sexist attitudes in homes and schools for limiting women’s potential in athletics, management, professional success and self-confidence. But sexism works both ways, says Fagot, who has studied sex-role development for several years.
“We have to find more non-sexist ways of raising children, and not just for women,” she says. “Our prisons are too full. This society is too violent, and I think it is partially too violent because we are not teaching boys to control aggression and behavior. We are teaching them to have a lot of expectations from the world, but not the skills to control themselves.”
Although many parents today want to eliminate sexist attitudes from the way they raise their children, few are doing it successfully, Fagot says. Society’s responses to boys and girls are so ingrained that it is difficult not to treat boys and girls differently, even when parents want to be egalitarian.
Her studies of children’s behavior, based on observation of children in pre-schools and during interviews in private homes, indicate consistent differences. Even by age two, she says, boys and girls get very different messages on behavior from parents.
“Boys are allowed to climb on furniture and run around the house more,” she says. “When a two-year-old boy is very active, parents shrug and say, Boys will be boys.’ With girls, they tend to pick the child up and cuddle her to calm her down. Parents encourage calmer behavior of girls and adult dependency.”
Even children’s shoes shape self-concept and behavior, Fagot says. Boys wear crepe-soled shoes which let them climb slides, or trees no matter how “dressed up” they are. Little girls are dressed in patent leather shoes which are too slippery for the same freedom of action.
As children grow, the difference in activity levels between boys and girls increases. According to one study, the average five-year-old boy has the freedom to come up and go in an area ranging an average of two blocks from his home. The activity range of the average five-year-old girl is one-half block from home.
According to Fagot’s observations and to studies by other sex role researchers, the expectation of action in boys and passivity in girls reaches even into the area of problem solving.
“Girls are trained to look for help, love and affection from adults,” she says. “They learn to use adult help. Boys are trained to go out and explore. If they do seek adult help, they are often told to try it again their own way.”
Both boys and girls face potential problems and limits as a result of the different behavior expectations with which they are raised, she says. Because boys are encouraged to be more active, more aggressive and more impulsive, they develop behavior problems. Because girls are cuddled more and taught to depend on adults for approval and protection, they tend to be more susceptible to anxiety than boys and less secure in their own self-concept.
With the research, she says, “we’re starting to see why boys and girls are brought to clinics at different ages and with different problems.”
The “Pathfinders in Human Personality” symposium at which Fagot spoke was sponsored by the UO Division of Developmental Studies, the Department of Psychology and the Division of Continuing Education.
Reprinted with permission. Copyright 1980, The Register Guard, www.registerguard.com.