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The Truth About Girls and Boys: Challenging Toxic Stereotypes About Our Children
Caryl Rivers and Rosalind C. Barnett are widely acclaimed for their analyses of women, men, and society. In The Truth About Girls and Boys , they tackle a new, troubling trend in the theorizing of that the learning styles, brain development, motivation, cognitive and spatial abilities, and "natural" inclinations of girls and boys are so fundamentally different, they require unique styles of parenting and education.
Ignoring the science that challenges these claims, those who promote such theories make millions while frightening parents and educators into enforcing old stereotypes and reviving unhealthy attitudes in the classroom. Rivers and Barnett unmake the pseudoscientific rationale for this argument, stressing the individuality of each child and the specialness of his or her talents and desires. They recognize that in our culture, girls and boys encounter different stimuli and experiences, yet encouraging children to venture outside their comfort zones helps them realize a multifaceted character. Educating parents, teachers, and general readers in the true nature of the gender game, Rivers and Barnett enable future generations to transform if not transcend the parameters of sexual difference.
Ignoring the science that challenges these claims, those who promote such theories make millions while frightening parents and educators into enforcing old stereotypes and reviving unhealthy attitudes in the classroom. Rivers and Barnett unmake the pseudoscientific rationale for this argument, stressing the individuality of each child and the specialness of his or her talents and desires. They recognize that in our culture, girls and boys encounter different stimuli and experiences, yet encouraging children to venture outside their comfort zones helps them realize a multifaceted character. Educating parents, teachers, and general readers in the true nature of the gender game, Rivers and Barnett enable future generations to transform if not transcend the parameters of sexual difference.
227 pages, Hardcover
First published June 28, 2011
7 people are currently reading
227 people want to read
About the author
Caryl Rivers
26 books21 followersCaryl Rivers has been called “one of the brightest voices in contemporary fiction.” Her novel VIRGINS was an international critical success, published in the US, UK, Sweden, Germany and Japan. It was on many best seller lists and in paperback (Pocket Books) sold more than a million copies. Her novels deal with American women trying to find a foothold in a rapidly changing world.
She is a nationally known author, journalist, media critic and professor of Journalism at Boston University. In 2007 She was awarded the Helen Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for distinguished journalism. She is the author of four novels and four works of non-fiction, all critically acclaimed. Her books have been selections of the Book of the Month Club, Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club and Troll Book club. With her late husband, Boston Globe columnist Alan Lupo, she penned a funny account of modern parenting, “For Better, For Worse.”
“Reading this book is like multiplying Woody Allen by two. Marriage isn’t supposed to be this funny.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer, on “For Better, For Worse”
Her articles have appeared in the New York Times magazine, Daily Beast, Huffington post, Salon, The Nation, Saturday Review, Ms., Mother Jones, Dissent, McCalls, Glamour, Redbook, Rolling Stone, Ladies Home Journal and many others. She writes frequent commentary for the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune and Womensenews. Of Her book “Selling Anxiety: How the News Media Scare Women” Gloria Steinem says it “will save the sanity of media watchers enraged or bewildered by the distance between image and reality.”
She has co-authored four books with Dr. Rosalind Barnett, senior scientist at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis—the latest (2011) being “The Truth About Girls and Boys: Confronting Toxic Stereotypes About Our Children.” Articles based on the book won a Casey medal for distinguished journalism about children and families and a special citation from the National Education Writers association. The Editorial Board of the Boston Globe voted their book “Same Difference” one of the best books of the year in 2004. The New York Times called their book “She Works, He Works” a bold new framing of the story of the American family, and praised its lucid prose. The Sloan Foundation cited their book “Lifeprints” as a “classic book” from the work-family canon that has made “a significant contribution and stood the test of time.”
Caryl Rivers also wrote THE CHEATS, an ABC afterschool special about the lives of high school seniors embroiled in a cheating scandal. It won the AFTRA American scene award for its treatment of minority characters. She also wrote A MATTER OF PRINCIPAL, syndicated by Hearst television, a drama about an urban school principal starring Loretta Swit. The drama won the prestigious GABRIEL award in l990 as the best locally produced television program in the U.S. Ms. Rivers was creative consultant for JENNY’S SONG, the first made for television drama to be syndicated nationally by Westinghouse television, starring Ben Vereen and Jessica Walter.
She is a nationally known author, journalist, media critic and professor of Journalism at Boston University. In 2007 She was awarded the Helen Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for distinguished journalism. She is the author of four novels and four works of non-fiction, all critically acclaimed. Her books have been selections of the Book of the Month Club, Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club and Troll Book club. With her late husband, Boston Globe columnist Alan Lupo, she penned a funny account of modern parenting, “For Better, For Worse.”
“Reading this book is like multiplying Woody Allen by two. Marriage isn’t supposed to be this funny.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer, on “For Better, For Worse”
Her articles have appeared in the New York Times magazine, Daily Beast, Huffington post, Salon, The Nation, Saturday Review, Ms., Mother Jones, Dissent, McCalls, Glamour, Redbook, Rolling Stone, Ladies Home Journal and many others. She writes frequent commentary for the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune and Womensenews. Of Her book “Selling Anxiety: How the News Media Scare Women” Gloria Steinem says it “will save the sanity of media watchers enraged or bewildered by the distance between image and reality.”
She has co-authored four books with Dr. Rosalind Barnett, senior scientist at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis—the latest (2011) being “The Truth About Girls and Boys: Confronting Toxic Stereotypes About Our Children.” Articles based on the book won a Casey medal for distinguished journalism about children and families and a special citation from the National Education Writers association. The Editorial Board of the Boston Globe voted their book “Same Difference” one of the best books of the year in 2004. The New York Times called their book “She Works, He Works” a bold new framing of the story of the American family, and praised its lucid prose. The Sloan Foundation cited their book “Lifeprints” as a “classic book” from the work-family canon that has made “a significant contribution and stood the test of time.”
Caryl Rivers also wrote THE CHEATS, an ABC afterschool special about the lives of high school seniors embroiled in a cheating scandal. It won the AFTRA American scene award for its treatment of minority characters. She also wrote A MATTER OF PRINCIPAL, syndicated by Hearst television, a drama about an urban school principal starring Loretta Swit. The drama won the prestigious GABRIEL award in l990 as the best locally produced television program in the U.S. Ms. Rivers was creative consultant for JENNY’S SONG, the first made for television drama to be syndicated nationally by Westinghouse television, starring Ben Vereen and Jessica Walter.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
October 23, 2011
This book challenges popular (but scientifically inaccurate) stereotypes about boys and girls -- stereotypes that make it difficult for both boys and girls to realize their full potential.
The authors also describe how mistaken assumptions about what's good for girls and what's good for boys are guiding educational policymaking.
This book should serve as a wakeup call to parents and concerned citizens everywhere.
Highly recommended.
See this article that I wrote after interviewing one of the articles of this book, Rosalind C. Barnett: http://www.thestar.com/mobile/living/...
Note: One co-author is missing from the book description. The other co-author is Rosalind C. Barnett.
Reviewed from ARC received via NetGalleys.
The authors also describe how mistaken assumptions about what's good for girls and what's good for boys are guiding educational policymaking.
This book should serve as a wakeup call to parents and concerned citizens everywhere.
Highly recommended.
See this article that I wrote after interviewing one of the articles of this book, Rosalind C. Barnett: http://www.thestar.com/mobile/living/...
Note: One co-author is missing from the book description. The other co-author is Rosalind C. Barnett.
Reviewed from ARC received via NetGalleys.
August 16, 2011
Are girls and boys really that different? Are their brains wired differently in important ways, leading to very different abilities and needs? Rivers & Barnett take a hard look at claims that the brains, and therefore the abilities, of boys and girls differ in major ways, making it necessary to teach them in very different ways. First they look at the claims, the proposals based on them, and the studies claimed to support them.
These claims include the idea that boys are innately less verbal than girls, because of their brain structure and wiring, and that they are thereby disadvantaged in the "verbally drenched" curricula of most schools and that this problem is compounded by the fact that most teachers are women. The corresponding claim, about girls, is that they are not equipped to do as well at math and science as boys, and really shouldn't be expected to even try to learn math in the same classrooms as boys. Girls need to be taught science through things that relate to girls' lives, such as using cosmetics to teach chemistry. Also, boys need to be spoken to loudly and forcefully, while girls need to be spoken to softly. Really, the proponents of this view say, the best thing for both boys and girls is to be educated in single-sex classrooms geared to each gender's natural strengths and weaknesses.
Rivers and Barnett take this position apart in great detail, analyzing and explaining the flaws and the limited scope of the studies claimed to support it, as well as presenting the substantial body of well-constructed studies that collectively present a much different picture, of girls and boys substantially equal in abilities and potential. These studies, precisely because their results are not as flashy and exciting, simply do not get the same media attention. What they show, however, is for more hopeful for both girls and boys.
Girls arrive at school with somewhat better verbal abilities, and boys with somewhat greater spatial, mechanical, and visualization abilities, because of the different ways that parents and other adults relate to young children. Even at very young ages, parents speak to their daughters more, and in ways that are more helpful for developing both verbal and interpersonal skills. Boys, meanwhile, are treated to more games of catch and other physical activities that develop their spatial, mechanical, and visualization skills. Because the human brain, especially in growing children, is extremely plastic, these differences in adult interactions with girls and boys actually cause their brains to wire themselves differently. Despite this, girls and boys rapidly catch up with each other in school--until, on the verge of high school, girls start to get messages that they don't really need calculus and advanced math, and shouldn't expect to do well in them. The most tragic part of this is that teachers perceive boys as doing much better in math that girls, even when their best students are in fact girls, and girls as doing much better in English, even when boys are their best students.
Rivers and Barnett's message is that what both girls and boys need is not to be separated into single-sex classrooms that play to their perceived strengths and downplay the areas where they are perceived to be weak, but rather to be challenged to learn from each other and develop all their talents.
For me, the saddest section of this book was the discussion of the startling re-segregation of toys. In the 1950s and 1960s, my parents, and aunts and uncles, put a fair degree of care in preventing all us cousins from getting the idea that there were "girls' toys' and "boys' toys." I had a cap gun, baby dolls, a Fort Apache set, a tea set, dress-up dolls, a chemistry set. . . When kids outside our normal social circles told us about this weird concept "girls' toys" and "boys' toys", we didn't believe them.
Rivers and Barnett describe toy departments where most toys, even such seemingly "neutral" toys as Legos or balls, are gender-typed with colors and patterns that relentlessly make them "girls' toys" or "boys' toys"--and mostly boys' toys, with little but the most stereotypically "female" toys left in the much-contracted girls' toy sections. Yet experiments show that a tea set in combat cammo pattern is perceived as a toy for boys by both girls and boys, while a toy gun in purple and silver is perceived as a toy for girls. It's not the toys themselves; it's what children of both genders have learned from adults around them about what signals girls' or boys' items.
This is an excellent and important book, clearly written yet also packed with documentation.
Highly recommended.
I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.
These claims include the idea that boys are innately less verbal than girls, because of their brain structure and wiring, and that they are thereby disadvantaged in the "verbally drenched" curricula of most schools and that this problem is compounded by the fact that most teachers are women. The corresponding claim, about girls, is that they are not equipped to do as well at math and science as boys, and really shouldn't be expected to even try to learn math in the same classrooms as boys. Girls need to be taught science through things that relate to girls' lives, such as using cosmetics to teach chemistry. Also, boys need to be spoken to loudly and forcefully, while girls need to be spoken to softly. Really, the proponents of this view say, the best thing for both boys and girls is to be educated in single-sex classrooms geared to each gender's natural strengths and weaknesses.
Rivers and Barnett take this position apart in great detail, analyzing and explaining the flaws and the limited scope of the studies claimed to support it, as well as presenting the substantial body of well-constructed studies that collectively present a much different picture, of girls and boys substantially equal in abilities and potential. These studies, precisely because their results are not as flashy and exciting, simply do not get the same media attention. What they show, however, is for more hopeful for both girls and boys.
Girls arrive at school with somewhat better verbal abilities, and boys with somewhat greater spatial, mechanical, and visualization abilities, because of the different ways that parents and other adults relate to young children. Even at very young ages, parents speak to their daughters more, and in ways that are more helpful for developing both verbal and interpersonal skills. Boys, meanwhile, are treated to more games of catch and other physical activities that develop their spatial, mechanical, and visualization skills. Because the human brain, especially in growing children, is extremely plastic, these differences in adult interactions with girls and boys actually cause their brains to wire themselves differently. Despite this, girls and boys rapidly catch up with each other in school--until, on the verge of high school, girls start to get messages that they don't really need calculus and advanced math, and shouldn't expect to do well in them. The most tragic part of this is that teachers perceive boys as doing much better in math that girls, even when their best students are in fact girls, and girls as doing much better in English, even when boys are their best students.
Rivers and Barnett's message is that what both girls and boys need is not to be separated into single-sex classrooms that play to their perceived strengths and downplay the areas where they are perceived to be weak, but rather to be challenged to learn from each other and develop all their talents.
For me, the saddest section of this book was the discussion of the startling re-segregation of toys. In the 1950s and 1960s, my parents, and aunts and uncles, put a fair degree of care in preventing all us cousins from getting the idea that there were "girls' toys' and "boys' toys." I had a cap gun, baby dolls, a Fort Apache set, a tea set, dress-up dolls, a chemistry set. . . When kids outside our normal social circles told us about this weird concept "girls' toys" and "boys' toys", we didn't believe them.
Rivers and Barnett describe toy departments where most toys, even such seemingly "neutral" toys as Legos or balls, are gender-typed with colors and patterns that relentlessly make them "girls' toys" or "boys' toys"--and mostly boys' toys, with little but the most stereotypically "female" toys left in the much-contracted girls' toy sections. Yet experiments show that a tea set in combat cammo pattern is perceived as a toy for boys by both girls and boys, while a toy gun in purple and silver is perceived as a toy for girls. It's not the toys themselves; it's what children of both genders have learned from adults around them about what signals girls' or boys' items.
This is an excellent and important book, clearly written yet also packed with documentation.
Highly recommended.
I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.
February 26, 2015
Extremely enlightening. My favorite points about the book:
1. Science-y goodness. Some supposition here, but nothing I noticed that isn't supported by study references. One of the benefits here is that the authors go to great lengths to debunk popular views and opinions which are wrong more often than not.
2. Not just about women and girls. Despite the title, I was worried this book would primarily talk about stereotypes that women face, but there's a good amount of information regarding men as well.
3. No axes being ground. I never felt like the authors were trying to push me into anything with authoritative voice and guilt.
I would recommend this book to anyone. This is the sort of stuff that we all should know but, sadly, do not.
1. Science-y goodness. Some supposition here, but nothing I noticed that isn't supported by study references. One of the benefits here is that the authors go to great lengths to debunk popular views and opinions which are wrong more often than not.
2. Not just about women and girls. Despite the title, I was worried this book would primarily talk about stereotypes that women face, but there's a good amount of information regarding men as well.
3. No axes being ground. I never felt like the authors were trying to push me into anything with authoritative voice and guilt.
I would recommend this book to anyone. This is the sort of stuff that we all should know but, sadly, do not.
August 22, 2014
The authors discuss and debunk the various stereotypes regarding how boys and girls learn, who's better at math, science, language, and who's more aggressive. It also talked about how damaging parents and teachers who believe the wrong things can be towards kids. I would definitely recommend this book to parents and teachers.
April 13, 2016
I love this book! It covers so many topics, including assumptions in co-education, marketing, learning ability, parenting skills, and so on. It does a ton of statistical analysis work. Best of all, for all that it covers a ton of academic ground and deals with many complicated topics, it is quite short and very linguistically approachable for a lay reader.
Great book. Enjoyed reading it so much.
Great book. Enjoyed reading it so much.
January 20, 2014
Read this book for my Sociology of Gender Relations class. A very good, if infuriating read. A great eye-opener that I recommend everyone should read.
June 15, 2021
Our children are inundated by gender based stereotypes from a young age. Not only do they hear the stereotypes and infer what they should be, often being told blatantly so by others in their lives, but they are treated differently based on how people perceive them due to the stereotypes. Caryl Rivers and Rosalind Barnett, in their book The Truth About Girls and Boys, acknowledge actual science that refutes these stereotypes and acknowledges the lack of difference between gender.
I would like to seen a revised and updated version which further addresses gender as a social construct.
I would like to seen a revised and updated version which further addresses gender as a social construct.
January 27, 2012
Interesting, but very repetitive.
March 27, 2013
Important points but there are better books written for the lay person illustrating the same points- pink brain, blue brain by lise eliot
May 2, 2014
This book reminds that there's a lot to know about kids beyond the paradigm of "pink” and "blue." If only it could be so easy.
October 12, 2013
Enlightening concept and material that debunks popular gender stereotypes, but poorly written and certainly not written for the audience that needs it.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews