Student
Article 9
Boys will be Boys
Developmental research has been focused on girls; now it’s their brothers’ turn. Boys need help, too, but first they need to be understood.
BY BARBARA KANTROWITZ AND CLAUDIA KALB
I
T WAS A CLASSIC MARS-VENUS ENCOUNTER. Only in this case, the woman
was from Harvard and the man—well, boy—was a 4-year-old at a suburban Boston nursery school. Graduate student Judy Chu was in his classroom last fall to
gather observations for her doctoral dissertation on human development. His greeting was startling: he held up his finger as if it were a gun and pretended to shoot her. “I felt bad,” Chu recalls. “I felt as if he didn’t like me.” Months later and
much more boy-savvy, Chu has a different interpretation: the gunplay wasn’t hostile—it was just a way for him to say hello. “They don’t mean it to have harsh consequences. It’s a way for them to connect.”
SOURCES: DR. MICHAEL THOMPSON, BARNEY BRAWER. RESEARCH BY BILL VOURVOULIAS—NEWSWEEK
1
Article 9. Boys will be Boys
Researchers like Chu are discovering new meaning in lots of things boys have done for ages. In fact, they’re dissecting just about every aspect of the developing male psyche and creating a hot new field of inquiry: the study of boys. They’re also producing a slew of books with titles like “Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons From the Myths of Boyhood” and “Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys” that will hit the stores in the next few months. What some researchers are finding is that boys and girls really are from two different planets. But since the two sexes have to live together here on Earth, they should be raised with special consideration for their distinct needs. Boys and girls have different “crisis points,” experts say, stages in their emotional and social development where things can go very wrong. Until recently, girls got all the attention. But boys need help, too. They’re much more likely than girls to have discipline problems at
Boys will be Boys
Developmental research has been focused on girls; now it’s their brothers’ turn. Boys need help, too, but first they need to be understood.
BY BARBARA KANTROWITZ AND CLAUDIA KALB
I
T WAS A CLASSIC MARS-VENUS ENCOUNTER. Only in this case, the woman
was from Harvard and the man—well, boy—was a 4-year-old at a suburban Boston nursery school. Graduate student Judy Chu was in his classroom last fall to
gather observations for her doctoral dissertation on human development. His greeting was startling: he held up his finger as if it were a gun and pretended to shoot her. “I felt bad,” Chu recalls. “I felt as if he didn’t like me.” Months later and
much more boy-savvy, Chu has a different interpretation: the gunplay wasn’t hostile—it was just a way for him to say hello. “They don’t mean it to have harsh consequences. It’s a way for them to connect.”
SOURCES: DR. MICHAEL THOMPSON, BARNEY BRAWER. RESEARCH BY BILL VOURVOULIAS—NEWSWEEK
1
Article 9. Boys will be Boys
Researchers like Chu are discovering new meaning in lots of things boys have done for ages. In fact, they’re dissecting just about every aspect of the developing male psyche and creating a hot new field of inquiry: the study of boys. They’re also producing a slew of books with titles like “Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons From the Myths of Boyhood” and “Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys” that will hit the stores in the next few months. What some researchers are finding is that boys and girls really are from two different planets. But since the two sexes have to live together here on Earth, they should be raised with special consideration for their distinct needs. Boys and girls have different “crisis points,” experts say, stages in their emotional and social development where things can go very wrong. Until recently, girls got all the attention. But boys need help, too. They’re much more likely than girls to have discipline problems at