Both conventional, “folk” wisdom and empirical data suggest that the development of verbal skills tracks a different course in boys and girls. Katherine Nelson and her colleagues attribute these differences to the way parents treat their children. I am conscious of this work and try very hard to treat my children the same way, as much as possible. And, yet, Abby speaks much more frequently and articulates her words much more clearly than Jake (Important aside: Just so you don’t think that Jake is a lunkhead, he is way ahead of Abby in ‘visual skills’ like recognizing letters and numbers and is much better at quantitative stuff like counting or adding).
There is some data that suggest that parenting style influences narratives produced by children over long time intervals, but it’s not clear whether this relationship extends into adulthood. The next time you are sitting in a mixed-gender group, pay attention to the way the males and females contribute to the conversation. Are there differences? How do men and women behave differently? Is it similar to what you would expect on the basis of what we have read/discussed?
Submitted by Matthew Schulkind
on Wednesday, 3/9/2011, at 3:47 PM