Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences | 
| Author: Leonard Sax
Publisher: Broadway
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  48 reviews
Sales Rank: 6291
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 0767916255
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.3
EAN: 9780767916257
ASIN: 0767916255
Publication Date: February 14, 2006
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Product Description
Are boys and girls really that different? Twenty years ago, doctors and researchers didn’t think so. Back then, most experts believed that differences in how girls and boys behave are mainly due to differences in how they were treated by their parents, teachers, and friends.
It's hard to cling to that belief today. An avalanche of research over the past twenty years has shown that sex differences are more significant and profound than anybody guessed. Sex differences are real, biologically programmed, and important to how children are raised, disciplined, and educated.
In Why Gender Matters, psychologist and family physician Dr. Leonard Sax leads parents through the mystifying world of gender differences by explaining the biologically different ways in which children think, feel, and act. He addresses a host of issues, including discipline, learning, risk taking, aggression, sex, and drugs, and shows how boys and girls react in predictable ways to different situations.
For example, girls are born with more sensitive hearing than boys, and those differences increase as kids grow up. So when a grown man speaks to a girl in what he thinks is a normal voice, she may hear it as yelling. Conversely, boys who appear to be inattentive in class may just be sitting too far away to hear the teacher—especially if the teacher is female.
Likewise, negative emotions are seated in an ancient structure of the brain called the amygdala. Girls develop an early connection between this area and the cerebral cortex, enabling them to talk about their feelings. In boys these links develop later. So if you ask a troubled adolescent boy to tell you what his feelings are, he often literally cannot say.
Dr. Sax offers fresh approaches to disciplining children, as well as gender-specific ways to help girls and boys avoid drugs and early sexual activity. He wants parents to understand and work with hardwired differences in children, but he also encourages them to push beyond gender-based stereotypes.
A leading proponent of single-sex education, Dr. Sax points out specific instances where keeping boys and girls separate in the classroom has yielded striking educational, social, and interpersonal benefits. Despite the view of many educators and experts on child-rearing that sex differences should be ignored or overcome, parents and teachers would do better to recognize, understand, and make use of the biological differences that make a girl a girl, and a boy a boy.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 43 more reviews...
 Good Read, Great Learning! June 15, 2008
This book has helped me greatly in understanding why my children (a boy and a girl) are sooooo different. And, because of this understanding, I think I'm a better parent;at the least, I'm more appreciative of their individual attributes and am better able to help them learn and grow. This book is a must-read for anyone who has children or who works with them in any capacity.
Gender Does Matter June 8, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
There is an inherent problem in reacting to a book like this one: everyone has deeply rooted experiences of gender, making him or her an expert. So anything that Dr. Sax has to say that doesn't map exactly to personal experience automatically "proves" him wrong. I felt some of my friends that read this completely over-reacted to and, in places, completely mischaraterized some of his conclusions. And, even though I thought he was off base in a couple places, I found this book to be very interesting. (By the way, this is coming from someone who would have been categorized by Dr. Sax as "an anomalous male"--somewhat insulting in its way but I'm long past worrying about how other people categorize me.)
The fact is, there are differences between the genders, many of which cannot be written off as products of environment. Dr. Sax describes a number of them from weaker hearing in boys to more advanced development of the emotion areas of the brain in girls. This helps explain why some girls feel they are "yelled at" by boys (boys automatically talk louder to compensate for poor hearing) and why boys have trouble talking about "feelings" (those areas of the brain are not sufficiently developed yet), to give a couple examples.
Of course, Dr. Sax also recognizes that there are exceptions to the rules and he points out the very important fact that, as men and women reach their 20's, these brain differences tend to go away as both boys and girls mature. However, he's got a lot of advice for how to deal with issues parents and teachers face with children when they are still developmentally so different. When he sticks close to the research, his conclusions can be very powerful. On the other hand, when he moves to speculation, his conclusions are more apt to provoke a response; particularly if your experience was different. (No amount of placing me in sports as a young boy did anything to change my tendencies.)
Still, there is a lot of useful information to be gleaned from Dr. Sax's book. As a parent and someone who has worked in education his entire life, you can never have too much information to help you understand a child. When a kid acts out, there are a myriad of possible reasons for it. Dr. Sax gives us some possibilities worth exploring.
A book every teacher should read. May 9, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
As I read this book it was one "well that explains it" moment after another.
Great book May 5, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
I loved this book. It really helped me to understand the way girls and boys are hardwired and why they have such different interests. It will make me more aware of how to teach my son so that he actually learns well. I would recommend this to anyone.
Excellent April 29, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Well written, easy to read, and informative. While I may not agree with all of Dr. Sax's conclusions and opinions, it is very thorough in the issues it covers. It has caused me to notice more carefully the ways I teach and discipline differently. Having been taught with such an emphasis on being "fair", I've also come to realize that what's fair for one person is not for another. We're all unique, but we have a lot in common and I appreciate Dr. Sax's perspective.
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