NBER has an interesting piece of research titled “Boy-Girl Differences in Parental Time Investments“.
Indications of human capital differences by sex emerge at young ages. Some preliminary evidence of sex/gender differences in test scores and cognitive measures at the preschool level is presented in table 1.3 We report the means of vocabulary and math test scores at ages 4 and 5 for girls and boys born in the 2000s in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. We also report a ‘conditional difference,’ estimated by ordinary least squares controlling for some standard observable characteristics (described below) and inferring the difference from an indicator variable for a male child. In almost all cases boys trail girls at the mean, with the gap ranging from 12% to 18% of a standard deviation. The emergence of this gender achievement gap at school entry is particularly salient given widespread agreement on the importance of early childhood experiences and investments to later life outcomes (e.g., Almond and Currie 2011).
Ungated draft here. The research finds that parents engage in more educational activities than they do with boys.
The estimates of the gender differences in cognitive activities for the U.S. are reported in table 4. At 9 months (first panel), there is evidence that parents are more likely to read, and to a lesser extent sing songs, to their first-born girl than their first-born boy. The differences in the frequency of telling stories and going on errands also favor girls although are very small and statistically insignificant. By age 2 (second panel) this initial pattern is now well established, with statistically significant and larger effects favoring girls in all activities except running errands. There are also a number of additional variables available in the second wave. One is a variable asking whether the child had visited a library in the last month. This was more likely, by 6 percentage points, if the child is female. There are also questions about whether the child attends a “story time”, and the number of books and number of CDs/records s/he has. The estimates for these latter two variables are statistically significant again favoring girls. Finally, in the bottom panel of table 4 are the results at age 4. They provide further evidence of a female advantage in these inputs. New here is a variable capturing how long the child is read to, on the days this activity occurs. The female advantage is about 3 minutes on average.
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Then why do girls keep majoring in stupid subjects?
As the father of 2 boys, and 1 girl, I can understand this. While boys are seemingly more problems, at least until they get their head out of their 3rd point of contact; over the long haul, they are easier to train and maintain control over. (Well, in a 2 parent family, at any rate.)
Girls have the capacity to financially and emotionally destroy a family. Especially, if “Lil Darlin’” shows up with a bulging belly. She has now committed the family to another 18+ years of financial servitude.
Spend the time with the girls. They need.
“Girls have the capacity to financially and emotionally destroy a family”
That’s pretty much it.
‘”Then why do girls keep majoring in stupid subjects?”
To put it bluntly, girls are stupid and not particularly good at thinking, particularly abstract reasoning. I have an older sister and three younger brothers, and all five of us were home schooled through middle school. My dad spent more time explaining algebra to my sister than he did to me and my three brothers combined.
While it is often asserted that girls get better grades, and are more likely to go to college and graduate therefrom, this doesn’t necessarily mean that girls are more intelligent or are better thinkers; it simply means that they are better at what passes for academics in this day and age.
So, when you allow girls to make decisions for themselves, it shouldn’t be surprising that they end up doing something stupid, like getting a Master’s in women’s studies or some such bullshit. They aren’t intelligent enough to make wise decisions for themselves. And since they aren’t particularly intelligent, it stands to reason that they need more tutoring.
Parents want both their boys and girls to do well in school, but more girls may want to be read to and go to the library. Parents, especially fathers, may play more physically with boys, who like to run around and roughhouse. I have seen statistics showing that women read more than men, especially fiction. The sexes are different.
Maybe girls want the effort, maybe they are more interested in learning.
Boys have a higher rate of autism, boys tend to be more uncooperative, impatient and downright lazy.
Parents and teachers tend to respond more to children/students who are enthusiastic about learning.
And that means more girls over boys. Not surprising.
shell entity dork pretending to be fair-minded and above the beta rabble:
“Maybe girls want the effort, maybe they are more interested in learning.”
maybe eggs are expensive and sperm is cheap, and parents subconsciously allocate accordingly.
“Boys have a higher rate of autism,”
it is a myth that male autism rates have risen since mid-century. so if “autistic” boys were doing fine then, what’s the difference now?
“boys tend to be more uncooperative,”
read: more willing to challenge the status quo.
“impatient”
less willing to suffer fools gladly.
“and downright lazy.”
better able to focus on what really matters. see how fun this is?
“Parents and teachers tend to respond more to children/students who are enthusiastic about learning.”
the problem is that the teaching profession had become a female ghetto, and women, unlike men teachers, have no clue how to handle the particular needs of schoolboys.
as for parents, single momhood has exploded. i bet a big reason for the lack of parental attention given to boys is the simple fact that harried single moms are taking the path of least resistance and focusing their dwindling energy reserves on their more compliant daughters.
another theory that makes more sense than your glib dismissals is the idea that a culture and economy oriented to the benefit of women and the disadvantage of men cues parents to invest more highly in daughters than in sons, because the reproductive payoff is better guaranteed.
“And that means more girls over boys.”
a bellwether of cultural decline.
If you’ve raised both in the upcoming generation you’d know why. I’ve probably spent more education time with the boys. But I’ve spent more quality education time with the girls. Much like we love to blame black students we need to be as equally strident when blaming male students. It’s not until you’ve identified the problem that you can solve it. And I’ve met the problem. It’s foul-mouthed, easily distracted, video game obsessed, ultra masterbatory. It’s you and me.
The “Liberated” education system desires “equality” and uses nondiscrimination and tolerance as the mechanisms to achieve this desire. They take a finite resource (education) and attempt to distribute it “equally” such that the education path for ALL is “equal.” This merely exposes an obvious absurdity. Why would my sons and daughters be on “equal” educational paths. But the absurdity is compounded when one realizes that reality makes it all nothing but Liberal pretense. There is no true desire for “equal” educational paths for all. There is only desire to educate daughters as though she were bound to be a man some day.
If I teach my daughter all ways one could drown and I teach my son nothing in the way of swimming, who is still left better off in the long run if my daughter thought drowning was “liberation.”
An education system that teaches daughters that nondiscrimination and tolerance should be one’s “highest values” only shows how malicious it really is. And that daughters are being taught more of this is no reason to lament the fact that your son isn’t getting more of the same. Or maybe, he doesn’t need to be fed anymore? A lot of the boys don’t seem to have any desire for manhood. Nondiscriminafion and tolerance seems like their creed already.