The War Against Boys (37 page)

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Authors: Christina Hoff Sommers

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32.
 AAUW/Greenberg-Lake Full Data Report,
Expectations and Aspirations: Gender Roles and Self-Esteem
(Washington, DC: AAUW, 1990), p. 18.

33.
 Ibid., p. 13.

34.
 American Association of University Women,
How Schools Shortchange Girls:The
AAUW Report
, p. 84.

35.
 Millicent Lawton, “AAUW Builds on History,”
Education Week
, September 28, 1994, p. 17.

36.
 Susan Chira, “Bias Against Girls Is Found Rife in Schools, with Lasting Damages,”
New York Times
February 12, 1992, p. 1.

37.
 Tamar Lewin, “How Boys Lost Out to Girl Power,”
New York Times
, December 12, 1998, sec. 4, p. 1. See also Judith Kleinfeld, “Student Performance: Males Versus Females,”
Public Interest
, Winter 1999, pp. 3–20.

38.
 American Association of University Women,
How Schools Shortchange Girls:The
AAUW Report
(Executive Summary), p. 2.

39.
 Amy Saltzman, “Schooled in Failure?,”
U.S. News & World Report
, November 7, 1994, p. 90. Psychologist Judith Kleinfeld had a similar experience when she attempted to locate the Sadker call-out study. Kleinfeld asked, “Is it possible for a study simply to disappear into thin air? Apparently it is: when I telephoned David Sadker to ask him for a copy of the research, he could not locate one.” (In Judith Kleinfeld, “Student Performance: Males Versus Females,” p. 14.)

40.
 See, for example, P. W. Hill, P. Smith-Homes, and K. J. Rowe,
School and Teacher Effectiveness in Victoria: Key Findings from Phase I of the Victoria Quality Schools Project
(Melbourne: Center for Applied Educational Research, 1993). University of Melbourne researchers studied fourteen thousand students: among their key findings were that (1) “attentiveness has a massive effect on student achievement” (p. 28), and (2) girls are more attentive than boys (pp. 18, 28).

41.
 Sadker and Sadker,
Failing at Fairness
, p. 279.

42.
 
Women's Research Network News
(New York: National Council for Research on Women, 1993), p. 11.

43.
 Emily Eakin, “Listening for the Voices of Women,”
New York Times
, March 30, 2002,
www.nytimes.com/2002/03/30/arts/listening-for-the-voices-of-women.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
(accessed September 20, 2012).

44.
 Metropolitan Life Insurance Company,
The American Teacher 1997: Examining Gender Issues in Public Schools
(New York: Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, 1997).

45.
 Ibid., p. 3.

46.
 Ibid., p. 131. A similar question was asked by the 1998–99 State of Our Nation's Youth Survey,
State of Our Nation's Youth 1998–1999
(Alexandria, VA: Horatio Alger Association, 1998): 71 percent of girls but only 64 percent of boys said they have an opportunity for open discussion in class.

47.
 The Search Institute is an educational foundation devoted to advancing the well-being of children and adolescents. See Search Institute,
Starting Out Right: Developmental Assets
(Minneapolis: Search Institute, 1997); also Search Institute,
A Fragile Foundation: The State of Developmental Assets Among American Youth
(Minneapolis: Search Institute, 1999).

48.
 Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans,
State of Our Nation's Youth 1998–1999.
The survey conducted by NFO Research, Inc., was based on two small but carefully selected samples of students (a cross-section of 2,250 fourteen- to eighteen-year-olds as well as a computer-generated sample of 1,041 students; see p. 4). The researchers are careful to note that this study is not definitive and provides only a “snapshot in time.”

49.
 Ibid., p. 31.

50.
 Bae, Choy, Geddes, Sable, and Snyder,
Trends in Educational Equity of Girls and Women
, p. 22.

51.
 Ibid., p. 28.

52.
 Susan Harter et al., “Predictors of Level of Voice Among High School Females and Males: Relational Context, Support and Gender Orientation,”
Developmental Psychology
34, no. 5 (1998), p. 892.

53.
 Susan Harter, Patricia Waters, and Nancy Whitesell, “Lack of Voice as a Manifestation of False Self-Behavior Among Adolescents: The School Setting as a Stage upon Which the Drama of Authenticity Is Enacted,”
Educational Psychologist
32, no. 3 (1997), pp. 153–173.

54.
 Ibid., p. 162.

55.
 Ibid., p. 153 (abstract).

56.
 Amy Gross, passage from
Vogue
cited in Carol Gilligan,
In a Different Voice
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).

57.
 Emily Eakin, “Listening for the Voices of Women,”
New York Times
, March 20, 2002. Gilligan left Harvard soon after the donation, and the center never came into being. Harvard returned the funds to Ms. Fonda.

58.
 Lawrence J. Walker, “Sex Differences in the Development of Moral Reasoning: A Critical Review,”
Child Development
55 (1984), p. 681.

59.
 William Friedman, Amy Robinson, and Britt Friedman, “Sex Differences in Moral Judgments? A Test of Gilligan's Theory,”
Psychology of Women Quarterly
11 (1987), pp. 37–46.

60.
 See the exchange between Gilligan and me regarding the status (and whereabouts) of her research in
The Atlantic Monthly
, August 2000, Letters, vol. 286, no. 2, pp. 6–13. Available at
www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2000/08/letters.htm
(accessed September 12, 2012).

61.
 Zella Luria, “A Methodological Critique,”
Signs
, no. 2 (1986), p. 318.

62.
 Faye J. Crosby,
Juggling: The Unexpected Advantages of Balancing Career and Home for Women and Their Families
(New York: Free Press, 1991), p. 124.

63.
 Gilligan is celebrated by some (mostly feminist) moral philosophers for her discovery of two approaches to morality: the (female) ethic of care and the (male) ethic of justice. The labeling of these as male and female is her doing, but the distinction is hoary. The tension between care and duty, between the personal and the impersonal, between abstract principle and contextual reality are familiar themes in moral philosophy that transcend gender. All standard theories (John Rawls's hypothetical contractarianism, for example) must assign proper places to care and duty, balancing, for example, considerations of justice with considerations of mercy. See George Sher, “Other Voices, Other Rooms? Women's Psychology and Moral Theory,” and Marcia Baron, “The Alleged Repugnance of Acting from Duty,”
Journal of Philosophy
81, no. 4 (April 1984), pp. 197–220.

64.
 Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan,
Meeting at the Crossroads: Women's Psychology and Girls' Development
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1992), p. 15.

65.
 Ibid., p. 10.

66.
 Francine Prose, “Confident at 11, Confused at 16,”
New York Times Magazine
, January 7, 1990, p. 46.

67.
 Debra Viadero, “Their Own Voices,”
Education Week
, May 13, 1998, p. 37.

68.
 Carol Gilligan, “Remembering Larry,”
Journal of Moral Education
27, no. 2 (May 1998), pp. 134–135.

69.
 Ruth Graham, “Carol Gilligan's Persistent ‘Voice,' ”
Boston Globe
, June 24, 2012,
http://articles.boston.com/2012-06-24/ideas/32348040_1_psychology-gilligan-gender-studies/5
(accessed September 20, 2012).

70.
 Carol Gilligan, “The Centrality of Relationship in Human Development: A Puzzle, Some Evidence, and a Theory,” in Gil Noam and Kurt Fischer, eds.,
Development and Vulnerability in Close Relationships
(Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1996), p. 252.

5.
Gilligan's Island

1.
 Carol Gilligan, “The Centrality of Relationship in Human Development: A Puzzle, Some Evidence, and a Theory,” in Gil Noam and Kurt Fischer, eds.,
Development and Vulnerability in Close Relationships
(Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1996), p. 258.

2.
 Ibid., p. 251.

3.
 Ibid., p. 250.

4.
 Gilligan,
In a Different Voice
, pp. 7–11.

5.
 Nancy Chodorow,
The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), p. 9.

6.
 Ibid., p. 7.

7.
 Ibid., p. 180.

8.
 Ibid., p. 181.

9.
 Ibid., p. 214.

10.
 Gilligan,
In a Different Voice
, p. 8.

11.
 Ibid.

12.
 Chodorow,
The Reproduction of Mothering
, p. 219.

13.
 See chapter 3 for a review of literature on sex differences.

14.
 Michael Norman, “From Carol Gilligan's Chair,”
New York Times Magazine
, November 9, 1997, p. 50.

15.
 Gilligan, “The Centrality of Relationship in Human Development,” p. 251.

16.
 Ibid.

17.
 Norman, “From Carol Gilligan's Chair,” p. 50.

18.
 Ibid.

19.
 Norman, “From Carol Gilligan's Chair,” p. 50.

20.
 Gilligan, “The Centrality of Relationship in Human Development,” p. 238; Franklin, “The Toll of Gender Roles,” p. 9.

21.
 US Census Bureau,
Living Arrangements of Children 2009
, p. 4,
www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/p70-126.pdf
(accessed September 21, 2012).

22.
 Ibid.

23.
 Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
The Negro Family: The Case for National Action
(Washington, DC: US Department of Labor, 1965). Quoted in National Fatherhood Initiative,
Father Facts
(Gaithersburg, MD: National Fatherhood Initiative, 1998), p. 57.

24.
 Elaine Ciulla Kamarck and William Galston,
Putting Children First: A Progressive Family Policy for the 1990s
(Washington, DC: Progressive Policy Institute, 1990), p. 14.

25.
 Cynthia Harper and Sara S. McLanahan cited in “Father Absence and Youth Incarceration,”
Journal of Research on Adolescence
14 (September 2004), pp. 369–397.

26.
 David Blankenhorn,
Fatherless America
(New York: HarperCollins, 1995).

27.
 Debra Viadero, “Their Own Voices,”
Education Week
, May 13, 1998, p. 38.

28.
 Information sheet from Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Women's Psychology, Boys Development and the Culture of Manhood
, September 1995.

29.
 Gilligan, “The Centrality of Relationship in Human Development,” p. 251.

30.
 Stephen Ambrose,
Citizen Soldiers
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), p. 473.

31.
 Ibid.

32.
 Ibid., pp. 471–472.

6.
Save the Males

1.
 McLean Hospital press release (
www.mcleanhospital.org/PublicAffairs/boys1998.htm
), June 4, 1998.

2.
 Ibid. In the study, as in the McLean press release, the word
healthy
, when applied to boys, is invariably encased in ironic scare quotes.

3.
 William Pollack,
Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood
(New York: Random House, 1998).

4.
 
www.williampollack.com/talks.html
, July 12, 1999.

5.
 William Pollack, “Listening to Boys' Voices,” May 22, 1998, p. 28. (Available through McLean Hospital Public Affairs Office, Belmont, Massachusetts.)

6.
 McLean press release, p. 2.

7.
 Pollack, “Listening to Boys' Voices,” p. 24.

8.
 Ibid., p. 10.

9.
 Ibid.

10.
 Ibid., p. 9.

11.
 Ibid., p. 17.

12.
 Ibid., p. 18.

13.
 American Psychiatric Association,
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,
4th ed. (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 1994), pp. 111–112. For an excellent critique of Pollack's work on boys, see Gwen Broude, “Boys Will Be Boys,”
Public Interest
136 (Summer 1999), pp. 3–17. It was Broude's article that brought the
DSM-IV
data on separation anxiety to my attention.

14.
 McLean Hospital press release, p. 2.

15.
 Pollack, “Listening to Boys' Voices,” p. 11.

16.
 Russell D. Clark and Elaine Hatfield, “Gender Differences in Receptivity to Sexual Offers,”
Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality
2 (1989), pp. 39–55.

17.
 “Harvard and Yale Restrict Use of Their Names,” Associated Press, October 13, 1998. See also
www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/
.

18.
 Megan Rosenfeld, “Reexamining the Plight of Young Males,”
Washington Post
, March 26, 1998, p. A1.

19.
 Barbara Kantrowitz and Claudia Kalb, “Boys Will Be Boys,”
Newsweek
, May 11, 1998, p. 57. See also
www.nytimes.com/library/national/science
.

20.
 “The Difference Between Boys and Girls: Why Boys Hide Their Emotions,” ABC, June 5, 1998.

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