Pink Brain, Blue Brain

"That book was transformative for me. Lise looked through every study on gender and brain research and broke them down for the general reader. Science was not my forte but the book laid out neuroscience in such a clear way that I found it easy to understand and even entertaining to read. It makes two key points. First, there are small differences between boys and girls at birth that are real. But, second, if we allow or encourage hyper gender differentiation those small differences become big gaps as kids develop. Those gaps include spatial skills, reading ability, and ways of dealing with people. This book really changed the way I thought about parenting. It encouraged me to encourage my daughter’s friendships with boys. We want men to be nurturing. We want girls to develop strong spatial skills. Cross-sex socialisation at an early age helps ingrain those attributes. As Lise emphasises, because of neuroplasticity nurture becomes nature. Consider language: We’re born able to make any sound but we lose the ability to make the sounds needed to speak other languages. In English-speaking culture, for instance, a lot of adults can’t roll their Rs. We were born with the ability to do so but that drops away. It’s not nature vs nurture – it’s how nurture becomes nature. When humans cry, fall, learn to walk and learn to talk, we’re strengthening some neurons at the expense of others – the younger the child, the greater the effect. So when we steer our daughters towards pink princess dresses and playing with make-up and away from playing rough and tumble with boys, that has a lasting impact on the brain. When kids are little they don’t understand that, for most of us, gender is permanent. They think that you might inadvertently turn into the other sex if, for instance, you wear pink when you’re a boy or cut your hair short when you’re a girl. That’s why little kids become the chiefs of the gender police and your little girl may cry if you try to put her into trousers. It’s really important for them at an early age to say, “I’m a girl, I’m a girl, I’m a girl.” So the appearance-oriented girl culture is exploiting a developmental phase, it’s not supporting a developmental phase. Once you understand that you can start thinking about how to help your daughter assert her femininity in a way that doesn’t undermine her long-term psychological health or personal potential. You can consider how to give her a different image of what it means to be feminine that’s stronger and more internal. I think of the flip side. By controlling what comes into the house, parents can limit the exploitation of girls and broaden the definition of girlhood. For instance, when my daughter was four we were reading about Greek myths so she went trick-or-treating dressed as Athena, the goddess of war and wisdom. It was really feminine – she got to wear a toga and a crown – but it was a different image of femininity than Cinderella."