There’s Only One Brain!

Now of course I have to bring in the other element—not nurture, but the biology of how little boys and girls are wired neurologically and hormonally. Unlike little boys, little girls have an initial growth spurt in the left hemisphere of the brain. As a result of this difference in neurological development, they tend to become more fluent and develop a greater repertoire of speech and language skills than boys. Little boys take about four years to catch up with this growth spurt. In the meantime, some serious environmental stimulation has taken place, and little girls get more parental verbal attention because they are more responsive, due to the advanced growth of their neuroanatomy.
In this case, the behavior of parents corresponds to real physiological characteristics. This is not true in the case of parents conditioning their sons to be more mechanically and mathematically inclined. The right hemispheres of boys’ brains do not grow more rapidly than those of little girls; the difference is purely environmental. In fact, I, along with many other specialists in the field, believe that if little girls were equally encouraged in mechanical and cognitive abilities, we would observe little or no differences between the sexes in this area.

Once Upon a Time There Was an Infant Boy and Girl

Men are raised differently than women are—yes, even in this day and age when we are supposed to be more sophisticated and aware. We clearly see this difference in people as early as infancy. For example, in a study at an Ivy League university, men and women were put into a room with infant boys and girls. Before entering the
room, the men and women were told that the infants were all little girls. As they entered and stayed in the room, both men and women spoke in a soft voice, making delicate cooing sounds and saying comments to the infants such as “You’re so pretty.” “Look at how beautiful you are.” “You are a little princess.” There was
hardly any physical contact.
Next, these same men and women were lead into another infant nursery, where—they were told—all the babies were little boys. Upon entering the room and subsequently spending some time there, the behavior of the adults changed greatly. The decibel level rose. The infants were actually taken out of their cribs and held under their
arms as they kicked the air beneath them. The adults used phrases such as “What a big strong boy,” “You’re gonna grow up to be a football player,” and “Hey, you little pumpkin head.”
More often than not, a parent will tolerate a boy’s impoliteness—“Gimme that”—over a girl’s impoliteness, insisting that “little girls don’t talk that way and have to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’”