According to the study, no. British researchers looked at 17,000 adults, all born in the same week in 1958. Men who had attended single-sex schools as children were more likely to divorce or separate from a partner by their early 40s than those who went to coed institutions. And men educated in single-sex environments were more likely to suffer depression or "a sense of malaise." Girls, however, did not appear to feel these adverse effects. Mary Bousted of the UK's Association of Teachers and Lecturers responded thus:

All the research shows single-sex schools are good for girls but bad for boys – both in terms of academic performance and socialisation. Girls seem to learn what the nature of the beast is if they have been to single sex schools whereas boys taught on their own seem to find girls more puzzling. Boys learn better when they are with girls and they actually learn to get on better.

As Bousted's "nature of the beast" comment shows, it's easy to inject anecdotal evidence into the single-sex schooling debate, and such evidence can easily turn to gender stereotype. For my part, boys I've known who had close female friends growing up — in school or out — tend to be more feminist and generally more comfortable around women. But it's hard to assign causality here — boys who are naturally well-disposed towards girls probably tend to have more of them as friends. And while I can certainly buy that being socialized with girls from an early age helps boys with relationships later in life, I'm not sure that girls are naturally "puzzling" while boys are easy to figure out. I wonder if the kind of school students attended affected the results — some were educated privately, some publicly, and it's not clear if researchers controlled for this. I also wonder if girls reap benefits from co-ed schooling that were outside the scope of the study. Lucy Hodges, editor of the Independent's education supplement, thinks they do. She writes,

As someone who was educated in a single-sex boarding school I believe my schooling might have been improved if I had spent it in the company of boys as well as girls. It would certainly have provided some welcome distraction in lessons. Instead of reading Georgette Heyer all the way through Latin and maths, I could have been making eyes at a real-life hero a few yards away and even had some improving discussions with him about my algebra prep. As it was, I didn't really get to know a youth who wasn't in a book until I arrived at university at the tender age of 17-and-a-half.

The relationship-building implications of single-sex schooling for heterosexual girls aren't totally trivial, but it's kind of unfortunate that Hodges chooses to frame them in terms of their dubious educational benefit. She also says that her daughter "would have been better off, certainly at sixth-form, at a school with some boys – and a few more male teachers – to bring a bit of spice and interest to her life." The idea that girls need sexual excitement to perform well in school is kind of depressing — can't academic subjects add "spice and interest" to life?

I'm not convinced that the excitement of the opposite sex helps hetero kids learn math. But it does seem logical that, regardless of sexual orientation, children learn social lessons from opposite sex peers. Potential confounding variables aside, it is possible that boys learn more valuable lessons than girls, or at least different ones. They may learn that girls share their interests and goals, that they can be smart and funny and fast and cool, and — most importantly — that they are people worthy of attention and consideration. Girls probably learn the same things about boys, but they may also learn that some boys don't like it when they speak up, or that some teachers have different expectations of them because of their gender. These lessons may be damaging to girls, and single-sex education may shield them from this damage for a time. But if it's true that sex segregation hampers boys' ability to relate to girls and later to women, that's not good for either gender. Single-sex education has benefits for many people, but it's not a gender-relations panacea — if we want boys and girls to grow up free of prejudice, we may ultimately need to pay more attention to what we're teaching them than to whether we're teaching them together.

Why Single-Sex Schools Are Bad For Your Health (If You're A Boy) [Independent]
Lucy Hodges: The Perils Of Single-Sex Education [Independent]

The MSNBC headline really says it all: "It's a boy? Disappointment plagues some moms." Of course, "gender disappointment" exists (as we know) in both forms. But for mothers who've been dreaming of girly bonding - or those, like my grandmother, who have four boys - the boy regret is apparently more common. As one mother quoted in the piece puts it, "There's not going to be any pink dresses. There's not going to be any scrapbooking. That's not going to happen."

Therapists quoted in the piece recommend that those who are super hung up on one sex find out in advance so as to deal with the disappointment. And now there's a resource: Altered Dreams: Living with Gender Disappointment, written by one mom whose sons will, hopefully, never check Amazon. I mean, surely at some point "gender disappointment" turns into "having a baby boy," right? This isn't the 19th century, where a father can't look at a girl without seeing the heir she should have been. And the moms quoted in the piece are sure to affirm that they love their sons, even if one of them "sometimes looks at her son and wonders, just for a moment, what he would look like as a girl." Well, if she's really curious, she can do what one of my friend's mothers did: dress him in dresses and bonnets because, dammit, she wasn't going to be cheated out of the pink.

It's A Boy? Disappointment Plagues Some Moms [MSNBC]

Some choice quotes from the issue, out Wednesday:

Losing weight to play a terminally ill woman who falls for her doctor has been rough, because Kate can't have cocktails: "And I love my glass of wine. I love tequila. To be in New York for two weeks and not have one beverage! I'm not sure I've ever done that."

The interviewer asks her what she weighs, which is kind of rude, but Kate says: "I'm pretty solid, actually. I'm not, like, 110lbs. But I'm probably heading towards that." (The Elle writer notes that her arms are very toned and "Her jeans are tight and she looks amazing from behind.")

Moving from the body to her skin: It's her face and she'll freeze it if she wants to:

"I was in a press conference once, and someone says, 'So, I can tell you've never had Botox!' Is that a compliment? Or are you trying to say I'm starting to get wrinkles? I literally was like, 'What?' Everyone's so obsessed with who gets Botox, but it's great! Are you kidding? The fact that women can avoid going under the knife, and get a little Botox treat and not have to worry about it? I'm glad it's there for when it's time."

On boys:

"I sometimes feel like when you're talking to boys, they just hear certain keywords… But if you had a bubble above their head, they'd be thinking about game scores, masturbation and food."

And:

"I love boys… but I believe they're really simple. Every guy likes to say that they're complicated, but they're so easy to figure out. What did that Dr Laura say? Something like, 'All men want is sex and for you to make them a sandwich.' I thought that was really funny – and not entirely untrue."

On being a female:

"I love being a girl. I love clothes and I love the rituals of facials and body treatments, all the stuff girls get, make-up, scarves, hats. And we're like a tribe. That's just our nature. You get a group of women together and, somehow, we keep it together. I love that we can be that powerful, as a group. Men, you know, it's survival of the fittest."

Lastly, she says of bloggers talking shit:

"It's like having a girl talk badly about you in high school. It's so juvenile and base. Not liking an outfit, OK, I get that. OK, let's all laugh at somebody's outfit. OK, you don't like it; you can make a funny joke about it. And if you have a good sense of humor, you can take it. It's happened to me; I got panned at the Oscars one year. But a lot of my [Hollywood] peers are really beautiful people. Really, really nice. And everyone's doing the best they can. It's not a negative world; it's quite positive. And for people to want to switch it and make it negative, because it makes them feel better, that's really bizarre."

Elle UK [Official Site]

[Images by David Slijper courtesy of Elle Magazine.]

Thirty six-month-old children were shown a pink doll and a blue truck. With new eye tracking technology, scientists found that while boys and girls both looked at the doll more than at the truck, girls looked at the doll more than boys did, whereas boys looked at the truck more than girls. According to Dave Munger at Cognitive Daily,

The researchers say babies this young don't have the motor skills to actually play with these toys, so the result must be due to different visual preferences in boys and girls. Arguably, babies at this age don't have any opinion about gender roles and don't even particularly distinguish between genders, so social influences must not be responsible for this difference.

Munger, however, is skeptical. He writes,

Personally, I'm not so sure I'm convinced by the researchers' logic. Little girls are dressed in pink and boys are dressed in blue from a very young age. Girls are given dolls and boys are given trucks, so whether the babies are conscious of gender roles or are able to physically interact with these toys, they have been exposed to them more or less based on their gender.

Eric Berger of SciGuy adds, "I think the study might have been more persuasive if the dolls and trucks would have been the same color." Since plenty of people still think it's important to paint a baby girl's room pink and a boy's room blue, I agree that color differences may have biased the results. I also agree with Munger that "it's intriguing to learn that at an average age of 6 months, girls already appear to be more interested in dolls and less interested in trucks than boys are" — although given that both genders looked at the doll more, the difference seems pretty small.

However, I'd also like to point out that the doll/truck dichotomy is sort of an artificial one. Kids are surprisingly flexible, and while it's true that some only like tutus and tiaras and others are single-minded MicroMachine addicts, most kids (and most toys) fall somewhere in between. My brother and I jointly played with the following: Legos, face paint, a Playmobil castle complete with an iron maiden, a set of cardboard bricks we used for our version of "The Cask of Amontillado," Batman and dinosaur action figures (who costarred in our short film, Mr. Freeze and the Velociraptor Rumble in Van Nuys), various wigs, and a stuffed flamingo named Rasputin. As interesting as it is to study gender differences in the way kids play, and to find the source of these differences, we should remember that lots of play — like lots of human behavior in general — is ungendered, and that boys and girls have a lot more in common than an essentialist interpretation of the doll vs. truck study might suggest.

Babies As Young As Six Months Prefer Different Toys Based On Sex [ScienceBlogs]
Even At Six Months Girls Want Dolls, Not Trucks [SciGuy]

Inspired in part by Larry Summers's comment that "issues of intrinsic aptitude" were behind the gender gap in math performance, Professors Janet Hyde and Janet Mertz of the University of Wisconsin-Madison decided to review the available evidence and see if boys consistently outperformed girls at the highest levels. Summers's claim — and one accepted by many others — was that while girls might perform as well as boys on average, boys had a greater variability of mathematical aptitude and thus might always dominate in the upper echelons of mathematics. No woman, some note, has ever won the Fields Medal, math's most prestigious honor. But Hyde and Mertz found that the gap between boys and girls at the top levels of achievement did not persist throughout the world, and was smaller in countries with greater gender equality.

In Iceland, Thailand, and the UK, 15-year-old girls outnumbered boys at the top levels of math achievement. In most countries studied, girls' math skills were just as variable as boys', and in the Netherlands they were actually more variable. In general, countries where girls matched or outperformed boys were also countries with high gender equality — like Denmark, Iceland, in the UK. All of these are in the top twelve — the US is 31, right before Kazakhstan. This suggests that culture, not biology, is holding girls back in countries where boys still outperform them.

Hyde and Mertz found that the gender gap in math doesn't even hold across all ethnic groups in the US. For Asian-Americans, more girls than boys scored in the top 1% in one battery of tests. Essentially, Summers's claim of greater variability seemed only to apply to white American kids. Mertz says, "U.S. culture instills in students the belief that math talent is innate; if one is not naturally good at math, there is little one can do to become good at it. In some other countries, people more highly value mathematics and view math performance as being largely related to effort."

It's no surprise that in a country where math skill is assumed to be innate, and where prominent people tell girls they have less innate skill, that girls might not always measure up to boys. We know that negative stereotypes can affect performance, but even in the face of people like Summers, girls in the US are catching up to boys. Girls now take high school calculus at the same rate as boys, and 30% of math doctorates go to women now, as opposed to 5% in the 1950s. American girls may have a ways to go before they reach total equality, but it's going to take more than Larry Summers to keep them down.

Girls Worse At Math? No Way, New Analysis Shows [Reuters]
Culture, Not Biology, Underpins Math Gender Gap [EurekAlert]
Girls Get Math: It's Culture That's Skewed [LiveScience]
Gender Gap In Maths Driven By Social Factors, Not Biological Differences [ScienceBlogs]
Gender Stereotypes Can Affect Men's And Women's Test Performance in Math, Study Shows [NYU]
The Global Gender Gap Report 2007 [World Economic Forum]

Isis was angry to read the following:

As female students increasingly dominate in science competitions across the country, educators are facing a conundrum that requires more social analysis than hard science: Boys are not just getting beaten by girls — they're not even showing up..."We're beginning to have concerns," said Reni Barlow, executive director of Youth Science Canada, a national organization that oversees the national and regional science fairs in its mandate to foster Canada's future generation of scientists. Educators are searching for new tools to lure more boys back into the fold. In Quebec, where girls made up 68 per cent of students at this year's provincial science fair, regional organizers recently created a program focused on technology and robotics — deliberately promoting fields where boys have traditionally shown the most interest. Youth Science Canada recently launched a mentorship program that it hopes will inspire more boys to continue in the footsteps of Canada's top male researchers.

Responds Isis,

The same is true for many women in science and academia. White male members of these spheres may think they've plugged the holes, but they lack the reference to appreciate cultural differences that put pressure on women to leave professional careers. I'll never forget being 20 years old and in college, going home to meet the parents of a boy I was dating. After dinner, the boy's father leaned over, pinched my hip, and told his son, "¡Qué bueno, hijo! Ella tiene cintura perfecta para estar embarazada."...I am so pleased that young girls are becoming better represented in science and I certainly hate to think that young boys are not pursuing science. However, to conflate this with the success of women in science is short-sighted and fails to appreciate the complexity of the factors that keep women from transitioning from trainee to career scientist.

She does a superb job of outlining the obvious responses to this line of reasoning, and as a working scientist and a teacher, she's in a good position to do so. And as a commenter points out, these very encouraging statistics about girls in science don't take the longer view, with its social and societal pressures into account: a girl who loves science may well not make it her field of study or her eventual career.

And at the end of the day, isn't this really two issues? As Isis points out, it's very possible to be thrilled by such gains for women and still be distressed to see boys losing interest in science, or any other field of study. To 'blame' boys' disinterest on girls' success does a disservice to both. Why must this become a source of resentment and defensiveness, perceived as success at the expense of others - isn't it this attitude as much as anything causing the polarity? Sure, we may not live in a vacuum, a utopia of equality, but it's a privilege of childhood that for a few years, kids can believe they do. Writes one commenter on the ScienceBlog post, "Those mean old girls are outcompeting the poor widdle boys in science fair. EMERGENCY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" And yeah, that's probably how most of us feel, this level of hyperbole at what should be celebrated and cheered in a world where men have the upper hand. But these kids are also individuals, and whatever the larger social truths of their advantages and privilege, their losing interest in science is an emergency. But in the acrimonious world of "boys versus girls" it seems like sometimes "kids" gets lost, and that's a shame. 68% smart women at a science fair, the fact that the three top winners at this year's Intel Science Competition are girls, is wonderful, a triumph for women, but also for scientists and smart people - an example, ideally, to all kids rather than a source of divisiveness to adults.
There Are Too Many Girls in Science! Let the Boys Back In! [ScienceBlog]

At the science fair, girls dominate the class [Globe and Mail]
Three Young Women Win Top Honors at World's Largest Pre-College Science Competition [DDJ]

Recently we linked to a CNN article in which a mom discussed her preference for a boy over a girl baby. Now Tori Spelling is admitting to the same feelings, prior to giving birth to daughter Stella, now a year old. The product of a famously contentious relationship with her own mom, Candi, Spelling apparently worried about replicating the dynamic. "How was I going to handle a girl?" She asks in Cookie.

Of course, now that the daughters exist, both moms have come around, presumably appreciating the differences - and, more to the point, appreciating them as individuals rather than simply defined by their sex. But soon enough, apparently, that sort of journey won't be necessary. Says Babble,

Now, according to a Swedish medical ruling, if a mother or couple discover the gender of their baby and decide "that's what we were hoping for" they can get an abortion on that basis

It seems sad to think that people like Wilson or Spelling who take advantage of this won't get the chance to challenge their assumptions and maybe have something unexpected and wonderful happen - and what's with no one wanting girls? (Selective pregnancy for boys is, after all, chillingly familiar.) Then too, this seems like a very slippery slope: what of those who want to isolate the "gay" gene to guarantee heterosexual offspring?

On the other hand, perhaps any parent who is that single-mindedly eager for a son or daughter might let the disappointment (?) color a child's life, and if that's the only way they feel capable of parenting well, then...But: there's so much chance in having a child at all that the sex is surely almost the least of it! Having children seems to be largely about giving yourself over to a loss of control: to love, to fear, to the unexpected. Control is futile - isn't that the tragedy and the beauty of giving birth to another human being? - and any parent is going to learn that soon enough. Sex would seem like a good place to start.

Don't like Your Baby's Gender? Sweden Rules 'Gender-Based' Abortion Legal [Babble]
Tori Spelling Was Worried About Raising a Girl [Cookie]
Earlier: This Mom: Brave Enough To Admit She Wanted A Boy, Not A Girl

In the ongoing quest to shatter every single sugar-coated motherhood cliche - I don't love my daughter! I hate playing with my kids! - CNN runs an essay (by way of Parenting) on Why This Woman Didn't Want A Girl. (Dozens of people have emailed us about it.) As a pregnant woman with two boys, the author, Amy Wilson, resents the implication that she "must" want a girl to round things out. Fair enough; any superior supposition about pregnancy has always struck us as pretty intrusive.

I do this partially in defense of the two wonderful sons I have. But it's the truth. I love what I have, and I have what I love: boys. I understand them. I understand the clothes, the toys, and the Matchbox-car skids on my wallpaper...Not that having two boys is easy — their physical interaction can be, shall we say, overwhelming. But I love even that, because when I say I am the mother of two boys less than two years apart, I get a respectful nod or even a big thumbs-up for having that much testosterone in my daily life.

She's starting to lose us here, but we persevere. Then we hit that quote about girls being manipulative - how will she, gaining everyone's respect for being such a guy's girl, "deal with that?" And this:

My sons sneer at all things princess, and so do I. We love to pore over the Birthday Express catalog so the boys can plan the themes of their parties through 2013. My role in this is to gasp, "Oh, I think you should have a pink-poodle party!" "YUCK!! That's for GIRLS!!" they shriek, and I laugh along with them. What will I do when I have someone who wants a pink-poodle party?

Sure, she says, not all girls are like this - she has a niece who's not a girly-girl - but what if she is? What if, presumably, she's a moron who likes stupid things? And, oh yeah, there are the social reasons:

I also worry that girls have it harder — whether they're tomboys or wear tutus. I fear I won't know how to protect my child from a world that may often tell her that she's not good enough as she is. That, in order to get ahead, she's going to have to deny some part of herself. Having a daughter means there's so much more, as a mother, that I can do wrong.

"A world that may often tell her she's not good enough as she is," hm? Like, say, a parent who makes unilateral sweeping statements about her sex and condemn her possible interests before she's even born? I'd say that'll set her up pretty well for the world, actually.

Okay, I'm being harsh, I know - and as a non-mom, I know how easy is is to criticize. People have all kinds of feelings, I have friends who've worried about their ability to parent to one sex or the other based on their experiences and inclinations - and all these ideas are, I guess, somewhat grounded in the pink-and-blue world of cliche. What's troubling about the author's rationale is not that she doesn't want a girl - fair enough - but that all her reasons seem to be founded on a contempt for girls that she's not examining. (And at the risk of overthinking, there are worse things than being in a culture where baby girls are valued.)

Many modern parents have struggled with seeing their children succumb to the lure of "gendered" toys and paraphernalia, but more often than not it seems the reality leads them to relax their view on the evil of a Barbie when weighed in the context of a smart, real child in an intelligent, loving home over whose values a parent has some control. Kids don't exist in a vacuum - even girls. Now, when there's a weird expectation of vapidity,of "whining, manipulation and triangulation?" Well, that's another matter.

It should be said that the piece features the post-script, "Her daughter, Maggie, is 16 months old, and Wilson "gets it" now, she really gets it." Now that's a piece I'd rather read - because we already know plenty about sweeping judgments. The specific reality's generally more complex.

Why I Didn't Want A Girl [CNN]

Pediatrician Dr. Perri Klass, in this week's "18 and Under" column, talks rather generally about the challenges of talking to boys about sex - which, in her book, means ensuring not just a respect for women but a general air of courtesy, a necessary defense against those who regard adolescent males as predators and girls as victims. Well, sure, among other things. As is often the case in these pieces, though, there seems to be a sense that these kids have just sprung up, Athena-style, fully formed and sexually active, at the whims of an overly sexualized pop culture. True to a degree, sure - healthy images of adolescent sexuality are certainly few and far between - but by the time a kid's a teen, hasn't he absorbed values of respect and decency at home? To the concerned Times-reading parent delivering this lecture, surely there's been at least a decade of raising, living, and influence far more potent than any 20-minute conversation?

I asked a male friend about "the talk." He described it as, "a weird combination of things I'd known for years - like safe sex stuff, and that it was okay to masturbate, which I'd gathered - and things I really did not need to hear. Like, 'if you ever get a girl pregnant, come to me, not your mother.' Pregnant? I was 12!" Another dude I asked said, "Yeah, my parents sat me down when I was maybe 15 to talk to me about how 'no means no' and basically to be a reasonable person and it was kind of offensive. I mean, I get it. But it was so obvious to me and the way I'd been raised. The guys who need to hear that? Probably not the ones having these conscientious talks with their parents in the first place."

To answer the author's question, do the sexes need to be addressed differently? Obviously, yes and no. Respect, self-respect, safety are fundamentals. The particulars and the pressures differ. Courtesy, which seems to be the author's bete noir, is important, and I guess in an ideal world underlies all this, but when push comes to shove is another issue entirely when we're talking about real issues of safety, trust and decency. The readers who write in earnestly all agree to a degree - "teach your children well" ad nauseam - and then there's this:

As a single, 30-something woman, I can tell you it isn't just the teenagers that need manners. I feel like such an old lady, but I'm simply shocked at the behaviour of men. Every week or so, a man comes up out of the blue to demand sex in explicit terms. Today a man came up on the subway and told me how good I'd look giving him a, well something that I don't think that can be repeated on the NY Times. On-line is the worst: last week a man wrote me the comparatively clean: "Strategically, what's the quickest way to intercourse with you?"...I have to wonder–does this work for some women? Why are so many men behaving like something out of a porn video? What on earth is going on?

Talking to Boys About Sex [New York Times]

Kristin Tillotson of the Star-Tribune argues that the word "tomboy" may be outmoded now that "girls have more athletic options than ever and are outpacing boys in college-graduation rates." The idea that girls don't have to dress or act like boys in order to be considered smart, strong, or adventurous is awesome, but we're not entirely there yet. Scarlett Thomas, who plays Ramona in an upcoming stage production of "Ramona Quimby," says "she likes Ramona, a still-beloved classic kid's lit character, because she thinks for herself and stands her ground — traits associated with boys and tomboys, but not girly girls." And young Girl Scout Shamira MensanTeajaha Granger says, "girls have to stay on top of their game about how they look and being clean all the time. Boys come to school smelling like anything."

All this implies that we haven't yet reached a world where traits like "well-dressed," "adventurous," "pretty," "sporty," and "smelly" can exist independently of each other and of gender. Even Tillotson falls prey to some gender stereotypes, as when she generalizes, "little girls love to wear pink tutus." As far as we're concerned, as long as well-meaning people say things like this, there will always be a place for the term tomboy, and a soft spot in our hearts for girls who prefer a cape to a tutu and don't mind "smelling like anything." These girls aren't necessarily smarter, cooler, or stronger than girls who wear tiaras and lip gloss, but for now they might have to be braver, because, as another Girl Scout said, boys still expect girls to "to have a Coke-bottle shape and wear cute clothes and makeup."

"Ramona Quimby" director Clinton Turner Davis thinks "it would be interesting to poll some of the female leaders of our time — Michelle Obama, Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice — and find out how many of them identified as tomboys." We took a similar poll of the Jezebel staff, and here are our results: Anna (H.) and Hortense were both total tomboys. Sadie "loved dolls and stuff, but I was very rambunctious, always climbing trees, skinning my knees, very grubby and kinda feral, too!" Dodai "had a phase where i was all about bugs and karate, but I never really thought of it as boyish." Intern Katy "was really interested in karate and boxing, but like Dodai, I didn't think it was 'boyish.'" Margaret says, "I don't know if having a brother very close in age influenced how I played, but I didn't pick up that you weren't supposed to wear a frilly dress AND play with He-Man figures in the mud until I was older." And while I was really into clothes, I also enjoyed X-Men, Creepy Crawlers, and fighting. If we're any indication, it looks like it's possible to combine "boy stuff" and "girl stuff" into a relatively happy childhood. What about you? Were you more about frills, more about bugs and karate, or all about both?

Tomboys In Tutus [Minneapolis Star-Tribune]

The New York Times reports that a recent study of 66,000 births by researchers at Tel Aviv University found that male babies had a greater chance of problems like premature birth and the need to be delivered by Cesarean. The results are similar to a 2002 study that examined 90,000 births in 1988 and 1999 and found that women pregnant with boys were 1.5 times more likely than women pregnant with girls to experience arrest of descent, in which the fetus stops descending during the pushing stage of labor.

Scientists believe the larger head size of males or their higher levels of androgens may play a role, but they add that the risks are so small that we shouldn't start worrying that male births are "high risk." Nor should the new findings give credence to the old myth about determining a baby's gender.

But, we've seen new research used to back up ridiculous urban legends in the past. Last year, two studies found that women with a high sodium intake and high potassium intake were more likely to conceive boys, and women who skip breakfast and have a lower calorie intake in general were more likely to conceive girls. Some interpreted this as proof that the old advice to eat bananas for breakfast if you want boys is true.

Though newspapers ran with headlines saying women who wanted boys should load up on Cheerios and French fries, "The F-Word" blog pointed out that there were several problems with the research. Only 56% of the women with high-calorie diets had boys. Often research on how a woman's habits increase her chances of having a boy or girl seems less significant when you consider that there is a 50/50 chance the baby will have the desired gender anyway. Pregnancy-info.net has a rundown of the many old wives tales believed to reveal whether a woman is carrying a boy or girl, from mixing urine with Drano to checking which breast is bigger. Most have been debunked by researchers and even in those with some medical credibility, the differences are so slight that they won't really help determine the child's sex. Aside from an ultrasound or genetic testing, they only way to be 100% sure of the baby's gender is to wait until it's born or adopt.

[Image via stock.xchng.]

The Claim: Birth Complications Are More Likely With Boy [The New York Times]
Boy Or Girl? Fact Or Fiction? [Pregnancy-Info.net]

Earlier: Want A Baby Boy? Eat A Burger For Breakfast

The Swedish org "Trade Ethical Council against Sexism in Advertising" (ERK) (because the actual Swedish words are presumably different), decries the Lego photo spreads thusly:

As the post recounts, the Danish company started out in the 70s as deliberately gender-neutral and high-mindedly concerned with cognitive development. When the stridently gender-specific toy market of the 80s came around, Lego started a girly pastel line called "Paradisa." In this regard, Feministe's Holly points out, they were right on trend with ideas about gender differences and similarities, which waxed and waned throughout the 80s and 90s.

One interesting thing I noticed during my tenure in the land of plastic bricks — when someone’s watching them, peers or adults, kids are much more likely to adhere to stereotypical divisions of play, and gravitate away from what’s clearly labeled as “for the other gender.” When we looked at statistics from the Lego website, however, where kids of a certain age range were often playing by themselves in front of a computer, we often found that the gender division of who was playing little online web games was much more gender-neutral. In other words, girls on the Lego website were playing the sports and (Lego-sanctioned, relatively non-violent) combat oriented games. This wasn’t a huge surprise, since the conventional wisdom was that of course there were some girls who liked “boy stuff,” and nobody bothered to market to them separately. More surprisingly, there were plenty of boys who also played the princess dress-up games. I always though that spoke volumes about the role of social observation in many kids’ adherence to gender rules.

What's funny about the whole controversy is that, were there ever a toy that seemed like it didn't require the bells and whistles of boy/girl marketing, it would be Lego. At the end of the day, after all, it's always blocks. Its limitless creative potential and essential plainness is probably what devotees love and what I, as a child, found unspeakably dull. The case raises several questions, none of them new: is this sort of "gendering" inherently offensive; is it based on anything but societal construct (as Holly seems to suggest; having been a wholly stereotypical small child myself, I will self-recuse); are the kids who find Lego intriguing already a subset; and, is this kind of marketing even effective? Lego's an interesting test case because the toy is itself so very neutral, in its appeal and presentation, that the sex-specific trappings are wholly superficial and, as such, make for an interesting control of sorts. (It's also why, ironically, it can be such a good medium for weirdness.) That "cognitive development" has become less a touchstone for marketers than its more commercial corollaries is probably a comment in itself — although more on the buying public than a company that, at the end of the day, has always just wanted to shill plastic blocks.

Gasp! Kids’ Toys Are… Gendered? [Feministe]
JC de Castelbajac's Lego Fashion Show [Shopping Blog]
Cultural Issues On Color & Sex [Colour Lovers]

[Image via JeongMee Yoon's Pink & Blue Project]

I was recently sitting with a friend's 8-year-old for an evening, when she brought me to her room to show me a note a little boy in her class had sent her. "I know you have a boyfriend," he'd written in a large, childish scrawl, "but I need to have you in my life." He went on to say that her happiness was the most important thing to him; he'd included a flower, which she had thrown away. Maybe Alec Greven's on to something!

When some of us were in third grade, we were so tiny and borderline feral that romance was not really an issue: such interactions were limited to intense secret crushes, occasional haughty snubbings, and spelling competitions with flirtatious undertones. When one little boy did like me, I was so humiliated that I asked to be moved to a different desk group. One of my out-of-school friends lied about having an older 4th grade boyfriend, which made me very uncomfy. A few couples in my class 'dated,' which didn't mean that they went anywhere or actually acknowledged each other. And I have a very distinct memory of one little girl attempting to impress a boy she liked by bringing all her horseback riding trophies to school and casually arraying them atop her desk; she was regarded with pity by the rest of the class.

So, based on this, a perusal of old diaries and recent interaction with abovementioned babysittee, here is what our inner 9-year-old girl would advise with regards to dating boys:

-Always be nice. Even if you don't like someone back, never humiliate him and try to keep things private.
-Keep all notes.
-If you like a boy, don't bring all your horseback riding trophies to school and put them on your desk, because everyone will know what you are doing and you won't be able to open your desk.

Your turn, belles! If we want to compile something definitive here, we're going to need a lot of child-channeling and, more to the point, as much advice as you can get from real 9-year-olds. Sisters? Cousins? Pupils? Bring it on! We'll compile all the advice we get as a public service.

Earlier: The Book Of Love

I don't think I have to say that I like women, that some of my best friends are female, that my sister rocks in unimaginable ways and that a girls' night out is tons of fun. But. When I was four years old, my best friend was a boy who lived down the street. We jumped on the trampoline, played doctor and watched cartoons together until I moved away. And there have been numerous successors ever since. Some of them were gay, some of them were straight. Some were older, some were younger. But having a guy as a close friend — as a best friend — is a feeling I've always known. There's something about the dynamic between two adults who don't want to sleep together and yet have different gender perspectives on life. Being girly with the girls is one thing; having a burger and a beer with the boys (or dumplings and champagne with the gays) is another. What is it about getting close to a man (in a totally non-sexual way) that's so appealing? (And am I the only one who loves having boys as besties?)

Always a Bridesmaid, Never the . . . Groom [Washington Post]