Here's a little food for thought about gender - a quote from a long article in Prospect magazine in which philosopher Roger Scruton reviews three books contributing to the nature-nurture debate.

This quote is from a section in which he argues, against the view of the philosopher Jesse Prinz, that biology does have a major impact on human behaviour.

In The Blank Slate (2002) Steven Pinker assembled the evidence for the conclusion that our fundamental capacities are implanted by evolution and malleable only in those matters in which malleability would confer a reproductive advantage. His argument was meticulous and serious, and the weight of scientific evidence impossible to deny. In this or that particular the science might be faulted or revised, but the broad case is surely compelling. Consider, for example, the division of roles everywhere to be observed between men and women. There is a powerful reason… click here to read whole article and make comments

Girls who spend a lot of time using multimedia seem are less happy and socially comfortable than peers who spend less time on screens, a study from Stanford University suggests.

Researchers came to that conclusion after analysing an online survey taken by 3,400 8- to 12-year-olds. The survey was offered through Discovery Girls magazine, which markets itself to that age -group (if indeed it is an age “group”, since there is, or ought to be, a big difference between 8 and 12-year-olds). The more time they spent in online communication and video use, the less happy they seemed to be.

There are problems with the survey: the girls self-report the time they spend on media, and they may not be a representative sample. There’s also the causality caveat: it could be that girls already less well-adjusted avoid face-to-face relations and have more recourse to the screen. With those reservations… click here to read whole article and make comments

If you have ever wondered why teenagers seem so different today and why they find the transition to adult life so much harder, you might be interested in the views of Psychology Professor, Alison Gopnik. Professor Gopnik traces such problems to what she sees as a lack of balance in the way we bring up kids these days and the impact it has on the development of their brains. She says we give them too much theoretical knowledge and not enough practical experience in the real world. Her solution is to introduce adolescents to the workplace much earlier in their development. She argues:

"Take your child to work” should become a routine practice. Students should spend more time watching and helping scientists and scholars at work, rather than just listening to their lectures. Summer enrichment activities like camp and travel, now so common for children whose parents have means, might be usefully alternated with… click here to read whole article and make comments

There is a distressing story of modern slavery in this feature in the Detroit Free Press but it is just one example of a human trafficking trend that sweeps thousands of individuals into servitude in the United States alone, and countless numbers internationally.

Eight in ten known trafficking cases involve the sex industry, which suggests that women are more likely to be enslaved than men (are the latter more subject to forced labour?). The worst of it is, however, that roughly half of those trafficked in the US are children. Teenage girls, for example, forced into prostitution and too terrified to run away.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, human trafficking has become the second-fastest-growing criminal industry -- just behind drug trafficking -- with children accounting for roughly half of all victims. Of the 2,515 cases under investigation in the U.S. in 2010, more than 1,000 involved children.

A British media personality has pricked the country’s happiness bubble by declaring that she does not want her kids to be “happy”. Kirsty Young, a Scot with two young daughters and two teenage step-children (and a husband who is a millionaire), said in an interview that it was impossible to be happy all the time because “Life is complicated … mostly never as it seems”.

“I don’t want my children to be ‘happy’,” she said. “They’ll be bloody lucky if they glimpse it now and again. I want them to be content and to have self-worth.”

I can understand her reacting against the obsession with happiness that seems to have taken hold of Britain. The government has been talking about it for a decade and is currently spending £1.5 million on finding out how happy or “satisfied” Brits are with their lives. Mind you, they have been goaded… click here to read whole article and make comments

A new study on divorce, looking at the complete spectrum of research on the subject, confirms what most people already know – even if they are not willing to admit it: divorce causes “irreparable harm” to the whole family, but  particularly to the children.

There have been plenty of individual studies exposing one or more effects of divorce, but rarely do researchers give an overview of the findings to date – and it makes disturbing reading.

Divorce puts some children on a “downward trajectory from which they might never fully recover”, says the study, The Effects of Divorce on Children, by Patrick F. Fagan and Aaron Churchill from US-based MARRI (the Marriage and Religion ResearchInstitute of the Family Rsearch Council). “It diminishes children’s future competence in all five of society’s major tasks or institutions: family, school, religion, marketplace and government.”

Any parent considering divorce, or even contemplating it as an… click here to read whole article and make comments

Schools with high academic expectations of students and a strong culture of community and support to match (termed “academic press”) have been shown to narrow the achievement gap for students from low socio-economic backgrounds. But there are some things, such as family breakdown, they cannot easily compensate for.

New research shows that “students who have experienced repeated changes in their family structure status will be less successful academically when attending schools with higher levels of academic press.”

The study, by Shannon Cavanagh, a professor in The University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Sociology, and Paula Fomby, an assistant professor in the University of Colorado Denver’s Department of Sociology, shows that mitigating social disadvantage is not simply a matter of putting kids in a strong academic environment.

“While students in a high-academic press school, regardless of family instability histories, are higher achieving in terms of course-taking compared to… click here to read whole article and make comments

After The Tiger Mom, maintenant, voici la mere Napoleon. French parenting, according to an American writer who witnessed the effects at first hand, produces toddlers who don’t throw food around and turn dining out into nightmare for the whole restaurant. How? Maman says Non! and means it.

Pamela Druckerman, mother of three, has written a book about it called French Children Don’t Throw Food: Parenting Secrets From Paris. (To be published in America in February as “Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting”)

The finer print, according to The Economist:

With a dollop of research and a big helping of anecdotes gleaned from friends, Ms Druckerman identifies two elements to French parenting that set it apart from what she calls the “Anglophone” version. One is that the French teach their children to be patient. Babies are not picked up at the first snuffle… click here to read whole article and make comments

If you have ever wanted to get a fully professional, reliable angle on abortion research a new initiative by Priscilla Kari Coleman (interviewed by MercatorNet in November) should interest you.

Professor Coleman, Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Bowling Green University in Ohio and a leading abortion researcher, has just launched the World Expert Consortium for Abortion Research and Education (WECARE). It is registered in the US as a non-profit with tax exempt status. She writes:

WECARE brings together credentialed scientists with a research program on the physical, psychological, and/or relational effects of abortion to engage in international research collaboration, scientific information dissemination, professional education, and legal consultation. By adopting a non-religious, non-partisan approach to understanding the implications of abortion, WECARE exists to enhance the quality of information, develop strategies for effectively transmitting research findings, and to break down barriers to evidence-based medicine.

There are already… click here to read whole article and make comments

We’ve been a bit sceptical about the self-esteem movement on this site in the past but now it seems we are in respectable company. A Washington Post article looks at new educational theories about praise, and a school that is rationing it -- for the sake of kids’ intellectual development.

“We used to think we could hand children self-esteem on a platter,” Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck said. “That has backfired.”

Slow kids don’t try hard enough and smart ones are scared to take risks when they are smothered with unearned praise.

The new approach seems to be mainly inspired by brain research and the idea that the brain is a work in progress, especially for the young. There is talk of persistence, risk-taking and resilience, of sweat and strain rather than warm fuzzies, but fostering these habits is geared to setting “the neurons popping” and giving children… click here to read whole article and make comments