January 7, 2013
News Clips
- Economic Conditions at Birth Linked to Behavior in Teen Years
Being born during a time of chronic unemployment may boost odds of juvenile delinquency, study says
Health Day
December 31, 2012 - The Great Recess Debate
The American Academy of Pediatrics is jumping into the debate over whether recess is a necessary break or wasted time away from the books. The group’s opinion: recess plays a crucial role in a child’s development and should remain a regularly scheduled period.
Health Day
December 31, 2012 - Elementary School Bias Against Boys Sets Them Up For Failure: Study
Academics from the University of Georgia and Columbia University think they have more insight into why girls earn higher grades on report cards than boys do, despite the fact that girls do not necessarily outperform boys on achievement or IQ tests.
Huffington Post
January 3, 2013 - Study: Kindergarten Rigged Against Boys
Is the End of Men nothing but a vast conspiracy against boys enacted by female elementary school teachers? The (male) head of economics at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business thinks so.
New York
January 3, 2012 - ‘Not Fair!’ How Sibling Fights May Lead to Later Mood Problems
Teens who fought with siblings over equality and fairness had higher levels of depression a year later, while those who fought over personal space issues were more anxious and had lower self-esteem, the researchers found. Younger brothers with older brothers and girls with brothers had more anxiety, while teens with an opposite gender sibling had lower self-esteem, according to the study published Dec. 20 in the journal Child Development.
Medline Plus
December 30, 2012 - More Evidence That Violent Video Games Help Spur Aggression
The more that people play violent video games, the greater their levels of aggressive behavior, a new study finds.
Health Day News
December 27, 2012 - Obesity declining in young, poorer kids: study
The number of low-income preschoolers who qualify as obese or “extremely obese” has dropped over the last decade, new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show.
Reuters
December 25, 2012 - Regular marijuana use by teens continues to be a concern
Continued high use of marijuana by the nation’s eighth, 10th and 12th graders combined with a drop in perceptions of its potential harms in this year’s Monitoring the Future survey, an annual survey of eighth, 10th, and 12th-graders conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan. The survey was carried out in classrooms around the country earlier this year, under a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health.
NIH News
December 19, 2012 - Veggies and Cheese as Filling as Chips For Kids, With Fewer Calories
Study finds tots who ate the healthier alternatives were just as satisfied
Medline Plus
December 18, 2012
Opinion
- Why don’t some boys see it as rape?
What strikes me about the incident is that it demonstrates a split in the boy rape-prone sexual culture. Some young men continue to believe that when a girl gets drunk, staging a sexual spectacle for their mates is part of a night’s fun. They don’t think of it as rape. Some of their buddies, however, disagree. In their transition to manhood, they are able to name rape when they see it.
CNN
January 4, 2013 - A Mom of Two Boys Wrestles With Sandy Hook and Masculinity
While my wife Tracie and I are learning to embrace our kids’ rather stereotypical boyness (you know, the near-constant potty talk, their obsession with certain body parts, their seemingly boundless physical energy and their excessive decibel levels), we refuse to shrug off incidents of aggression, verbal or physical, with a flippant “boys will be boys.”
Huffington Post
December 26, 2012 - Girls’ guns and boys’ Barbies?
A 13-year-old girl’s campaign to get Hasbro to make an Easy-Bake Oven that isn’t purple or pink so it would appeal to her little brother is a fresh sign of movement in an old debate. Parents who hope to expose their children to different kinds of play — science sets for girls and dolls for boys, for example — can find themselves stymied by a toy industry that tends to reflect traditional gender roles.
Washington Times
December 23, 2012 - The Joys of Raising Boys or How I Became a Christmas Shrew
Raising three middle school boys at once is tough work. We visited my brother, who has two daughters of similar ages, recently. The differences that exist between girls and boys was glaringly obvious. My nieces are happy and talkative and animated. When a friend waves to them they smile and wave back. When a friend waves to the boys, they shrug their shoulders and look away. They are moody.
Huffington Post
December 22, 2012 - Teaching Boys to Be Half Human
In the past few days, I, like many others, have written to suggest why making connections between masculinity and violence, race and identity are critical to answering those questions. Specifically, why are we not paying attention to the fact that mass murderers are predominantly young, white and male and thinking about what that means and what to do about it?
Huffington Post
December 20, 2012
Book Review
- Crime Against Nature
Filled with gorgeous, Klimt-esque illustrations, Seemel’s book shows readers just how diverse nature can be and just how often it fails to conform to our ideas of what is normal — from girls who are bigger and tougher than boys; to boys who give birth; to boys and girls that don’t have sex or reproduce at all (and don’t seem to mind one bit).
Boing Boing
January 2, 2012
International News
FRANCE
- Dolls for boys, drills for girls: ending toy ‘apartheid’
The latest to chip away at the toy apartheid, French supermarket Super-U, has printed a holiday season catalogue showing boys cradling dolls and girls piloting remote-controlled cars, billed as a first for the country.
Dawn.com
December 19, 2012
KENYA
- When beasts eye boys
The recently published Kenya Violence Against Children Survey 2010 (KVACS) reports that over 17 per cent of men aged between 18 and 24 were sexually abused as children.
Daily Nation
December 18, 2012
UK
- Education is leaving boys behind
We have to energise and inspire boys lagging behind girls – including the forgotten lads of our post-industrial economy
The Guardian
December 13, 2012
SUDAN
- The lost boys of Sudan’s civil war
Thousands of children were separated from their families and forced to become soldiers in a country ravaged by war
The Independent
December 31, 2012
UK
- Treat white working-class boys like ethnic minority, Willetts tells universities
The Universities minister David Willetts wants white, working-class teenage boys put in the same category as students from other disadvantaged communities and ethnic minorities – as groups that should be targeted for recruitment.
The Independent
January 3, 2013