Raising Girls: Why girls are different – and how to help them grow up happy and confident. Gisela Preuschoff
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flight reactions – are regulated. Here there is also a pinhead-sized group of cells, the so-called ‘third interstitial nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus’. It is thought that this area controls sexual desire. The size of this group of cells is identical for boys and girls when they are infants, but it begins to grow in boys from the age of ten; and by the onset of puberty, boys have two and a half times more nerve cells here than girls.
The most often debated difference between the male and female brain, however, concerns the band of nerve cells connecting the right and left cerebral hemispheres. This bridge, corpus callosum, is definitely larger in the female brain, and it may explain differences between male and female thought processes. Girls and women use both cerebral hemispheres simultaneously, while males use only one at a time.
It has also been proven that girls’ left cerebral hemisphere matures more quickly than that of boys. As the speech centre lies in here, boys – as a rule – learn to speak later than girls. The right cerebral hemisphere, which is responsible for the solution of spatial-visual problems, develops later in girls, which is why young girls often have difficulty imagining objects from different perspectives and orienting themselves spatially.
Birth differences
As a rule, the birth of a boy lasts an average hour and a half longer than that of a girl, perhaps because boys have an average 5 percent greater body weight at birth than girls. If a girl seems very contented as an infant, for example, it might be because her birth went smoothly and she had no traumatic birth experiences. In 1987 in Finland, it was established that newborn boys had a 20 percent higher risk of low Apgar scores than girls (the Apgar system is an index developed by the American doctor, Virginia Apgar, which states a newborn’s vital signs; measurements are taken of breathing, pulse, base colour, appearance, reflexes). Premature births, vulnerability to mental disturbances and infections, and likelihood of accidents are all distinctly lower with girls than with boys.2 A girl’s parents are lucky: female babies are tougher and more robust than boys. We can only speculate about all the factors that contribute to this imbalance, but we can say that cortisol – the stress hormone – and testosterone, which boys build up, heighten the vulnerability of the immune system in male infants.
Perhaps the fact that girls are more socially attuned after birth and maintain eye contact longer than boys is connected to this higher probability of good health for them. They also react more strongly to noises and to other people present in the room, cry less often and are pacified more easily.
Even during pregnancy, the female body is three weeks ahead of the male in terms of bone development. At birth, female babies are already four to six weeks ahead of boys developmentally. At puberty, most girls are clearly and visibly at least two years ahead of their male classmates in development – clearly, these differences began very early in the piece.
Developmental differences and their consequences
Female skin is significantly thinner than male skin and seems to want touching more. The hormone that releases the need to be touched is oxytocin.3 It is no wonder that women, whose receptors are ten times more sensitive than men’s, think it is so important to touch and hug their husbands, children and friends.
Parents speak more often to their female babies, which certainly could explain why girls seem to listen more attentively. As little girls maintain eye contact longer than boys, they ‘demand’ that their parents devote more time to them, smile at them and talk to them.
Every baby begins to distinguish women’s voices from men’s very early on. She knows her parents’ voices from when she was in the womb. With this, a more detailed classification process begins: for example, a deep voice means coarser facial features and rougher skin. The baby is gathering information that, years later, moulds her image of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’.
At the age of six months, little girls are already more independent than their male companions: they can occupy themselves happily with toys and can comfort themselves with their thumb or a muslin.
The most significant difference in the first months is the speed with which little girls mature. Their height and weight increase more quickly, and they cut their canine teeth earlier than boys.
At the age of seven months, little girls can roll from one side onto the other (and often they can crawl already), are very skilled in handling a spoon, can draw lines and can pull up a zip.
These developmental differences continue apace. At preschool age, girls’ fine motor skills are significantly better developed. Girls also start speaking much sooner and have more self-control (see page 33).
Parents’ expectations and behaviour
So there are distinct, biologically determined differences between boys and girls. These are strengthened or weakened by their parents’ behaviour and the whole environment around them. It is intriguing to know that in experiments, people faced with a group of infants clothed in yellow jumpsuits could not tell whether the babies were boys or girls. Even though they said they could! As soon as they learned what sex a child was, however, they reacted to girls differently from boys.
One mother recorded in her diary – which deals with the first three years of her daughter’s life (she was born at the start of the 1980s) – that one of her girlfriends said, on seeing the newborn baby girl, ‘Katie will be able to twist men around her little finger.’ And the mother herself was sure that ‘to have a right to exist in this world of men, a woman must look good’.
Is this still true these days?
The pressure to be fashionable and beautiful has never been as great as it is today, and girls suffer more than boys if they don’t conform. I shall return to this later. Almost everyone notices that parents dress and groom their little daughters particularly carefully, and how a girl’s ‘natural’ predisposition to smarten herself up is welcomed and reinforced by adults.
Female researchers have observed that parents look after their small daughters more tenderly than their small sons. This may have to do with the widespread illusion that ‘men’ must be toughened up, or that they are not as sensitive in the first place. As we saw, males are less physically sensitive than females,4 but how did this biological fact become extended to include emotional sensitivity?
Who you are is crucial
Sometimes we forget that everything depends on self-awareness. What kind of person am I? How do I behave? What kind of example am I setting for my child? (To help you answer these questions, refer back to the ‘Self-awareness questions for parents’ in the Introduction.) The better you know yourself and understand your own anxieties, feelings and desires, the less likely you are to force your children into a mould or transfer your anxieties to them. Which means that the most difficult part about raising children – whether they are boys or girls – is the work you have to do on yourself. When you have a daughter, you must ask yourself what it means to you personally to be part of a female child’s upbringing, and what femininity means to you. You need to be honest here. Little children see through insincerity quickly. What does the subject of girls mean to you? Barbie dolls, curls, horses, high heels, pink jumpers and little cotton dresses? Or wise women, witches, grandmothers, female presidents, astronauts and taxi drivers? Femininity has many facets these days. What do you understand by it?
Your ideas of femininity
The examples of femininity that are being shown to girls today range from world-famous models to anonymous humanitarian workers. What matters to you personally? If you are aware of which forms of femininity you respect, which sorts you actually live by, and what tolerance you have for other forms of femininity, you’ll be able to more easily answer all the questions that arise as you bring up your daughter. For example, if you can, sit down with your daughter’s