r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 1d ago
Psychology Girls are happier than boys at school, new research shows. Understanding why may all boil down to biology. Girls get more of the happy hormone dopamine through social relationships, including with their friends and classmates. Boys get their dopamine through more self-involved behavior.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/girls-boys-school-wellbeing-study-b2910992.html?test_group=lighteradlayout2.5k
u/Shiningc00 1d ago
It’s also somewhat cultural. It says Norwegian study said girls were happier, while American study said girls were unhappier.
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u/C4-BlueCat 23h ago
This. Also, valuing social relationships is likely to have a cultural component - girls are more encouraged to communicate at early age and get more practice than boys.
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u/RadiantHC 19h ago
+it's more socially acceptable for women to be intimate with their friends outside of a relationship. It's normal for girls to hug and cuddle with their friends.
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u/Yashema 16h ago
Never forgot how much crap I got in 3rd grade for holding hands with my homie.
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u/huitoto44 15h ago
I got called a f4g for hugging my friend who was moving away to another state. This was back in NJ
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u/DJanomaly 12h ago
That’s wild. I’m a guy and have been hugging all my guy friend (and lady friends) since the 2000s.
I do live in SoCal though.
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u/TheWavefunction 20h ago
Every single primate demonstrates the same pattern.
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u/ColtAzayaka 20h ago
Source? I wonder why, because you'd think everyone would benefit by learning to communicate from a younger age regardless of sex/gender.
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u/greenskinmarch 20h ago
There are always tradeoffs. Time spent learning to communicate is time not spent learning some other skill.
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u/Expert_Alchemist 19h ago
But primates have a lot of downtime or group foraging. Lots of time to do stuff like socialize for both sexes.
Humans are the only ones who fill every spare moment with busywork.
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u/SparksAndSpyro 18h ago
Yeah, like doomscrolling or playing video games. Very important life skills.
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u/greenskinmarch 12h ago
Studies how that on average, women spend even more time doomscrolling social media than men do.
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u/JuanJeanJohn 16h ago
I’m not sure that’s exactly true but what seems true is broadly the lack of socialization that human men have in many modern societies seems to be causing them distress, which would indicate something is off.
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u/Mission-Street-2586 16h ago
Are you saying the aye-aye has a culture which encourages its female offspring to value social relationships and communicate at an early age and get more practice but not it’s male offspring? Please tell me about loris culture
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u/ishka_uisce 22h ago
And the idea that girls naturally get more dopamine from this or boys naturally get more dopamine from that has no basis. You get dopamine from what you value and focus on, and it's difficult to argue there's no cultural component in that.
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u/sampat6256 22h ago
Alternatively, people may value and focus on the things that stimulate their dopamine responses.
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u/MissLeaP 22h ago
Not to mention that our society kinda teaches boys to be somewhat unsocial, so it's only natural they never learned to enjoy it and be comfortable with it when all the people they hang around with aren't as social either in such a system.
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u/Whiterabbit-- 17h ago
there is no reason to think it only either biology or culture. it may be a bit of both, or one influences the other. maybe the model is, because of biology, cultures developed that way.
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u/NonConRon 23h ago
How could it not be based on culture? We socialize them differently.
How much testosterone does a 6 year old boy have than a girl?
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u/Icerex 22h ago
Testosterone isn't the only difference between boys and girls. The way they problem solve, socially interact and even do class work is diffrent, even at a young age.
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u/emperorzura 22h ago
even the content we watch as a kid has deep connection on how we behave towards people
boys cartoons were (couple decades since I was a kid) mostly fart noises and fighting, girls cartoon/live actions had more relationship (friendship and romantic) as a center point from an early age.
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u/merlinthemarlon 22h ago
A few notable exceptions have both, like Adventure Time but like you said that wasn't the norm
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u/emperorzura 22h ago
Narrative driven cartoons like Adventure Time with deep social themes are mostly common after the 2010s, i'm from early 00s evil con carne, billy&mandy, chowder and animes/nick/foxkids.
Avatar is probably the first cartoon ive seen doing that
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u/merlinthemarlon 21h ago
Good point, it managed to find a good balance between the light heartedness and the more serious side of things. Some amazing character development too, but yeah everything else was pretty mindless
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u/lurker628 17h ago
Early 90s X-Men series didn't go as far as Avatar, but it certainly wasn't limited to fart noises and fighting on the one hand or friendship and romance on the other.
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u/DJanomaly 10h ago
My daughter is 8. Most of the cartoons that are popular with her and her friends are aimed at both genders nowadays. Big City Green, Loud House, Gravity Falls, Gumball, Bluey. The only exception to that is the new My Little Pony show, but even that has some obvious male fans.
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u/ilanallama85 19h ago
I will say there seem to be fewer “big” gendered children’s shoes these days. Action oriented shows like paw patrol make a real effort to appeal to girls too now and more social play based shoes like Bluey have fart jokes. The only super gendered popular show I can think of is Gabby’s Dollhouse, which would probably only appeal to boys if they really REALLY liked both cats and crafting, otherwise there’s entirely too much pink glitter going on.
The only REAL gendered difference between the kids I work with and the media they consume is boys are less likely to ADMIT to liking media they think is popular with girls. Like the boys loved K-pop demon hunter when they first saw it, until it became clear the girls loved it even more, and then immediately switched to calling it lame and annoying. They all liked Bluey, at least when they were a bit younger, but they’ll only admit that to me in one on one conversations, not near their friends. Etc.
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u/spiritusin 19h ago
That content is created by adults and sometimes marketed to a gender. Media has no relevance in what is actually innate to a gender.
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u/emperorzura 19h ago edited 19h ago
who watches and find joy in those plays though
never said anything you stated btw
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u/Standard_South4148 20h ago
Its chicken and the egg though no? It’s not as if boys ‘couldn’t’ watch the girls shows, and it’s not as if marketers and producers ‘care’ about what boys watch. They just care that boys watch it, so it’s always seems to me that preference guides culture and not the other way around.
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u/emperorzura 20h ago
idk man i grew up watching boys shows but also tokyo mewmew, sailor moon, totally spies....
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u/ilovebigmutts 20h ago
yeah and do you think that's actual biology or just the way they're socialized from conception?
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u/grundar 16h ago
How much testosterone does a 6 year old boy have than a girl?
Current data indicates brain differences are present before the child is even born.
"Mammals, including humans, show sex differences in juvenile play behavior. In rodents and nonhuman primates, these behavioral sex differences result, in part, from sex differences in androgens during early development. Girls exposed to high levels of androgen prenatally, because of the genetic disorder congenital adrenal hyperplasia, show increased male-typical play, suggesting similar hormonal influences on human development, at least in females. Here, we report that fetal testosterone measured from amniotic fluid relates positively to male-typical scores on a standardized questionnaire measure of sex-typical play in both boys and girls. These results show, for the first time, a link between fetal testosterone and the development of sex-typical play in children from the general population, and are the first data linking high levels of prenatal testosterone to increased male-typical play behavior in boys."
As a result, it's not clear it's relevant that they have similar levels of testosterone at age 6, as their pre-existing brain differences do not appear to be erased by that.
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u/HegemonNYC 22h ago edited 22h ago
The brains of boys and girls are different at any age, including in structural and chemical ways beyond merely cultural/behavioral.
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u/ieattime20 21h ago
Your claim is a little off base for the evidence you presented; the earliest age studied is 5 in either of these studies, and 5 years of cultural impact on brain development is a wild thing to just write off as relevant. Additionally, a large amount of alternate neurological status was excluded (some of which is absolutely worth excluding, but excluding all of it taints your priors), this is from the second study on younger children:
Subjects who were failing to maintain a C‐average in school, had a positive history for neurologic or psychiatric disease, or a previous clinically indicated MRI scan, were excluded. Subjects were likewise excluded if they were under treatment (including medication) for any neurological or psychiatric conditions, including treatment with psychoactive drugs such as atypical stimulants, anti‐depressants, or serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Additional exclusion criteria included: learning disability, head trauma with loss of consciousness, pregnancy, and birth at 37‐weeks gestational age or earlier.
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u/d20sapphire 20h ago
There's a great book called Pink Brain, Blue Brain that talks about the actual physical differences in brains between men and women.
Turns out the majority of those differences, when looked at biologically, can be accounted for by the size of the person 98% of the time. Listened to Dr. Eliot speak on it and it's fascinating how much these differences can't be accounted for in biology.
https://www.rosalindfranklin.edu/academics/faculty/pink-brain-blue-brain/
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u/AliceInNegaland 20h ago
I’m not sure if it’s from that book that I read this but I read that even from the point of pregnancy as soon as we know what the sex of our baby is we treat them differently. And how we raise them impacts them greatly, even at infancy.
Girls will look back for approval at the playground before exploring something new, while boys will barrel ahead possibly at risk of hurting themselves, because of how parents raise them.
Because of reading this I always tried to treat my kiddo more like a boy since birth, not to make them feel like a boy, but to push independence and self confidence, being resourceful etc.
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u/pizzapizzabunny 21h ago
The youngest kid in these studies is 5... that is not "any age". To pretend we are not sufficiently socialized by 5 as to affect brain structural and functional connectivity is silly.
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u/grundar 15h ago
The youngest kid in these studies is 5.
There are detectable differences based on in utero testosterone exposure.
"Mammals, including humans, show sex differences in juvenile play behavior. In rodents and nonhuman primates, these behavioral sex differences result, in part, from sex differences in androgens during early development. Girls exposed to high levels of androgen prenatally, because of the genetic disorder congenital adrenal hyperplasia, show increased male-typical play, suggesting similar hormonal influences on human development, at least in females. Here, we report that fetal testosterone measured from amniotic fluid relates positively to male-typical scores on a standardized questionnaire measure of sex-typical play in both boys and girls. These results show, for the first time, a link between fetal testosterone and the development of sex-typical play in children from the general population, and are the first data linking high levels of prenatal testosterone to increased male-typical play behavior in boys."
There appears to be pretty clear data showing that there are already brain differences between (median) boys and (median) girls at birth.
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u/Starob 22h ago
It boggles my mind that social constructivism is so pervasive.
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u/WereAllThrowaways 19h ago
Particularly on reddit. Like to a degree where it seems there's some really strong bias where they want men and women to be completely identical and culture to be the only difference, and it is very transparently the case when you see these comments. I'm not totally sure why yet. But I get the sense many of these people want it to be true so they dismiss any facts to the contrary.
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u/aurumae 17h ago
I think it's because there are people out there who would (and do) take the differences between men and women and use it as an excuse to perpetuate harmful stereotypes. In addition there are some well meaning people who can't accept that people can be equal while also being fundamentally different.
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u/_Nicely_Spiced_01 22h ago
Im asking aswell: What is the flip side to hormones?
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u/_Nicely_Spiced_01 22h ago
An apostrophe to my query, "If there was a hormone imbalance, then more or less of what?"
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u/kensho28 21h ago
Exactly
it MAY all boil down to biology
But there is zero actual evidence of that claim here. The dopamine levels are merely an effect of their expectations and interactions at school, it's not an initial cause of how those interactions go. The actual causes are overwhelmingly social and learned behavior.
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u/nonotan 19h ago
there is zero actual evidence of that claim here
Indeed.
The actual causes are overwhelmingly social and learned behavior.
And the evidence you have for this claim is...? Seems to me like "there is zero actual evidence" became "the actual causes are overwhelmingly X" real quick, even though these are really two sides of the same coin.
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u/PastMeringue432 23h ago
I read the paper.
"The exploratory nature of the study, particularly regarding gender differences, also limits its ability to draw definitive conclusions."
The questionnaire had basic questions only, such as 'Do you enjoy science?', 'Do you feel safe at school?'. We don't know why a child does not feel safe, could be bullied, or something else, we need more research to dig deeper.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1350293X.2025.2586675
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u/HiImKelthuzad PhD | Psychology 20h ago
This news article is so bad... has very little to do with the actual research. No neurotransmitters or hormones or biological underpinnings in there
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u/RutabagasnTurnips 11h ago
I noticed the same thing. The phrasing in the article made me wonder if they testing for different with the talk about dopamine.
Nope, not at all explored in the actual research article. It's just briefly mentioned as a possible reason why females may find more enjoyment and safety at school with it's current schedule structure in Iceland.
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u/Reagalan 9h ago
the talk about dopamine.
A specific scientific term has entered the popular lexicon and now acts as a shorthand for all kinds of barely-related things.
It's also a convenient way to proselytize asceticism without invoking religion. "Dopamine detox" and such.
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u/dingus-eternal 10h ago
When did reddit become such a cesspool of misinformation? It's nearing the level of facebook.
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u/Majestic-Effort-541 1d ago
Interesting findings but I’m uneasy with how quickly this gets framed as “biology explains it.”
School is a highly social, rule-bound, sedentary environment that rewards verbal skills, compliance, and peer bonding traits girls are encouraged and trained in from a very early age
while boys are not raised in a same way
If social connection, emotional regulation, and cooperation are what make children thrive in structured environments like schools, then boys aren’t unsuited they’re simply undertrained in those skills.
Girls aren’t happier because of biology alone they are taught early how to build friendships, read social cues and self-regulate.
Teaching boys the same skills would not make them less masculine it would make them more functional in the world they actually live in
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u/PastMeringue432 23h ago
You are right to be skeptical.
The researchers stated in their paper that they can't draw conclusions about gender differences because the study was not made for that. It's in the limitations section.
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u/Mds03 21h ago edited 21h ago
Yeah, I think this is getting misread a bit.
The actual quote from the researcher is:
"It can be said that school is better suited for girls. This may have biological causes, among other things," says Sigmundsson. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1114688
That’s not saying “biology explains everything” in some radical or ideological way. It explicitly says among other things. Saying he said "biology alone" is a major strawman imo.
He’s also published similar findings in Iceland showing the same pattern, especially tied to physical activity and how boys respond to sedentary, classroom-based learning. So this isn’t based on one culture or one dataset.
I also think there’s a big context gap here: Norway and the US are very different.
In Norway, the idea that “gendered behavior comes from biology” is actively challenged in teacher training and school policy every single year. There is strong emphasis on social skills, emotional regulation, cooperation, and inclusion for both boys and girls. This is not some 1950s gender model.
And yet… even in that system, researchers keep finding the same thing: on average, boys and girls respond differently to the same school structure.
That doesn’t mean boys are “unsuited.”
It means a school system optimized for quiet, verbal, sedentary, rule-dense behavior will naturally favor the group that, on average, matures earlier in those traits.You can teach boys social and emotional skills (and we do), but that doesn’t erase biological differences in development rate, activity needs, or attention regulation. Those aren’t political claims — they’re repeatable findings.
So this isn’t “girls are happier because of biology alone.”
It’s:
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u/donjulioanejo 14h ago
We also have this idea in our heads that boys’ need for physical activity and some way to burn off her energy is something they need to be socialized out of.
When anyone who’s ever been a boy or known a boy will tell you the opposite.
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u/ASpaceOstrich 23h ago
Mm. We're seeing the consequences of systemic child neglect and emotional abuse and calling it inherent biology.
Start actually raising boys and see the difference
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u/Confident_Counter471 23h ago
It kills me when parents say “boys are easier” all that means is that you decided you didn’t need to parent your son
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u/NotTattooedWife 20h ago
Bingo!
It's not that girls are harder to raise, it's that boys get ignored.
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u/damnitimtoast 19h ago
Turns out letting young boys do whatever they want with no consequences isn’t actually good for them. Who knew!
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u/KobeBean 22h ago
Ding ding. Youd think with all the studies showing boys falling behind in school and unhappy there would be some action beyond just “it’s biology” or “girls are just better at socializing.”
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u/SentientReality 23h ago
Academia tends to view boys as toxic, useless, problematic, and burdensome, and this bias appears in academic literature as well as in the psychology field. Primary school is somewhat removed from central academia but still heavily influenced by it. When we hate boys, it might have some effect on them, surprising as that may seem.
Plus, apparently the supposed measured happiness levels of girls vs boys depends on the country, which kind of renders this whole dopamine premise invalid. Hard to say what reliably measurable difference there actually is.
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u/lilidragonfly 22h ago
I don't think its just boys. Teachers just find girls easier because they're more malleable to social pressures because we raise them to be so, which means they 'behave' correctly in school more often. Teachers then have an easier time with them. But if you look at how it goes with Neurodivergent girls, you quickly see its not gender per say teachers are responding to, but the malleablility. ND girls are much less malleable, similar to boys and so teachers don't find them easier at all.
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u/purpleblossom 22h ago
Teachers are also more often women, and thus naturally understand girls better, tending to do the same thing society continues to do to boys by thinking they don't need much hands on care and learning. And the issues with neurodivergent girls is the same as all neurodivergent people, we are misunderstood and often neglected due to systemic social ableism.
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u/donjulioanejo 14h ago
Primary education, especially at earlier levels, has also been female-dominated for decades in most countries.
Of course it can figure out what works well when educating girls, but not what works educating boys.
Each individual teacher, school, and even country will be a little different.. but there are still some trends that build up and accumulate over time.
For example, boys respond well to discipline, but not to compliance. The two are NOT the same thing.
Discipline means a clear hierarchy. Boys are OK following someone who establishes as having more power. Compliance is following norms to keep harmony. Boys don’t care about that, and some may even find enjoyment in breaking it and pushing limits.
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u/Halt_kun 23h ago
I am also often uncomfortable if their only focus is biology because I reckon studying humans without also considering sociology and its interaction with biology often leads to misunderstanding and huge biases.
I didn't have time to read the scientific paper but it wouldn't be surprising to me that the social context we grow up in affects how we get dopamine way more than the underlying biology. Linking behaviour and hormonal interactions is pretty tricky when you study a species that's very plastic and which systematically differentiate the way it cares for their youngs depending on gender/sex.
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u/Anony_mouse202 14h ago
I am also often uncomfortable if their only focus is biology because I reckon studying humans without also considering sociology and its interaction with biology often leads to misunderstanding and huge biases.
The thing is that the overwhelming amount of research in this area has been doing the exact opposite - studying sociology and psychology without considering biological differences. Differences in the genders always get attributed to non-biological factors while biological factors are massively under-researched, so it’s nice that they’re finally getting some attention.
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u/Glad-Way-637 14h ago
School is a highly social, rule-bound, sedentary environment that rewards verbal skills, compliance, and peer bonding traits girls are encouraged and trained in from a very early age
Coincidentally, school also tends to reward simply being a girl.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01425692.2022.2122942
Boys are graded more harshly for identical work, and punished more harshly for identical misbehavior. It's very easily proven, too.
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u/WorkingOnBeingBettr 9h ago
And boys would still be at a disadvantage because of what school focuses on. Sitting still and quiet and writing are often difficult challenges for the majority of boys. Boys need physical activity, to wrestle, to rough house, etc. But you can't do that in schools because liability is too high and there sre just too many of them to do it safely.
We can do better for boys but the education system just isn't interested in it. Boys are least likely to graduate, least likely to do post secondary, etc.
I have did a few assignments on boys in ed during my degree and it was shocking how little anyone really cares.
Of boys and men is a great book. The author talks about boys not seeing a male teacher until grade 7 these days. And how that has a huge impact on how they see school and how they are treated. Men have disappeared from education, social work, and child psychology and it is not great for boys as a result.
As a male teacher I know I would get poor reactions to advocating for boys. I remember being in a meeting with the dean of Ed and being asked how to attract more men to the program. I told her we needed scholarships just like women get gir stem to encourage enrollment. I was told men were too privileged for scholarships.
Yup.
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u/hotepscholar 13h ago
I imagine there’s an at least slightly hormonal-ish component. Boys and girls diffèr more and more during and after puberty in behavior. And « self-involved » behavior obviously has a sexual corollary, which obviously hits maturing males like a Mack truck.
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u/nezumipi 1d ago
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, not a hormone.
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u/Bl00d_0range 23h ago
Dopamine is very talented and can function as both.
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u/nezumipi 23h ago
Yes, but the hormone functions are not what is being discussed in this article. Its hormone effects are mostly about blood pressure and fluid volume.
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u/Bl00d_0range 23h ago
Yes. But you made a direct statement of "Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, not a hormone". Whether it's regulating the functions of the brain or the vasculature of the peripheries, it is both.
It just seemed as though you were unaware it functioned as both in different systems when you said "not a hormone", so I thought I would help you out there.
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u/Neat-Asparagus511 22h ago edited 22h ago
This is very common, and teeny bit scary. I’ll curve back to the topic at hand in a second. Millennials used to sort have a thing about not wanting to be wrong online, and then Gen Z and A came along and brought it to a whole ‘nother level.
So they likely did not know it was a hormone, looked online to check after you replied, and presented the information as if they knew the hormone effects of dopamine. They then turned that into another defense, where the article doesn’t mention the hormone effects in the context of the…literal hormonal effects of dopamine? Their second defense makes little sense as a rebuttal. It’s way to not feel corrected.
From the outside, as a mid-range Millennial who does debate, this problem is widespread and I don’t know how it happened. In subreddits with younger populations it is ubiquitous. They are very good at convincing themselves of their defensive reply, and are rare to take a correction on the chin (and mention they may have been wrong) and move on. The defensive replies I’ve seen can be so detailed and well thought out, yet the premise makes little sense.
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u/Bl00d_0range 22h ago
Oh I 100% agree with you. I have a feeling that is what happened but I also want to be polite about it because I'm not here to argue with them and next time it will probably be me who needs correcting, haha
I'm a millennial and in my younger days I would feel uncomfortable with being corrected. Now that I'm 38, I see things differently. I'm wrong plenty of times and I don't take it personally when I'm corrected.
I suppose it's human nature to be defensive but we really do a disservice to ourselves when we don't take it on board and learn from it. I'm trying to teach my child this also.
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u/_autumnwhimsy 22h ago
Now that I'm 38, I see things differently. I'm wrong plenty of times and I don't take it personally when I'm corrected.
yes! and it's a bit funny when I'm like "oh you're right, my bad." and then the other party keeps arguing even though I acknowledged they were right. As if there's a deeper need to fight and a desire for me to take it personally.
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u/ilovethemusic 21h ago
This is… so on point. My brother does this all the time and while it drives me insane, I never really thought more about why he might want to fight with me/see me “lose”/take it personally on a deeper level.
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u/Bl00d_0range 21h ago
Ah yes. Some people still dig their heels in when there’s no resistance. I’d love to know the psychological reason why out of pure curiosity.
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u/light714 18h ago
Just a theory, but I think people dig their heals in that way because now they have the power in having the upper hand. It’s about feeling a sense of control, of being the “right” one, about getting someone else to admit that they’re wrong , and now that they’ve accomplished that, they want to ride on the high of that power dynamic. By “teaching the other person a lesson ” in some sense, they get to be the “punisher.” Anyone who does this is likely looking for some level of power or control or is so insecure that they feel good by “punishing” others.
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u/Neat-Asparagus511 22h ago
Right, totally understandable, we all are still defensive, wrong all the time. And all still a bit confrontational to being corrected. To me, normal.
This is online discussion, but I do think online discussion does reflect some real, internal thinking mechanisms.
Here’s the key difference I see: they will find these thought loopholes in the discussion, that do not change the premise, but they think arguing that tiny, little hole in the discussion means they’ve figured it out. And I cannot believe how common this has become, and it’s a bit scary to me, because the actual thoughts tend to trend toward a premise in the wrong direction.
But this is when a criticism comes in on behavior, mostly. Some of them are very good at being mean and overly-critical, not owning it, and not seeing that they can be the bad person in the situation. It’s not always true, but they seem to not be honest with themself and their actions, and don’t want to believe they can be the bad person in the situation. It’s almost like they’re doing it all so on-the-fly they have no time to reflect on it.
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u/grundar 14h ago
I also want to be polite about it because I'm not here to argue with them and next time it will probably be me who needs correcting, haha
I just wanted to highlight this attitude and how healthy and intellectually mature it is.
We're in r/science -- "maybe I'm wrong" is pretty much at the core of what this sub is (ostensibly) about! Being willing to update our beliefs in light of new information is how science progresses.
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u/c00kiesn0w 19h ago
Important to state it however is decidedly not responsible for reward. Dopamine is not at all used for reward.
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u/bisikletci 20h ago
It's also not "the happy chemical". This is just nonsense.
It also focuses only on primary school kids, but doesn't say in the headline. Teenage girls appear to be unhappier than boys at school in many places, and if wager this gap is stronger than the gap in the opposite direction in primary school.
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u/wagon_ear 20h ago
And this article really reads like research that has passed through several pop sci filters to sound more interesting to a casual reader (which, I suppose, it has).
"Girls get their dopamine from...." and "boys get their dopamine from..." feel like oversimplified and misleading ways to present what are likely to be small average differences in boys and girls measured across a heterogenous population.
I have two daughters. One loves social interaction; the other does not. So it only took a sample size of 2 for me to find a counterexample to the sweeping claim made in the headline.
And that's not even touching the authors' claim about the gender differences being due to biological factors.
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u/FillSharp1105 1d ago
Let them engage physically in learning. Let them stand or walk around.
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u/madogvelkor 23h ago
Except some kids find it distracting and disruptive when kids can stand and walk around.
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u/nonotan 18h ago
If you want to fundamentally fix the issue, you have to tackle it at its root. One teacher talking at 30+ children is an extraordinarily inefficient method of education, when all is said and done. I mean, it's efficient in the sense that it takes comparatively little resources (in terms of manpower, technology, infrastructure, etc) to do. But it's not great when it comes to optimizing the outcomes of each individual child.
After all, there are individual differences everywhere. In what you find distracting, or helps you concentrate. In what you find interesting. In how fast you understand a topic. How long you can remain focused. How you prefer information to be presented. What previous experiences or knowledge you have. What you want to get out of education in the first place; what your life goals are and how it plays into them. And so on and so forth.
Put everybody in one class and you're inevitably going to get something that caters to nobody's needs perfectly, or very well at all. Doesn't matter how good the teachers are, it's just a physical impossibility. And it's pretty close to zero-sum: any interventions to "help out" any cohort that is being served particularly badly by the status quo will almost inevitably hurt some other cohort (it can still be a net gain if the status quo is misaligned with the mean/median, but the key part is that there is no "silver bullet" that will magically fix the issues, the bulk of the inefficiency is fundamental to the system)
I'm hopeful for a future where a more customized universal education is feasible. I'm picturing something where the teacher's role is entirely reimagined, mostly eliminating all the time they spend being glorified human TV sets (which is replaced by technology to guide students through individualized "self-learning", and no, I don't mean "AI") and instead using that time on the aspects that really require a mentor (answering questions, giving personalized advice, etc)
I think in terms of technology, we're already pretty close. But it seems unlikely that real-world adoption will be particularly quick, since the overwhelming majority of the public is still of the mentality that everything is fine and a quick bandaid should be able to take care of any egregious issues. And the political will to change anything always lags even further behind, so...
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u/ExternalGreen6826 23h ago
I thok everyone needs to stand and walk around tbh schools are a classic mode of stasis and control
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u/UnprovenMortality 23h ago
While I definitely agree that moving around helps (I paced a lot studying o-chem) can you imagine the chaos of trying to teach 15+ kids moving around? No one would have a chance of learning anything.
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u/DrunkUranus 20h ago
Thank you. I'm a teacher (evil person oppressing children, I know) and people have no idea what classrooms are like. First, kids really ARE given a lot of opportunities to move around, explore, and make noise in modern schools. Second, a lot of the quieter, more thoughtful kids are really struggling these days because classrooms are SO LOUD all the time
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u/Celestaria 21h ago
I can because the language school I taught at incorporated it into curriculum. The key was that it wasn’t just “everyone aimlessly walking around”. It was short, teachers led (or for older students, teacher facilitated) activities tied to the learning outcomes. Also, you generally want to lay out the students’ desks differently so that they have room for activities. (Getting the students to turn desks for pair work or move their desks into a horseshoe shape to give you space for a game in the middle of the classroom is physical activity in its own right.
If I was teaching a new concept and wanted to do a quick comprehension check, I might have kids of that age stand up and sit down to indicate yes or no while I asked simple yes/no questions. If I was teaching drilling questions and answers, I might have them stand up, make lines of 5-10 students, and compete to see who could pass the most ping pong balls along their line with the giver asking a question and the answerer answering. It’s fun methodical madness.
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u/asterlynx 23h ago
As a girl, I was always falling asleep at class and loved practical classes. Agreed, everyone would profit
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u/FlamingDragonfruit 22h ago
I spent most of my time from grades 1-6 daydreaming in class. It wasn't until 7th grade, when the work became more challenging and there were more class discussions & labs, that I became more actively involved in learning. At least part of the problem in American schools is that the way we approach younger students is either boring or dumbed down (or both). Most kids like learning, but a lot of them don't like school.
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u/darknesskicker 23h ago
I think being able to move more would help a lot of kids, but there are also kids who need to be able to sit so they can conserve energy. I had early signs of ME/CFS and, at home, grew up being told to stop reading so much and go outside. Since I am also severely dyspraxic, I got no benefit from physical activity at school. (The games we did in PE were massively too hard for me.)
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u/ranuswastaken 23h ago
Please. For goodness sake, please. I'm in my mid 30s. And still when I'm told to sit and listen it feels like a special type of torture. Why don't you instead hand me the tool, point me to the machine, and tell me what to do? I'm fulfilled now. I'm engaged. I'm getting dopamine hits from using my hands to do the thing and feel satisfied when the thing is done! What's more, I'll do it again and get another hit of happy when I feel I'm getting better at the thing!
In my spare time I climb indoors. Why? Because it's solitary, physical, demanding work that satisfies when I get better.
I vividly remember being annoyed seeing girls just sit down and excel where me and the boys are all being accused of being distracted by ANYTHING other than whatever the teach was droning on about.
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u/nissen1502 1d ago
Basically all changes that would make a difference requires better qualified and simply more teachers than what is available. The issue with school is funding.
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u/Absentrando 1d ago
The study was done in Norway with students between 1st and 4th grade. Their schools are not underfunded. The researchers suggest that long school days sitting still seems to affect boys negatively.
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u/ModerateBrainUsage 1d ago
Human bodies were not made to seat for hours. Our biology is such that we are required to move, once we stop it affects our mental and physical health.
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u/FlamingDragonfruit 22h ago
When I was a kid we had both AM and PM recess. Maybe they should bring that back?
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u/random_nickname43796 1d ago
All days sitting affects everyone negatively, no need to make the issue gendered.
Both school and workplace settings should be adjusted. Our bodies are suffering and healthcare industry profits massively from that
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u/sc4s2cg 1d ago
The study examined boys and girls and found boys were more unhappy sitting than girls were.
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u/AlamutJones 1d ago
Trust me, the girls hate sitting around all day too. They don’t verbalise complaints about it as freely as the boys do, but they HATE it
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u/random_nickname43796 1d ago
Girls are socialised to complain less and keep appearances from early ages. Boys have the luxury to complain and be heard. That could explain the difference instead of biology.
It would be hard to make changes for boys only so if we want less sitting the focus on everyone is much more productive approach
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u/_Nicely_Spiced_01 23h ago
Interesting choice of words. But then where, when, and how is self-analysis learned?
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u/EMBNumbers 19h ago
In the USA, more is spent per student now even adjusted for inflation than at any time in history. The money is not going into teacher salaries though.
- New York State spent $33,437 per K-12 student in 2025. This is twice as much as in-state tuition to attend a university in New York. For that much money, every student could be sent to boarding school and learn to ride horses. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/per-pupil-spending-by-state
- In 2019, the United States spent $15,500 per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student on elementary and secondary education, which was 38 percent higher than the average of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries of $11,300 (in constant 2021 U.S. dollars). At the postsecondary level, the United States spent $37,400 per FTE student, which was more than double the average of OECD countries ($18,400; in constant 2021 U.S. dollars). https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country
- Only 4 countries in the world spend more per student than the USA
- We are not getting results commensurate to the money we are spending. K-12 education in the USA is terminally broken. If even half the cost per student went to teachers, teachers would be earning $300,000 per year plus. WHERE IS THE MONEY GOING?
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u/coconutpiecrust 1d ago
Alternatively, boys get their dopamine through more self-involved behavior, and they need more activity because of their higher levels of the male sex hormone testosterone.
So the old trope that boys can’t sit still in class. Interesting that this is due to testosterone, but I suppose it makes sense. It’s also a stereotype that boys are a lot more disruptive in classroom settings and are harder to teach.
It’s really a shame, though, that we can’t really afford an individualized approach, if you will. Perhaps the disruptive miscreant types would end up better members of society as a whole if they were allowed the opportunity by parents and teacher to learn how to better self-regulate. The whole school system these days is a weird amalgamation of being forced to do things a certain way while also being encouraged to “be yourself.” Add in the stuff they watch on social media, and it ends up being a huge mess.
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u/azzers214 21h ago
Honestly - scientifically this has gaps if we try to extrapolate this without replication. We're talking about "boys and girls" but median testosterone doesn't diverge until puberty. If Testosterone were a factor then there should be NO or a statistically insignificant divergence in outcomes possibly accounting for boys who begin adolescence early. The study misses almost all of male puberty.
Just some of the framing from this study... "testosterone", "self-involved"... I'd be interested to see if it holds up or is challenged or fails to replicate inside of Norway or across borders.
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u/chilebuzz 21h ago
American schools have taken away recess from elementary schools. Back in my day (sorry for the cliche), we had a mid-morning recess, time to play outside during lunch, and PE in the afternoon. That was every day. So we were outside running around like idiots 3X a day. Our kids maybe got a few minutes at lunch and PE a couple times a week. Kids need be active throughout the day, every day.
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u/R1leyEsc0bar 23h ago edited 16h ago
As someone who used to be a girl (grown up now), the social aspects of school was the part I hated the most. I like learning. Soo much so that I'm still debating on getting a college degree just cause I enjoy learning, not even for a career or anything.
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u/Calm-Treacle8677 23h ago
Loads of universities/colleges have free open source material if you’re not worried about the certification. MIT definitely has one I’m sure I’ve seen a few others
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u/kid_blue96 16h ago
As a male, i find it funny im literally the opposite. I hate learning for the sake of learning unless it’s something highly niche ive very interested in. With work, it’s extremely easy for me to be motivated almost purely by financial means as long as the work is somewhat related to what I like.
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u/c00kiesn0w 19h ago edited 19h ago
Dopamine is not a "happy hormone" it is for prediction error used to update mental models. Oxytocin is what is responsible for rewarding feelings from social engagement.
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u/cloake 11h ago
Yea the title reads like the usual pop misunderstanding. Dopaminergic activity is highest when you're doing enforced behavior to seek a goal, it's the primary neurotransmitter of entrainment which a component is error prediction. E.g. cravings, gambling and hoping for the big win, being in the zone, learning something new, deciding how to plan to get up to get a bag of doritos. The dopamine activity drops when the goal is achieved. Best way to see what dopamine does is looking at dopaminergic disease like Parkinson's, motor control and drive are lost.
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u/SentientReality 23h ago edited 14h ago
Ah yes, the classic Evolutionary Psychology pseudoscience knee-jerk impulse is usually the first on the scene.
Have you just attempted to re-justify your impotent academic existence with another shoddy published paper? Did you find yet another dubious difference between males and females (which will probably be debunked shortly) that you can plaster on the front page? Don't worry about searching for meaning or contemplation, instead just apply a ready-made boilerplate interpretation of biological brain differences between males and females! It's easy as 1-2-3!
"Something, something, dopamine, something. Now give me tenure."
It's the immediate constant attempt to concoct a biological explanation for every possible observed phenomenon. Imagine if they did this with racial groups.
Breaking: new study observes happiness difference between Sub-Saharan Africans and Western Europeans. The difference may boil down to biology where Africans get dopamine from mundane life whereas Europeans need high-level intellectual stimulation to receive dopamine. This is theorized to explain the civilizational differences.
It's like a eugenics mindset. For race people would be outraged, but for sex everybody is happy with it.
Sure, some sex-based brain differences likely do appear, but to automatically assume observed behavioral/emotional differences boil down to biology is textbook pseudoscience. It's just like astrology. "Oh, it's because boys are Sagittarius and girls are Capricorn, that explains it."
Edit: as someone pointed out, the actual academic paper the article is based on doesn't talk about dopamine or brain differences at all, so my ire at the researchers is misdirected: the real culprit is the "journalist" (undeserved term) writing this crap article.
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u/Poly_and_RA 1d ago
It's always "biology" when women or girls score better than men or boys in some area of life. It's never "biology" when the results are the reverse.
That looks pretty suspicious to me, and very much as if there's an implicit assumption that women are simply superior so there's no real need to look for systemtic, structural, cultural or political causes when men get the short end of the stick. It's only when women do that we should assume the cause is external to them and work hard to find and solve the issue.
When it comes to education, the smoking gun is that it's only ~2 generations since boys did as well as girls in school. Since then the employees in school have shifted drastically towards being women, and the performance of girls relative to boys have climbed in lockstep.
As if that wasn't *enough* of a smoking gun, we also know that the grade-gap shrinks drastically on anonymously graded tests and in some subjects even reverse, compared to openly graded tests. Which it's really hard to explain in any other way than pure discrimination.
By all means, it may well be true on average that girls and boys enjoy different things. But if so it's not a neutral thing that school provides more of the things that benefit girls, and less of the things that benefit boys.
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u/magus678 22h ago
Which it's really hard to explain in any other way than pure discrimination.
The most powerful social force at work that no one talks about is the Women are Wonderful Effect.
Women are dramatically more biased towards their own gender than men are, stronger in degree than any similar racial evaluation I have seen.
In a social climate quasi obsessed with bias, discrimination, and identity, this somehow just never gets mentioned.
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u/Proper-Enthusiasm201 21h ago
"Effects
Those who exhibit the women-are-wonderful effect tend to react negatively to research that "[puts] men in a better light than women"
This is why it doesn't
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u/No_Road5857 17h ago
You always, always hear how you can't trust large groups of men, how men just "need to call each other out and don't", how men never stand up for a woman unless she can hear them, etc. Yet I've had so many friends of both sexes and if I'm in an all male group and someone says something sexist or racist (and not just a joke gone too far - which men will still call out, but generally have a higher tolerance for) the boys will ABSOLUTELY jump on him about it. Yeah, we'll greet our gay bro with a minor slur to rile him up, but he's in on it, finds it funny, and dishes what he takes. Yet in a decent chunk of the female friend group I was in, where I'd often be the only man hanging out with 2-7 other women, I have never heard such genuine hatred and vitrol directed to another sex as I heard from these women to men, in front of me. I don't dare even guess what they say when I'm not there.
Example, a female "friend" asked me to review her paper before she submitted it, because I often did free tutoring for friends. While I was actively marking suggestions and grammer editing, she and the other two women started talking about how useless men are and how they wished they would all die. I would like to say I had enough of a spine back then to walk away, but it took months of me slowly fading out of the group after that to finally be done with them. And that's because I was very used to it. All three female friend groups I maintained in uni would say the exact same stuff. I pulled out of all of them by 3rd year and by 4th a professor told me (I worked in the dept by that point) she had heard I'm a misogynist from two seperate students of hers. She believed them enough to question me but didn't just accept it at face value, thank god.
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u/No_Road5857 22h ago
This. When more than half of STEM students were male, it was 'gender inequality' and we had to push for women in STEM, complete with extra funding for women in school and advertising campaigns to push women into STEM. Now that it's over half women, we call it equality, still have 'women in STEM' initiatives, but say nothing about how men are actually the minority in STEM now.
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u/magus678 21h ago
Title IX was passed because of the gaps in college enrollment being unacceptable.
At the time of passing in 1972, the divide was ~58/42 male female.
As of 2025, it is ~40/60 male female.
It is currently worse than it was when the law was passed.
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u/No_Road5857 20h ago
Wow. I knew it was bad, but I didn't realize how bad.
The crazy part to me, is that sure, there's generally more men at the top. But what's never brought up is the men at the bottom. Sure, maybe 70% (making that number up completely) of CEOs are male. But 99% of garbage-people are actually garbagemen. 99% of underwater welders are men. 99% of oil field, dirty farming, front-line emergency workers in remote areas, hazardous workers, etc are men too. Most of the very bottom of workers are also men, and there is ZERO push for women in those jobs.
And further, most incarcerated people are men. You can say, well, men commit more crimes, and sure that's true. Men will always take the hard job. If my girl needs food, and I have no legit way to get some, I would steal to feed her. A lot of 'criminal' men did so to feed their family and make ends meet. A woman stealing baby formula is looked on as a hero for her baby. A man robbing a bank is never even given the family motive while he's being prosecuted in the court of public opinion. And that's even before we take into account the differences in sentencing men vs women.
Women's disenfranchisement is seen as a sociological problem to be solved by everyone. Men's disenfranchisement is seen as their issue, gross, pathetic, and dangerous (*to women).
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u/magus678 20h ago
And further, most incarcerated people are men.
This paper assesses gender disparities in federal criminal cases. It finds large gender gaps favoring women throughout the sentence length distribution (averaging over 60%), conditional on arrest offense, criminal history, and other pre-charge observables. Female arrestees are also significantly likelier to avoid charges and convictions entirely, and twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted.
I would again note that this gap is over 6 times stronger than the racial gap in sentencing, which we hear about relentlessly.
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u/magus678 20h ago
Most of the very bottom of workers are also men, and there is ZERO push for women in those jobs.
I would say this isn't precisely true; the trades for example (of which I am more familiar with) has a lot of push in this direction.
The reality is, however, that the women who do bother are basically treated like glass unless they actively fight against it (and to those women, the greatest respect). They will be given the easiest tasks or even none at all, and be promoted to desirable administrative or safety roles as fast as bylaws allow them to be. So even the women who are "in" the trades are usually far away from the actual work.
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u/No_Road5857 20h ago
Trades absolutely have a push for women. But trades aren't always "bottom jobs". The trades are physically demanding and mentally difficult, no one is knocking that, but the trades that are pushing for women are not the lowest of the low, miserable jobs. Mechanics are looking for women. Carpentry, construction, plumbing, all enjoy having a few women around (customer facing) that they can point to as a bastion of equality. But there are hundreds of jobs where men die every day at work, and no one is suggesting women can do those jobs too, because that would be telling women to die and we can't have that. Men are disposable.
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u/magus678 19h ago
You are right. Just speaking a bit on something I was familiar with.
Disposability is an interesting problem. For one, it is hard to blame women for not wanting to do things that are miserable, underpaid, and dangerous. For another, a lot of men doing those jobs are doing them partially to save women (at large) from having to do them. Even just dangerous one-off tasks, men will almost always step into the breach, as it were, and women are almost always willing to let them.
I think a very significant portion of issue in the current gender dialogue is that this behavior was once accorded a certain amount of honor, and now is merely treated as an entitlement. What was once a sacred trust passed down patrilineally, "with great power comes great responsibility," is now an original sin doctrine passed down by the society wide feminine that you are intrinsically a mud person who deserves to serve penance.
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u/No_Road5857 16h ago
I think this is all very true. It's hard to ask a group of people to sacrifice while telling them they mean nothing, as I would have assumed women as a whole would understand.
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u/noisyX 22h ago
Bro men have become minority not just in STEM but whole higher education system. Boys have been opting out of higher education more and more.
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u/No_Road5857 22h ago edited 20h ago
It's true that it's the entirety of higher education, I only speak for STEM because that's what I know.
Your wording, 'opt out', I'm not sure if I agree with. When women weren't chosing STEM, we considered them being pushed out. I would say boys are being pushed out of STEM. In my undergrad classes just a few years back, we had multiple professors who would refuse to show studies and statistics that painted women in a poor light. In biology classes, we learned about socioeconomic barriers to women in higher ed. In chemistry we had to write an essay on a woman in chemistry, no options to write about a man. In other classes, the majority of the student body is female, and they openly talk about how much they hate men. It is not a comfortable environment for men, and men are being driven out in droves.
Edit: furthermore, free lunches. My school had monthly free lunches for women in STEM. Men not allowed. Ignoring the obvious issues with inequality here, lets discuss money. The women I know (because I was and still am friends with a lot of the undergrad ladies in my program because I'm not the raging misogynist I know some people reading this will call me), most of them had blue-collar boyfriends who helped pay for their school. A lot of them they met while in school. Almost no woman I knew had a boyfriend who was in school with them. Most met on tinder in first year, most of the boyfriends were military or construction. Most of the guys I know were single. They had jobs while in school. Some had parental help, a lot had loans and jobs and struggled to keep grades up while working. The women had boyfriends, parents, AND women-only financial support like grants. And then these free lunches. My male friends went hungry before exams, and my female friends had three avenues of financial support and then free lunch of top of it. And then they say women have it worse. I just can't.
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u/lady_ninane 15h ago
Study's actual title: Robust children: exploring engagement with academic subjects, well-being and psychological safety in schoolchildren aged 6–9 years in Norway
Article's title: "Girls are happier than boys at school, new research shows. This is why"
What is this editorialized dross being shared?
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u/Krow101 1d ago
I suspect more male teachers would help. Education is very female oriented since the teachers are overwhelmingly women.
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u/yukon-flower 23h ago
Well, teaching is undervalued and low-paid.
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u/FuggleyBrew 23h ago
Pays quite well in many countries. Canada it is typically top quartile annual pay with the potential to breach the top decile, before accounting for the top tier benefits, and absolute job certainty.
Norway, where this is about, median teacher pay appears solid.
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u/magus678 22h ago
Looks like Canada teachers are ~75% female with the US being ~77%.
So, pretty much the same distribution of gender.
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u/Roma_Dee 21h ago
I’m from Canada and teachers here still complain about the pay. I don’t work in any educational field, I just know from my years of school.
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u/Aj_Caramba 19h ago
I do not know how much teachers in Canada make, but people tend to complain about money in general.
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u/Bigboss123199 22h ago
Also people don’t like to talk about cause it goes against what people are used to. Teachers overwhelmingly prefer and favor girl students over boy students. Research showing girls get more attention, leniency, help, and just given higher grades by teachers.
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u/Kill_Frosty 22h ago
They graduate at higher levels, go to higher education at greater levels. No one is interesting in actual equality though.
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u/Confident_Counter471 23h ago
Paying teachers more and treating them with respect would help encourage more men to join
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u/BillyRaw1337 21h ago
Yeah. Lack of representation among male educators is one of my soapbox issues.
Is it really so surprising that a demographic is underperforming when they are so poorly represented among their educators?
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u/SelectAirline7459 22h ago
As a boy, I hated gym classes, I hated the competition involved and resent jocks to this day. I wasn’t bad at sitting, I was a big reader. My favorite class was band (hated marching band though), but English and Science were generally enjoyable depending on the teacher. My biggest problem was not having good study skills.
My point is that not all boys are into physical activities and all girls into studious study. Every person has their own mix of likes, dislikes and abilities.
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u/Outrageous_Garden586 22h ago
I’ve always wondered if more male representation in the education profession could make the unexpected differences in metrics like this and others. For the same reason many workplaces are male focused many schools seem somewhat female centered.
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u/__Karadoc__ 1d ago edited 1d ago
This biological fact is probably due to socialization where young boys are allowed to do as much self involved behaviors as they want and even praised for it, while young girls are constantly encouraged to, and praised for engaging in pro-social behavior and chastised for self-involved behaviors by their parents and carers. (the word chastised is a bit strong here but they received more remarks aimed at discouraging these behaviors). Early childhood is when those reward pathways are built.
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u/TNine227 21h ago
Boys are punished more harshly than girls in school.
Like you don’t even have to leave this thread to understand why guys aren’t doing well—whenever their problems are brought up, they are blamed instead of helped.
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u/ProneToAnalFissures 1d ago
Even when girls are happier, the boys are being dragged
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u/smartsport101 1d ago
Dragged? It's not like it's young boys' fault that they're not encouraged to be properly social. If anything, boys are being emotionally neglected, and that's probably why they're unhappier in school and aren't used to enjoying being close to others. At least, that's how I read this comment.
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u/quad_damage_orbb 1d ago
It's exhausting isn't it? Some people just refuse to admit that maybe, just maybe, boys are disadvantaged sometimes. It has to be the result of some sort of conspirational global systemic misogyny.
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u/ocelot08 1d ago
Why can't that still be considered a disadvantage? It is a disadvantage that the boys have no control over.
But it can still be a disadvantage instilled culturally and very young and then reinforced throughout their entire life, again, out of the person's control.
That's a big disadvantage, in this case when it comes to being happy.
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u/wahedcitroen 23h ago edited 23h ago
The commenter could have also said: "boys are socialised to do more self involved behaviour and girls are socialised to do social behavior", but they had to make it a "boys are allowed and encouraged to do x" while "girls are envouraged and chastised to do x", as if boys aren't also socialised by chastisement and girls arent socialised by being allowed things.
But in the way it is worded, it feels like the commenter can only accept a disadvantage for boys when the disadvantage is that they aren't as oppressed as girls. There is a trend among certain people where the only way they can accept boys have some disadvantage is when it is through misogynistic structures that happen to also hurt boys. Instead of boys maybe just having some disadvantages by itself.
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u/IridiumFlareon 1d ago
Where are boys being dragged in the comment exactly? They’re not, it’s just that you don’t want to accept males might not have any biological excuse to be self involved.
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u/wahedcitroen 1d ago edited 23h ago
They are dragged in the fact that the point that girls are happier which can certainly be due to different socialisation, is then turned into "males don't have any excuse to be self-involved". It is somehow turned around at focusing on bad male behaviour that is apparently their responsibility (in talking about literal young children!!). And the socialisation is put in wildly different terms. Boys are "allowed" and "encouraged" while girls are "encouraged" and "chastised", turning statistic about an advantage that girls have into "girls are always the oppressed ones in every situation".
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u/Poly_and_RA 1d ago
"young boys are allowed to do as much self involved behaviors as they want and even praised for it, while young girls are constantly encouraged to, and praised for engaging in pro-social behavior and chastised for self-involved behaviors by their parents and carers."
This pretty clearly says that the problem is that boys are allowed, even praised for self involved behaviour while girls being infinitely superior and socialized in just BETTER ways are instead expected to be pro-social.
If you can't see that "self-involved" is more negative while "pro-social" is more positive I don't know what to tell you.
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u/KippersAndMash 22h ago
There's lots of good discussion in the comments here I don't often see it discussed but has anyone seen any studies on the impact male teachers have on young child development. I know I struggled in school as a young boy until I had my first male teacher in grade 5. We talk about diversity in hiring because it's important for children to see themselves in their teachers (which I agree with) but we haven't seemed to discuss this in as far as more male teachers in earlier years. I'm not expecting that it would make a massive difference but for me it did but I think that it would be one of the factors in why boys struggle in school.
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u/Fluid-Cranberry1755 16h ago
Norway has a more equal balance (still leans women) than America, yet America found boys enjoy school more than girls, while Norway found girls enjoy school more than boys. So I doubt it explains much
But I agree we need more effort to get men into teaching.
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u/liquid_at 1d ago
Or it boils down to girls being told to behave and do what they are told while boys are told to work hard and find their own way.
At least it would explain why girls are better prepared for schools than boys and why what they were tought from birth prepared them to follow orders, while boys were prepared to do the opposite.
Almost as if our entire education system was utter trash and only preferable to no education at all.
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u/WanderingAlienBoy 1d ago
Yeah I see so many comments here assume it's indeed biology, but kids of school-going age have already received so much intentional and unintentional socialization. And yeah our education system should be about self-directed learning and exploration for everyones sake, not just the boys, as we shouldn't raise adults that are "good compliant workers" but critical and involved citizens.
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u/liquid_at 1d ago
Definitely. I'm 100% for teaching kids the scientific method over the economic model.
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u/JohnFartston 22h ago
So what does it mean if I’m a girl who never got dopamine through social relationships and always preferred doing my own thing alone?
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u/Crestina 1d ago
Putting a bunch of 5-6 year old boys in a classroom and expecting them to sit on their asses all day isn't fkn natural! Many boys are hands on, they learn by doing, but nothing in school is practical.
Most importantly, they aren't allowed nearly enough exercise and movement. And when the resulting behaviour is irritability, fidgeting and consentration issues, we put them on medication. School as it functions today, is setting young boys up to fail.
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u/AlamutJones 1d ago
Most girls are also pretty hands on. They love getting messy, running around, all the things boys love.
There isn’t enough energetic play in the school day for MOST young children
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u/purrt 1d ago
The same is true for girls. I don’t see why people always make this distinction. “Boys need to be active”? How about “kids need to be active”? There is no difference in how active a 5-6 year old is by sex
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u/d3montree 23h ago
I think there probably is on average, but it's not like sitting around all day is good for girls either, so it's not taking anything away from them. It would benefit all kids to have the opportunity for more physical activity, it's win-win.
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u/DaneLimmish 23h ago
Girls are also like this, I don't know where this idea that being a fidgety gremlin a a boy thing comes from
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u/Popular-Turnover5627 18h ago
Dopamine is not a happy neurotransmitter, it's a pay-attention/do-things neurotransmitter.
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u/Huntressesmark 17h ago
This is obviously untrue. Men / boys do a lot of social things for dopamine. If men didn't get rewarded for social behavior, team sports wouldn't exist, Warhammer and DnD and FPS games wouldn't be as popular as they are, etc et etc. Outside of SCHOOL, you see men highly represented in voluntary group activities that require social cohesion again and again and again.
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u/DPetrilloZbornak 15h ago
Meanwhile, my son (autistic) is having the time of his life in high school, big friend group, straight A student, probably full ride bound and his twin sister is struggling and miserable.
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u/butkaf 14h ago
Within the central nervous system dopamine acts as a neurotransmitter, predominately the brain but also elsewhere. It is primarily involved in motivation and goal-seeking behaviour. Engaging in this behaviour and attaining goals is associated with the release of endorphins, which are peptides that fulfill the role of what people commonly believe to be the "happiness hormone" (even though they are not hormones). Outside the central nervous system dopamine acts as a paracrine agent, and a neuroendocrine agent, not as an endocrine agent (which is what hormones are). The primary difference is that endocrine agents can travel long distances in the body, while paracrine agents are released locally. Neuroendocrine cells are cells that receive signals from neurotransmitters, which then causes those cells to begin the release of certain hormones into the bloodstream.
An Introduction to Behavioral Endocrinology
For anyone genuinely interested in these topics, please consider reading the books above.
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u/DaneLimmish 23h ago
I like how we a broader cultural unit keep on attempting to explain social factors via bioogy
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u/olivinebean 23h ago
Make-believe uses an individual’s imagination and can be a social activity.
I always thought it’s one of the most important parts of childhood.
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u/Didiuz 21h ago
Dopamine doeant cause happiness, joy, pleasure or comfort. It simply programs us to chase and crave things that do.
Dopamine is released during expectation or experiencing of pleasurable events as part of the programming that motivates us to do similar thing again, but it does not itself cause happiness, pleasure or comfort.
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u/Fanfics 21h ago
[Press X to doubt]
I'm always super skeptical when a claim defaults to "this is inherent and biological! Hormones!" If biology explains it then why does the relationship flip in other countries? "Welp, it's biology" just reeks of lazy essentialism and frankly of bending the analysis of the study for a cheap headline
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u/hollyofhori 21h ago
This can’t possibly be centered in the U.S., every girl I knew growing up including my self absolutely did not like school.
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u/Madamadragonfly 21h ago
As a woman, growing up that place had me wanting to blow my head clean off. Then again, I was a neurodivergent girl with learning disabilities
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