Mediate Michigan

As researchers (and virtually all parents) have long known, children show definite sex differences when it comes to behavior such as play and risk-taking. So-called tomboys are the exception that proves the rule: boys have a clear preference for rough-and-tumble play as well as for taking risks. My son Greg could fashion a gun out of a stick from as early an age as I can remember. Given the opportunity, his preferred place of rest is high up in the limbs of a tree (and he has the scratches and bruises to prove it). In contrast, his sister Becca has virtually no interest in climbing trees, and her interest in guns has always been limited to super-soakers.

Behavioral sex differences like the above appear to be the basis on which our society stereotypes boys’ and girls’ innate personalities and temperaments. As opposed to behavioral differences these latter stereotypes are generally inaccurate; worse, when it comes to divorce they can be downright dangerous. The specific stereotype I’m speaking of is the one that goes: girls are sensitive, boys are tough. In truth, if anything boys may actually be more emotionally vulnerable than girls. Thinking that boys are emotionally thick-skinned is one reason why boys may have an even harder time than girls adjusting to divorce.

via Joseph Nowinski, Ph.D.: Helping Children Survive Divorce: The Myth of the Tough Boy.