Pink Brain, Blue Brain : How Small Differences Grow Into Troublesome Gaps -- And What We Can Do About It

Pink Brain, Blue BrainAuthor(s): Lise EliotAn important scientific exploration of the differences between boys and girls that breaks down damaging gender stereotypes and offers practical guidance for parents and educators.In the past decade, we've heard a lot about the innate differences between males and females. As a result, we've come to accept that boys can't focus in a classroom and girls are obsessed with relationships. That's just the way they're built. In Pink Brain, Blue Brain, neuroscientist Lise Eliot turns that thinking on its head. Based on years of exhaustive research and her own work in the new field of plasticity, Eliot argues that infant brains are so malleable that a few small differences at birth become amplified over time, as parents and teachers—and the culture at large—unwittingly reinforce gender stereotypes. Perhaps surprisingly, children themselves exacerbate the differences, by playing to their modest strengths. They constantly exercise those “ball-throwing” o