Latest / Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD / Raising Boys: Another side of gender equality

Transcript

Raising Boys: Another side of gender equality · Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD

0:01
Speaker 1: This is parent data. I'm Emily Oster. My firstborn child
0:06
Speaker 1: is a girl. And when I was pregnant with my
0:08
Speaker 1: second and I found out that he was going to
0:11
Speaker 1: be a boy, people said a lot of things. Some
0:14
Speaker 1: people said, Oh, it's so nice, you'll have one of each.
0:17
Speaker 1: But one person told me, oh, you just wait, boys
0:20
Speaker 1: are really slow. You're going to think your son is
0:22
Speaker 1: really stupid. And I want to say, I have never
0:28
Speaker 1: thought my son is stupid, but this echoes the way
0:32
Speaker 1: I hear a lot of parents talk about their concerns
0:36
Speaker 1: about their boys. When I talk to parents about their boys,
0:39
Speaker 1: they worry about later language development, They worry if they're
0:42
Speaker 1: ready for the rigors of kindergarten when they get a
0:45
Speaker 1: little older. They worry about how their seventh grade boys
0:47
Speaker 1: can't keep up with seventh grade girls in almost anything.
0:51
Speaker 1: And when we look out at the data, there's a
0:54
Speaker 1: lot of evidence that boys do less well in school.
0:58
Speaker 1: And when we look out at the world, we see
1:01
Speaker 1: even at older ages, boys and men are struggling. Forty
1:04
Speaker 1: percent of college enrollment is boys and about sixty percent girls.
1:10
Speaker 1: Looking at some of these numbers, hearing parents, it's sometimes
1:13
Speaker 1: hard to shake the view that if this were reversed.
1:16
Speaker 1: If girls were behind, we would be more panicked about it,
1:19
Speaker 1: and in fact, forty years ago, when girls were more behind,
1:24
Speaker 1: we were more panicked about it. As a result of this,
1:29
Speaker 1: we've seen a lot of headlines in the last few
1:30
Speaker 1: years which say things like, what's going on with boys?
1:33
Speaker 1: Why are boys struggling? What's wrong with our boys? And
1:36
Speaker 1: yet on the other side, it's hard to shake the
1:40
Speaker 1: feeling that there's also a lot of progress we need
1:42
Speaker 1: for women, certainly globally but also in the US. Not
1:47
Speaker 1: to put too fine a point on it, but if
1:49
Speaker 1: we're so worried about boys and men, why are they
1:50
Speaker 1: still in charge of basically everything. That contrast, I think
1:56
Speaker 1: frames what's wrong with this discussion, which is that it
1:59
Speaker 1: feels sometimes zero sum, that when boys get more, girls
2:04
Speaker 1: get less. And my guest today is going to push
2:07
Speaker 1: back on that. Richard Reeves is a writer and a scholar,
2:10
Speaker 1: and he's the president of the American Institute for Boys
2:13
Speaker 1: and Men. He has dedicated his career to thinking about
2:17
Speaker 1: the issues that face boys and men and to thinking
2:19
Speaker 1: about gender equality writ large as equality and not just
2:25
Speaker 1: as empowerment of one group over another. Richard and I
2:29
Speaker 1: are going to talk about the big issues of problems
2:32
Speaker 1: facing boys and men today, but we're also going to
2:35
Speaker 1: get into the nitty gritty details of practical questions about
2:40
Speaker 1: raising boys and why sometimes it's different from raising girls,
2:44
Speaker 1: and what kinds of things parents should and maybe shouldn't
2:47
Speaker 1: do in the process of doing that. I love talking
2:50
Speaker 1: to Richard, and he and I push back on against
2:53
Speaker 1: each other quite often, and we always come up with
2:56
Speaker 1: new ideas after the break. Richard Reeves, Richard Reeves, I'm
3:12
Speaker 1: absolutely delighted to welcome you here to Parentata.
3:16
Speaker 2: I'm really happy to be here.
3:18
Speaker 1: I would love for you to start by introducing yourself
3:20
Speaker 1: a little bit to the audience.
3:22
Speaker 2: So my job is president of the American Institute for
3:26
Speaker 2: Boys and Men, which is the first and only think
3:29
Speaker 2: tank that does research and policy development specifically focused on
3:34
Speaker 2: boys and men. I've been a policy wonk andent in
3:37
Speaker 2: and out of government most of my career. I just
3:39
Speaker 2: recently did ten years at the Brookings Institution, where I
3:42
Speaker 2: focused mostly on inequality issues. Before that was in the
3:46
Speaker 2: UK government doing some kind of policy stuff there. I
3:50
Speaker 2: have three sons, all in their twenties now, so I'm
3:53
Speaker 2: sort of through that bit of.
3:54
Speaker 1: The parents on the other side.
3:56
Speaker 2: Yes, the other side. I mean, it never really ends,
3:59
Speaker 2: but it's difference the other I'm in a different side
4:02
Speaker 2: or a different phase, for sure, And that did motivate
4:05
Speaker 2: some of my work around boys and men, which led
4:07
Speaker 2: to a book, which led to the institute.
4:12
Speaker 1: So I'd love you to talk a little bit about
4:14
Speaker 1: why this focus, Because you've thought about a lot of things,
4:18
Speaker 1: You've done a lot of different kinds of policy, and
4:20
Speaker 1: you've ended up in a place where you're thinking about
4:24
Speaker 1: quite specifically about boys and men. And why have you
4:27
Speaker 1: turned your considerable expertise and talents to this particular issue.
4:34
Speaker 2: Well, I think the honest answer is because nobody else was,
4:38
Speaker 2: really And what I discovered was that there was just
4:43
Speaker 2: it wasn't any discovery that people knew that there were
4:45
Speaker 2: lots of gaps, particularly in education, which I'm sure we'll
4:48
Speaker 2: get to another's where really it was kind of boys
4:50
Speaker 2: and men who are kind of lagging behind. But it
4:53
Speaker 2: was always like an afterthought or a secondary thought to
4:56
Speaker 2: another paper. Right, So someone would do a paper on
4:58
Speaker 2: something and I say, oh, look, well there's a big
4:59
Speaker 2: gender gap, and then move on. And he also felt
5:02
Speaker 2: that some of those issues just weren't getting If they
5:04
Speaker 2: were getting attention, they were either getting fleeting attention or
5:07
Speaker 2: the wrong kind of attention. In other words, the sort
5:09
Speaker 2: of picked up in online circles or perhaps people with
5:13
Speaker 2: kind of more reactionary intent. And I think you know
5:16
Speaker 2: a thing or two about people taking data and using
5:18
Speaker 2: it for the wrong, wrong purposes as well as the
5:21
Speaker 2: right purposes. Do you know do you know what that's like?
5:22
Speaker 1: Do you know a bit about that? Yes? Okay?
5:25
Speaker 2: And so I sort of actually and I just kept
5:28
Speaker 2: in these data points, you know, like I don't know,
5:31
Speaker 2: college the college enrollment rate dropped seven times more for
5:34
Speaker 2: men than women when the pandemic hit. You know, almost
5:37
Speaker 2: one in four boys have been diagnosed with the developmental
5:41
Speaker 2: disability in K twelve twice the or eight for girls.
5:46
Speaker 2: You know, men were dying from COVID in much bigger
5:48
Speaker 2: numbers and stuff. And as someone that's had a I
5:50
Speaker 2: would say a pretty robust commitment to gender equality. Actually,
5:54
Speaker 2: I just noticed that people were uncomfortable really shining a
5:59
Speaker 2: light on on those and that discomfort, really, in the
6:02
Speaker 2: end is what drew me to the work, because I
6:04
Speaker 2: realized that because of that discomfort, it wasn't being done
6:07
Speaker 2: or it wasn't being done.
6:08
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, there's a fact that I've heard you say
6:11
Speaker 1: before about college enrollment. That is, when we passed Title nine,
6:16
Speaker 1: forty percent of college enrollment was women and now forty
6:19
Speaker 1: percent is men. And that somehow the way that we're
6:23
Speaker 1: talking about that is completely different in terms of whether
6:27
Speaker 1: it's a problem than it was in the nineteen seventies,
6:30
Speaker 1: and question of sort of just putting those things together
6:33
Speaker 1: and asking are we underconcerned about this or are we
6:37
Speaker 1: avoiding talking about it because it somehow feels like it's
6:42
Speaker 1: not an okay thing to grapple with.
6:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's what you hear a lot from people,
6:46
Speaker 2: which is like, yeah, either I see it in my
6:50
Speaker 2: own life or my own institution, but maybe it's just
6:52
Speaker 2: me just us, or I get it and I see
6:56
Speaker 2: it more, but I just think it's too risky to
6:58
Speaker 2: talk about. Those are the kind of responses that you get.
7:01
Speaker 2: The truth is that these are public issues. I mean,
7:03
Speaker 2: these are general issues. They're not like if you're a
7:05
Speaker 2: parent and your boys struggling in school, well, I'm not
7:08
Speaker 2: suggesting girls don't struggle in school as well, but boys
7:11
Speaker 2: are struggling more right, it's not you and it's not
7:13
Speaker 2: your boy, and it could be at least partly something
7:16
Speaker 2: to do with the school and the education system, so
7:19
Speaker 2: kind of if you're not alone. I think it's an
7:22
Speaker 2: important part of the message. But then the second thing
7:23
Speaker 2: is just to try and make it a bit safer
7:25
Speaker 2: to talk about, because there are still many people. I
7:28
Speaker 2: think it's getting better, but who's genuinely believe that to
7:32
Speaker 2: sort draw attention to some of the real problems of
7:35
Speaker 2: boys and men is to some way dilute our commitment
7:38
Speaker 2: continuing to do the work that's necessary for women and
7:41
Speaker 2: girls that we have to choose. You know, if you're
7:43
Speaker 2: a parent and you've got a son and a daughter,
7:45
Speaker 2: but you're only allowed to care about one of them,
7:47
Speaker 2: is sort of what it would feel like caring about
7:49
Speaker 2: both of them, Like, well, if you love him, you
7:51
Speaker 2: can't love me, because there's only so much love to
7:53
Speaker 2: go around. But it has that sort of feel in
7:55
Speaker 2: public policy circles, and a lot of people will say
7:57
Speaker 2: that to me, that just feels wrong and dangerous to
8:00
Speaker 2: me to frame gender equality as a zero sum game.
8:03
Speaker 2: And I don't think that's been going well in the
8:06
Speaker 2: recent years either.
8:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's it's interesting and maybe we can
8:10
Speaker 1: come back to this, but I for me, some of
8:12
Speaker 1: that comes from this realization that it's still the case
8:16
Speaker 1: that men are in charge of a lot of things.
8:18
Speaker 1: So it's still the case that at the top end
8:20
Speaker 1: of the income distribution or at the top end of
8:23
Speaker 1: the employment distribution, still a lot of I noticed a
8:26
Speaker 1: lot of men running companies, many more than women, and
8:29
Speaker 1: so somehow reconciling the places we still very much need
8:34
Speaker 1: to go in those areas, or you know, would like
8:36
Speaker 1: to go with the fact that in other parts of
8:38
Speaker 1: the economy and in education, we're often seeing boys and
8:42
Speaker 1: men really struggle and make much lower gains or fall
8:46
Speaker 1: backwards relative to women.
8:48
Speaker 2: Yes, I think that's part of the issue here, is
8:50
Speaker 2: kind of being able to see both of those things
8:52
Speaker 2: at once. And you're right that particularly the many of
8:56
Speaker 2: the not all, but many of the gender gaps that
8:59
Speaker 2: we still have to be really concerned about as they
9:02
Speaker 2: impact women are in the labor market, and especially in
9:05
Speaker 2: the higher reaches of the labor market, in those kind
9:07
Speaker 2: of leadership roles where we continue to see the significant
9:10
Speaker 2: underrepresentation of women, and in politics, by the way, I
9:13
Speaker 2: mean the US is still, you know, really really depressing
9:16
Speaker 2: outlier in terms of the lack of women, you know,
9:19
Speaker 2: in politics, and so venture capital is another area where
9:23
Speaker 2: we just don't see access to capital. There is still
9:25
Speaker 2: a huge issue for women. And so those are kind
9:29
Speaker 2: of issues that aren't maybe affecting the kind of median
9:33
Speaker 2: family as much, but they are the kinds of issues
9:36
Speaker 2: that the people who control, who are sort of in
9:38
Speaker 2: charge of the discourse, right, the people who write articles
9:41
Speaker 2: and run universities and make podcasts and so on too, like,
9:44
Speaker 2: they're more likely to be in those more elite circles.
9:46
Speaker 2: And so if they're just looking around their own communities
9:49
Speaker 2: or maybe even looking up, they're still seeing the kind
9:51
Speaker 2: of old gender inequalities. I don't mean they're not there,
9:54
Speaker 2: you know what you mean by old, but maybe they
9:57
Speaker 2: don't actually spend much time in working class communities where
9:59
Speaker 2: actually men have their wages go down.
10:02
Speaker 1: And so I think this is a good place to
10:04
Speaker 1: pivot to kids, because I think in those communities the
10:06
Speaker 1: place that we are that we do see this, and
10:08
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people resonate with some of
10:10
Speaker 1: this message is in the boys in school piece of this,
10:16
Speaker 1: and to frame that fact, I think that the way
10:20
Speaker 1: many people, many parents would talk to me about this
10:23
Speaker 1: is just my boy doesn't seem ready for school or
10:27
Speaker 1: he is circles are being run around him by the
10:30
Speaker 1: girls who are the same age, and there are a
10:33
Speaker 1: bunch of different reactions to that, you know, holding boys
10:36
Speaker 1: back thinking about changing schools. There's many ways one can
10:40
Speaker 1: can come into this. Do you want to talk a
10:42
Speaker 1: little bit about why this happens, like what is going
10:47
Speaker 1: on to the extent we understand it, and maybe when
10:50
Speaker 1: in school these times these are this is most salient.
10:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the first thing to say is that on average,
10:58
Speaker 2: on average agenda gap. So I know, the wonderful thing
11:02
Speaker 2: about about this podcast, Emily, is that I don't need
11:05
Speaker 2: to talk about overlapping distributions and averages all the time
11:08
Speaker 2: right now.
11:08
Speaker 1: The wonderful thing about the podcast is you can talk
11:11
Speaker 1: about overlapping.
11:12
Speaker 2: Well, I can, but I don't need to because all
11:14
Speaker 2: that well knows. I can just say that yes, and
11:17
Speaker 2: I can say it's you know, no one thinks that
11:19
Speaker 2: the statement men are taller than women means that all
11:21
Speaker 2: men are taller than all women. And that's true for
11:24
Speaker 2: everything that we're going to talk about. So you don't
11:26
Speaker 2: have to say on average every time, but the gap,
11:28
Speaker 2: the gender gaps are there all the way through K twelve.
11:32
Speaker 2: And then as you point out, that shows up in
11:34
Speaker 2: higher education, where we've now got a bigger gender gap
11:37
Speaker 2: than in the early seventies when we passed Title nine.
11:39
Speaker 2: But the other way around, that really does largely reflect
11:42
Speaker 2: what's happening earlier than that. And so you see big
11:45
Speaker 2: gaps in school readiness at four and five, and then
11:48
Speaker 2: big gaps at the end. So in GPA, for example,
11:52
Speaker 2: which is a really good I think aggregate measure. If
11:55
Speaker 2: we look at high school GPA and rank it by
11:58
Speaker 2: decile from the kind of highest to the lowest ten percent,
12:02
Speaker 2: two thirds of the top ten percent are girls and
12:05
Speaker 2: two thirds of the bottom ten percent are boys, and
12:08
Speaker 2: a linear relationship in between. And so in terms of GPA,
12:11
Speaker 2: it's just a different world honestly through high school. And
12:14
Speaker 2: then the second part of your question is like when
12:16
Speaker 2: does it happen. So it's happening all the way through.
12:18
Speaker 2: But I would say two things. One is it's particularly
12:20
Speaker 2: true in literacy English and literacy, where in the average
12:24
Speaker 2: school district now the boys are almost a grade level
12:29
Speaker 2: behind girls, and there's no gap in math, at least
12:32
Speaker 2: until high school, where it starts to tweak open a
12:35
Speaker 2: little bit again in favor of boys in poor school districts.
12:40
Speaker 2: The boys behind in English and math, so it's English.
12:42
Speaker 2: And then the second thing is, it's hard to say
12:45
Speaker 2: for sure, but middle school and the transition into high
12:47
Speaker 2: school seems to be where a lot of this kind
12:51
Speaker 2: of really I don't know, say kind of takes It's
12:55
Speaker 2: almost like the moment where the derailment happens, right, so
12:58
Speaker 2: the boys are behind all the way through. But if
12:59
Speaker 2: I could choose, if I could choose a grade or
13:02
Speaker 2: two grades when actually I just see that opening gap
13:05
Speaker 2: opening up and the boys, it tends to be middle school.
13:09
Speaker 2: Towards the end of middle school and that transition into
13:11
Speaker 2: high like seven, eight, eighth, ninth grade just seem to
13:14
Speaker 2: be where the girls just pull away their head all
13:16
Speaker 2: the way, but you're a runner, so like they're they're ahead.
13:19
Speaker 2: But then that's when they just the girls just kick
13:22
Speaker 2: it right and the boys just they're in the dust
13:25
Speaker 2: from that point on.
13:26
Speaker 1: And you see, you would pick up that more than kindergarten,
13:30
Speaker 1: where I think we so much of the discourse that
13:34
Speaker 1: I hear about. This is around you know what we
13:37
Speaker 1: call red shirting kids in kindergarten, that recognizing the gaps
13:42
Speaker 1: in kindergarten readiness and exactly what that means we can
13:45
Speaker 1: talk about, but recognizing those gaps and saying, should I
13:47
Speaker 1: hold my kindergartener back because in the kindergarten classroom they're
13:50
Speaker 1: going to be going to they're going to struggle.
13:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, actually it's I mean there's two things I'd
13:55
Speaker 2: say in response to that, Like, one is you just
13:57
Speaker 2: alluded to the kind of what's captured by school readiness,
14:00
Speaker 2: but it also applies to the GPA thing too, which
14:03
Speaker 2: is that the gender gap is largely around kind of
14:05
Speaker 2: non cognitive skills like softer skills, organizational skills.
14:09
Speaker 1: Executive functions, not cognitive skills. Right.
14:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like the girls aren't smarter than the boys.
14:14
Speaker 2: There's no gender gap on SAT or ACT or most
14:16
Speaker 2: of the standardized tasks and so or vice versa. I
14:19
Speaker 2: should say in case we still have to say that
14:21
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty four, Right, it's not the boys are
14:22
Speaker 2: smarter than girls. But GPA and school readiness measures they're
14:28
Speaker 2: really about things like ability to pay attention, your organizational skills,
14:32
Speaker 2: self efficacy skills, and that's really where the gender gap
14:35
Speaker 2: shows up. And of course it has huge implications for education.
14:39
Speaker 2: And I know why people talk about kindergarten, and I
14:41
Speaker 2: have myself are proposed that it would be good to
14:44
Speaker 2: at least pilot having boys start somewhat later than girls
14:48
Speaker 2: because they are younger. But I actually think the age,
14:52
Speaker 2: like if we think about the difference between chronological age
14:55
Speaker 2: and developmental age, right, chronological age is a really crude
14:59
Speaker 2: proxy for you, developmental age obviously, this massive variation between
15:02
Speaker 2: among five year olds, right, But where I start to
15:05
Speaker 2: see it really is in it is in those early
15:07
Speaker 2: adolescence years and and puberty comes earlier. That does seem
15:13
Speaker 2: to be associated with a little bit of the development
15:14
Speaker 2: of kind of frontal cortex stuff.
15:16
Speaker 1: You know.
15:16
Speaker 2: I've just learned from a Jewish friend that in the
15:18
Speaker 2: modern Jewish tradition, the bat mitzvahs are typically a year
15:22
Speaker 2: earlier than the bar mitzvah's. Right, Well, maybe there's a
15:25
Speaker 2: little bit of wisdom to that. It's like why why why?
15:28
Speaker 2: And no one questions it, by the way, everyone just goes, well,
15:29
Speaker 2: of course, but but why why? Of course, because the
15:33
Speaker 2: girl's mature earlier.
15:34
Speaker 1: Oh okay, have you met any thirteen year old boys, Richard.
15:39
Speaker 2: I've I've met at least three, but it's Mike. Margaret
15:43
Speaker 2: Meade had this great line where she said, if you
15:45
Speaker 2: go into the average ninth grade classroom, you won't just
15:49
Speaker 2: think that the boys and girls are of a different gender,
15:51
Speaker 2: you'll think they're of a different species. Right, And that's
15:54
Speaker 2: an overstatement for sure, but you kind of know what
15:57
Speaker 2: she means if you have spent time in those age groups, right,
15:59
Speaker 2: they're just and so developmentally the girls behind all the
16:02
Speaker 2: way through. And so I actually think it's at least
16:04
Speaker 2: as much about adolescence as it is about the early years.
16:08
Speaker 1: I meane one interpretation one way to sort of see
16:11
Speaker 1: that is to think about the the timing of puberty
16:16
Speaker 1: and the magnitude of the effective age gap frontal lobe development.
16:21
Speaker 1: I think another way to frame that is to ask
16:24
Speaker 1: what are we asking of people in schools at that time?
16:29
Speaker 1: And so I wonder if that overlaps here, that that
16:34
Speaker 1: is a time in which we start asking way more
16:37
Speaker 1: of executive function and of kind of organization than we
16:41
Speaker 1: did in the third grade, where if you don't bring
16:45
Speaker 1: in your homework kind of nothing happens, and then we
16:48
Speaker 1: hit seventh eighth grade and we start expecting you to
16:50
Speaker 1: bring your homework every day and bring in your school
16:53
Speaker 1: book and not you know, play a game where you
16:55
Speaker 1: smash the smash the chromebook on each other's hands till
17:00
Speaker 1: it breaks it. We're kind of expecting more, and then
17:03
Speaker 1: we start seeing those differences.
17:04
Speaker 2: But it is a good game. That's a great game.
17:06
Speaker 1: It's a good game. It has some negative potential negative outcomes,
17:11
Speaker 1: but until you recognize it gets in the negative outcomes,
17:13
Speaker 1: it's pretty awesome. So I guess I wonder how much
17:18
Speaker 1: you think this is about the structure of it's masking
17:20
Speaker 1: about how much is the structure of schools.
17:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's well, they're obviously interdependent. So one
17:27
Speaker 2: of the criticisms of this developmental story that we're talking
17:30
Speaker 2: about here is, oh, so you're blaming the boys, all right,
17:33
Speaker 2: you're saying, oh, while I are immature, you're rolling rise.
17:35
Speaker 2: It's just about Actually the opposite, my view is that
17:39
Speaker 2: the system, the education system, has inadvertently kind of defaulted
17:44
Speaker 2: to more of the kind of female standard. Right, there's
17:47
Speaker 2: a kind of why aren't you more like your sister
17:50
Speaker 2: flavor to I think our entire education system, and that's
17:54
Speaker 2: it's actually one of the reasons I worry so much
17:56
Speaker 2: about the kind of cratering share of male teachers. You know,
17:58
Speaker 2: we're down to twenty three percent now, that's ten percentage
18:01
Speaker 2: point drop in the last twenty years and share of
18:04
Speaker 2: male teachers, and I think one reason to care about
18:07
Speaker 2: that is just because I think, through no one's fault,
18:09
Speaker 2: if you have a massively kind of gendered occupation, it's
18:13
Speaker 2: likely to take on that kind of median way of
18:15
Speaker 2: being right. And so I do think that the pedagoguy,
18:19
Speaker 2: the structure of the school day, the assessment mechanism just
18:23
Speaker 2: a bit more female friendly than male friendly. And so
18:25
Speaker 2: to that extent, the boys are a bit of a
18:27
Speaker 2: square peg in a round hole, and you can either
18:31
Speaker 2: blame them for being square or wonder why the whole
18:33
Speaker 2: is only around. And I do think that there's a
18:36
Speaker 2: lot to do in the education system to make it
18:38
Speaker 2: a bit more boyfriendly. And again I'm not blaming anybody.
18:41
Speaker 2: This is not a feminist conspiracy to fail boys. It's
18:44
Speaker 2: just in the inadvertent consequence of a series of shifts
18:47
Speaker 2: we've seen is to just I think leave education, it's
18:50
Speaker 2: just not as friendly to boys.
18:57
Speaker 1: More parent data, including what the shifts are that ifavored
19:00
Speaker 1: girls over boys, what we lose when we eliminate standardized testing,
19:04
Speaker 1: if it's even possible to teach our sons to have
19:06
Speaker 1: better executive function, and what Richard Reeves would do with
19:10
Speaker 1: twenty million dollars after the break. I think it's worth
19:30
Speaker 1: asking the question, what are the shifts that we're seeing
19:32
Speaker 1: that that are making this more female friendly, less appropriate
19:37
Speaker 1: for boys, less male friendly.
19:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'd say the first thing is I've already
19:41
Speaker 2: mentioned this, but the fact that the teaching profession, which
19:44
Speaker 2: has always kewed female, is just doing so very much
19:46
Speaker 2: more so than in the past. And so it's just
19:48
Speaker 2: a much more female dominated environment and that might have
19:51
Speaker 2: an influence on and there is some evidence that female
19:54
Speaker 2: teachers on average just react a little bit differently to
19:57
Speaker 2: male behavior. Right, I'd actually love to know whether it
20:01
Speaker 2: would be true of if female teachers have sons. Yeah,
20:07
Speaker 2: wouldn't that be kind of Maybe We've talked about this before,
20:09
Speaker 2: but I just have to be a super interesting study,
20:11
Speaker 2: like if you could somehow compare the ones that have
20:13
Speaker 2: versus daughters and how they react to it. But nonetheless,
20:16
Speaker 2: this does seem to be something about just the culture
20:18
Speaker 2: and so on in the classroom and how that's directed
20:22
Speaker 2: to I do think that some of the kind of
20:24
Speaker 2: move away from kind of recess and extracurricular and kind
20:28
Speaker 2: of fizzed staff has been bad period, but probably a
20:31
Speaker 2: little bit worse on average for boys. The move towards
20:35
Speaker 2: more continuous forms of assessment like GPA, et cetera. I
20:40
Speaker 2: think that's had a different effect for boys, and the
20:45
Speaker 2: move away from more vocational forms of training and more
20:48
Speaker 2: hands on learning styles. But it just sounds a bit
20:51
Speaker 2: counterintuitive to people. But the way I look at the
20:53
Speaker 2: evidence suggests suggests that actually girls are on average a
20:56
Speaker 2: little bit better at kind of abstract learning and just
20:59
Speaker 2: learning for the sake of life learning. Boys seem to
21:01
Speaker 2: need more of a sense of weight. Why am I
21:03
Speaker 2: learning this again? What is the point of this? They're
21:06
Speaker 2: just not as good at dutifully sitting there and doing
21:08
Speaker 2: it because they're supposed to do it, And we kind
21:10
Speaker 2: have all kinds of arguments about why that is. And
21:12
Speaker 2: so if it's more hands on and more applied and
21:14
Speaker 2: more vocational, it looks like that seems to work a
21:17
Speaker 2: bit better for boys. But we've moved away from that,
21:19
Speaker 2: so we've got fewer teachers and more female profession fewer
21:21
Speaker 2: male teachers, moved away from more of those you know,
21:25
Speaker 2: standard those tests, high stakes testing. It's kind of you know,
21:28
Speaker 2: gotten bad rap in many circles now, but that's one
21:31
Speaker 2: of the areas where boys at least can hold their
21:33
Speaker 2: own and then move away from vocational education. I'll say
21:37
Speaker 2: one more thing is I think this will interest you
21:38
Speaker 2: if it hasn't crossed your radar, But one consequence of
21:43
Speaker 2: higher education institutions going test optional or to remove the
21:48
Speaker 2: test from college admissions, is to massively increase the female
21:52
Speaker 2: share of students by four percentage points. Like, the only
21:55
Speaker 2: big effect of going test optional is to hugely increase
21:59
Speaker 2: the gender. I mean, four percentage points is a big
22:01
Speaker 2: shift in your student composition, right, And anyone's wondering, that's
22:05
Speaker 2: a lot. That's a lot. And the main reason for that,
22:07
Speaker 2: of course, is because the only aspect of college admissions
22:10
Speaker 2: where boys are at least equal with girls is standardized tests.
22:16
Speaker 2: On every other measure they're way behind.
22:18
Speaker 1: That is extremely interesting. I did not know that. Of course,
22:21
Speaker 1: when you say it, it makes.
22:22
Speaker 2: It's mechanical, isn't it's mechanical. Yeah, yeah, but it's not
22:26
Speaker 2: the intention of the policy. I don't think that that
22:29
Speaker 2: was why they were doing it. And now a lot
22:31
Speaker 2: of them are also worrying about the fact that they're very,
22:33
Speaker 2: very female skewed. And I always say, well, did you
22:35
Speaker 2: go test optional? I mean saying, I'm not saying you
22:36
Speaker 2: shouldn't have done it, but like.
22:38
Speaker 1: Did you think that through that? Did you think about it? Yeah?
22:41
Speaker 1: So when parents, when we're when we're parenting boys. The
22:43
Speaker 1: other thing that comes up a lot is this diagnosis
22:47
Speaker 1: fact which you mentioned briefly, that much larger share of
22:50
Speaker 1: boys than girls are diagnosed with ADHD or related developmental issues.
22:55
Speaker 1: And I wonder I'm not exactly interested in over diagnosis,
23:00
Speaker 1: but just the question of how our interactions with our
23:02
Speaker 1: boys relate to just that fact of diagnosis.
23:07
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, it speaks a little bit to the work
23:09
Speaker 2: that I'm so happy you did for us around kind
23:11
Speaker 2: of competence as well, because what does that signal. It's it's, well,
23:14
Speaker 2: there's something wrong with you, and you know it is
23:16
Speaker 2: twice as high. There isn't good recent data on this,
23:19
Speaker 2: but even a while ago it's twenty three percent of
23:21
Speaker 2: boys I mentioned who have a quote developmental disability. And
23:25
Speaker 2: I think a couple of things. One is that should
23:27
Speaker 2: make us look hard at the structure. I think if
23:29
Speaker 2: we've learned anything from the disability lobby, it is that
23:31
Speaker 2: very often environments are disabling rather than the people who
23:34
Speaker 2: are disabled, or at least you should think about both
23:36
Speaker 2: sides of that equation. And then I think also the
23:39
Speaker 2: second thing is like, if you've got a square peg
23:42
Speaker 2: like that's trying to get into a round hole, then
23:45
Speaker 2: the danger is what you do. So this isn't working,
23:47
Speaker 2: there must be something wrong with you. Oh maybe you've
23:50
Speaker 2: got a disability. Maybe it's add or ADHD or something
23:54
Speaker 2: like that. Okay, well let's medicate you. And so if
23:57
Speaker 2: you take this too far, you end up treating boys
24:02
Speaker 2: like malfunctioning girls. And in order to make them more
24:06
Speaker 2: functional in the classroom, what you do is you give
24:09
Speaker 2: them drugs that might make them a bit more like
24:12
Speaker 2: girls and a bit less like boys. And I'm not
24:14
Speaker 2: suggesting it isn't appropriate in certain cases, but I do
24:17
Speaker 2: worry that that gap we see between where boys are
24:22
Speaker 2: what their interest level is. They're just a way of
24:26
Speaker 2: being in the world is and what the school system
24:28
Speaker 2: requires of them. That sometimes that gap is being filled
24:30
Speaker 2: with drugs, and that seems like not the best solution.
24:35
Speaker 1: Agreed. So I'm curious about teaching skills because I read
24:42
Speaker 1: some of this, particularly if we go back to some
24:45
Speaker 1: of the adolescent stuff and thinking about the gap growing
24:48
Speaker 1: there many of these things they feel like noncognitive skills.
24:52
Speaker 1: They feel to me like executive function, Like there's a
24:55
Speaker 1: lot of organization where boys maybe take a longer time
25:00
Speaker 1: time to development, they may or may not ever get
25:03
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know if there are like adult
25:05
Speaker 1: gender differences in that kindability, but it does feel that
25:09
Speaker 1: one could teach that, And so I'm wondering if you
25:11
Speaker 1: think that's a part of the solution to actually think
25:15
Speaker 1: about literally organizing your backpack as like a class that
25:20
Speaker 1: could happen and we could tell people like this is
25:23
Speaker 1: how you might organize your life, and this is how
25:26
Speaker 1: you would organize your day and make a schedule and
25:28
Speaker 1: whatever are the are the things that seem to come
25:31
Speaker 1: naturally to some people and not to others, Like should
25:34
Speaker 1: we be trying to teach them?
25:36
Speaker 2: Well, there are thousands of parents out there cheering on
25:38
Speaker 2: your idea of organizing.
25:40
Speaker 1: The back classes on back back just like if.
25:43
Speaker 2: You ever ran for office, then I just think that should.
25:46
Speaker 1: Be I would just ran with pictures of backpack which
25:48
Speaker 1: is just full of like pieces of wood, small pieces
25:52
Speaker 1: of wood and like crumpled papers. I don't know where
25:57
Speaker 1: did they come from.
25:59
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter. They're awesome, they're they're precious. They're precious article.
26:03
Speaker 1: You have to throw them away when they can't see,
26:05
Speaker 1: you know, you.
26:06
Speaker 2: Have to be careful about that though, because you think
26:10
Speaker 2: it's just some old piece of wood. It's not. So
26:16
Speaker 2: when I share this data on like you know, frontal
26:19
Speaker 2: cortex average, where there's a huge gap, especially adolescents, and
26:22
Speaker 2: I say, look, if you don't, if you don't believe me,
26:24
Speaker 2: go into a seventh or eighth grade classroom and just
26:27
Speaker 2: ask them to open up.
26:28
Speaker 1: Their backpacks, right.
26:32
Speaker 2: And again on just and everyone gets that right. It's again,
26:35
Speaker 2: it's like a well du moment that you know, we
26:37
Speaker 2: don't need social science to tell us. But if that's true,
26:39
Speaker 2: I agree. So there's two things we could do. One
26:40
Speaker 2: is we can well, maybe there's three ways to approach
26:43
Speaker 2: this difference in non cognitive skill. Number one is more
26:46
Speaker 2: intentionally do some skill training around this stuff, and boys
26:52
Speaker 2: will benefit more from that. Of course you wouldn't only
26:53
Speaker 2: do it for boys, but that will be a way
26:55
Speaker 2: a way to kind of address that and just be
26:57
Speaker 2: more intentional. Don't don't presume they've already got those just
27:00
Speaker 2: because you have them and the girls have them. And
27:02
Speaker 2: also don't sort of just roll your eyes and say, well,
27:06
Speaker 2: organize your backpack. What's all this wood for? Right? Why
27:09
Speaker 2: didn't you have why do you have nice little colored
27:11
Speaker 2: tabs like in a nice folder. Because my sons were exciting,
27:18
Speaker 2: so it was basically opening up the book bag of
27:20
Speaker 2: a kind of middle school or boys like a controlled explosion. Right,
27:24
Speaker 2: you just have to step back a little bit.
27:26
Speaker 1: So my kids, there's a thing they say, which is
27:29
Speaker 1: that you could you could sip your homework, which is
27:32
Speaker 1: stuff in planner because you're supposed to put it in
27:34
Speaker 1: your binder. But many people, more boys than girls, will
27:39
Speaker 1: just sip their homework, just stuff it in their planner,
27:41
Speaker 1: and then it often doesn't come back after it's been sipped.
27:44
Speaker 1: So they're being told, don't sip your homework.
27:49
Speaker 2: Well, I'm well aware of the phenomenon. I just didn't
27:52
Speaker 2: know it now acquired a label.
27:53
Speaker 1: It has a label, so we could teach it.
27:56
Speaker 2: We could also compensate a bit more for it. And
27:59
Speaker 2: I just say, as a parent, it just took me
28:01
Speaker 2: way too long to just recognize that some of these
28:05
Speaker 2: skills were just being presumed on the part of the
28:07
Speaker 2: education system and they were not present, you know, And
28:10
Speaker 2: it wasn't true for all It's the same degree for
28:11
Speaker 2: all my sons, but it wasn't there. And actually I
28:14
Speaker 2: got so the gap between what the school thought he
28:16
Speaker 2: had in terms of skills and what he actually had
28:19
Speaker 2: was one that I blamed him for, right, I said, well,
28:22
Speaker 2: clearly the GAP's on you. And actually I now think,
28:24
Speaker 2: and I was slow to this, well maybe some of
28:26
Speaker 2: the gap was on the school just assuming that and
28:28
Speaker 2: so substituting for it. One of is Okay, one of
28:32
Speaker 2: my colleagues at the Brookings Institution, Camille Boussette, sat her
28:35
Speaker 2: son down, I think it was like seventh or eighth grade,
28:37
Speaker 2: and she said to him, she said, look, the school
28:39
Speaker 2: system thinks you've got a fully developed front of cortex.
28:42
Speaker 2: You don't. I am going to be your substitute frontal
28:45
Speaker 2: cortex for the next five years, okay, And he was like,
28:48
Speaker 2: and she showed him the brain charts. She actually showed
28:50
Speaker 2: him that, like because she's a Brooking scholar. So she
28:52
Speaker 2: showed him and he's like, okay, mom, that became a thing, right,
28:55
Speaker 2: She's just like, okay, I'm going to be your stand
28:57
Speaker 2: in a frontal cortex. And by the way, I think
28:59
Speaker 2: that many upper middle class parents are doing that for
29:02
Speaker 2: their sons, which is why the gender gaps are not
29:05
Speaker 2: as big at the top of distribution, one of the
29:07
Speaker 2: reasons why they're not as big. So we can just
29:09
Speaker 2: recognize we've got a step in. But the third thing
29:11
Speaker 2: we can do is maybe think about whether or not
29:13
Speaker 2: schools and educational institutions could actually just relax some of
29:18
Speaker 2: those requirements or think differently about them at least, right,
29:20
Speaker 2: I don't want to in any way say we should
29:22
Speaker 2: dumb down or level down, but is some of this
29:24
Speaker 2: kind of non cognitive demand that you're putting on the students,
29:27
Speaker 2: is all of it necessary? Could you think about rebalancing that?
29:30
Speaker 2: So I think there's three different things we can do,
29:32
Speaker 2: skill up, compensate, but then also maybe just demand a
29:35
Speaker 2: bit less of it.
29:37
Speaker 1: So I like one in three, the skilling up and
29:40
Speaker 1: the sort of thinking holistically off it for everybody having
29:44
Speaker 1: this be less of a thing. I worry about the
29:47
Speaker 1: compensation piece of this, and this is related to something
29:51
Speaker 1: I wrote for you guys on what I call the
29:53
Speaker 1: competence gap. But I worry a little bit that when
29:56
Speaker 1: we compensate, we both leave boys or whoever we're compensating
30:01
Speaker 1: for in a position where they haven't learned those skills,
30:04
Speaker 1: and then they don't learn them even when they would
30:06
Speaker 1: be ready to learn them. And I worry that it
30:09
Speaker 1: conveys a message that it's okay to be incompetent like this,
30:15
Speaker 1: and that there's really this is just the way you are,
30:18
Speaker 1: Like you're just you're a boy. You're disorganized, your backpack
30:22
Speaker 1: smells like garbage, and that's just the reality and we
30:28
Speaker 1: can't hope to change it, and that somehow we're not
30:30
Speaker 1: holding people to a higher standard, Like there's a distinction
30:33
Speaker 1: between I'm going to help you scaffold getting to that
30:36
Speaker 1: higher standard as opposed to saying you could never get there.
30:39
Speaker 1: So let me just make sure I clean out your
30:41
Speaker 1: backpack every day, and then I do this for you
30:43
Speaker 1: because I can never hope that you will be able
30:46
Speaker 1: to do this and somehow I find that balance really tricky.
30:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's fair, and I like your scaffolding
30:54
Speaker 2: is a great term in this context, I think because
30:57
Speaker 2: maybe maybe the position is take on this is that
31:01
Speaker 2: you're not just only substituting, although there may be a
31:05
Speaker 2: little bit of that sometimes, but it's more your simultaneously
31:09
Speaker 2: substituting and training, right, And so it's we're going to
31:12
Speaker 2: clean your backpack out together, yeah, right, and we're going
31:14
Speaker 2: to kind of figure out what that means. But we're
31:17
Speaker 2: not just going to say, well, you can't have you
31:19
Speaker 2: cleaned your back back out? Right, Like with my kids,
31:21
Speaker 2: I'd be like, have you done your homework? And they'd
31:24
Speaker 2: say yes, And it took me a while to realize
31:25
Speaker 2: that that was not reliable data. And so it's like,
31:30
Speaker 2: I'm going to help you structured kind to get your
31:32
Speaker 2: home and your backpack, but trying to skill up at
31:34
Speaker 2: the same time, because of course you want to develop,
31:36
Speaker 2: but if there's a gap between the level development they've
31:39
Speaker 2: currently got and what the institution's demanding of them. And
31:41
Speaker 2: I do think particularly in more kind of higher pressure,
31:44
Speaker 2: higher stakes educational environments, right, it doesn't to a lot
31:50
Speaker 2: of people, It doesn't feel like, yeah, well, maybe you'll
31:52
Speaker 2: just only graduate high school and struggle to find a college,
31:56
Speaker 2: but you'll figure it out in the end. I actually
31:58
Speaker 2: wish more parents were a bit more like that. That's
31:59
Speaker 2: kind of before or I ended up, honestly, But that's
32:04
Speaker 2: not how a lot of people feel about this. They
32:05
Speaker 2: don't feel that this is just something you can't just
32:08
Speaker 2: right off, you know, your freshman GPA. Well it turns
32:11
Speaker 2: out you can. To my people, people don't think that, right. Yeah,
32:16
Speaker 2: my sons absolutely did that. But I do think that
32:18
Speaker 2: people don't think that, and they're kind of they're not
32:20
Speaker 2: wrong to just think it's okay to let you sink
32:23
Speaker 2: or swim, because eventually that will be how you learn
32:26
Speaker 2: to swim. And so it's how do we kind of
32:28
Speaker 2: support you whilst training you up? So you're right, there's
32:31
Speaker 2: a middle ground.
32:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think there's there's a sort of very
32:34
Speaker 1: complicated thing in parenting this age, which is thinking about
32:37
Speaker 1: what when is it okay to let them fail and
32:39
Speaker 1: learn from the failure, And when is the failure going to,
32:42
Speaker 1: you know, either actually follow them or more feel like
32:46
Speaker 1: it follows them. When is the moment when you you
32:50
Speaker 1: step in Because they've forgotten something, and it's very important
32:53
Speaker 1: that they actually do it. And when is the moment
32:55
Speaker 1: that you say, well, you didn't bring your shoes to school,
32:57
Speaker 1: and so like, now you have to play this acer
33:00
Speaker 1: game with no cleats, and that's too bad, and next
33:03
Speaker 1: time you like, let's work on how you can remember that,
33:05
Speaker 1: and just figuring out which failures should we allow. It
33:11
Speaker 1: can't be none of them. But also when do we
33:14
Speaker 1: realize the failure is too is too big a failure
33:17
Speaker 1: that it's going to affect them too much, either in
33:20
Speaker 1: a real or perceived way, and so we have to
33:22
Speaker 1: fix it.
33:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's a great example because I think that
33:25
Speaker 2: one of the things that we're talking about here is
33:28
Speaker 2: how proximate the consequences are. And that makes a difference
33:32
Speaker 2: because one of the things that you get with the
33:34
Speaker 2: executive functioning in the frontal cortex is more of a
33:37
Speaker 2: future orientation. You get slightly you get longer time horizon.
33:41
Speaker 2: And so actually I'm just sort of thinking about it, like, yes,
33:44
Speaker 2: if you've got a you know, or they don't take
33:47
Speaker 2: their lunch or they don't take their cleats, where they're
33:49
Speaker 2: going to be hungry or they're going to not be
33:51
Speaker 2: able to play soccer. Actually that's a consequence that really
33:55
Speaker 2: hits with a ninth grade boy. But I have to
33:58
Speaker 2: tell you from personal experience, getting a one point seven
34:01
Speaker 2: GPA in your freshman year doesn't really bother some of
34:05
Speaker 2: them because they haven't figured out what the AA means
34:08
Speaker 2: in GPA yet and they certainly don't care about college
34:12
Speaker 2: or that stuff, like you know, to a ninth grader generally,
34:15
Speaker 2: but especially for a boy who's a little bit behind,
34:18
Speaker 2: like getting him to realize that his grades might matter
34:20
Speaker 2: now because it might now because it's four years away,
34:25
Speaker 2: good luck with that, and so it's a different kind
34:26
Speaker 2: of such so and this is helpful because it's like
34:29
Speaker 2: it's really important to see the consequence. But one of
34:31
Speaker 2: those foundational problems here is that you don't have you're
34:34
Speaker 2: not developed enough to know that the consequences of you're
34:38
Speaker 2: in action or failure on preturning your chemistry homework is
34:41
Speaker 2: going to matter to your future self. You don't have
34:43
Speaker 2: a good sense of your future self, your very short
34:46
Speaker 2: term at that point. And that's true for both, but
34:48
Speaker 2: it's particularly true for boys.
34:49
Speaker 1: I mean, in some ways I think that's this is
34:51
Speaker 1: like a there's a lot of productive realizations in that
34:55
Speaker 1: because the places that if you think like they care
34:58
Speaker 1: a lot about the things that are immediate, like remember
35:01
Speaker 1: like lunch and soccer cleats and whatever, things that actually
35:04
Speaker 1: don't matter too much, but if they forget them, it
35:07
Speaker 1: will be a moment to be like, oh, how can
35:08
Speaker 1: I put in someplace something that will make sure I
35:10
Speaker 1: remember that. That's a low stakes way to let them
35:14
Speaker 1: fail that may matter quite a lot to them while
35:16
Speaker 1: you are scaffolding to make sure the homework does go in,
35:18
Speaker 1: which is something where they're not as much going to
35:23
Speaker 1: care about remembering it, but it is very important. So
35:26
Speaker 1: there's like almost an opportunity.
35:28
Speaker 2: It's almost muscle yes exactly if you build the muscle around.
35:32
Speaker 1: That feels feels important for them, but they don't.
35:35
Speaker 2: So yeah, it feels immediate to them, which is incredibly important.
35:37
Speaker 1: I feel like we fixed it. So this is great.
35:40
Speaker 2: This is great. This is a incredily high value podcast.
35:43
Speaker 2: Anyone listening to this like this is this is We're done,
35:45
Speaker 2: presuming you can just wrap up now.
35:49
Speaker 1: Okay, So I actually wanted to ask you what you're
35:54
Speaker 1: going to do with your twenty eight million dollars that
35:56
Speaker 1: melitda Gates just gave you.
36:00
Speaker 2: That was a surprising email. I'll be honest, can you.
36:04
Speaker 1: Tell can you give people a little more context?
36:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's Melinda French Gates has just made a
36:10
Speaker 2: huge investment in gender equality, and much of the money
36:13
Speaker 2: is going particularly around kind of women's empowerment and many
36:15
Speaker 2: of the issues we talked about earlier, around you know,
36:18
Speaker 2: access to capital, women in leadership positions, etc. She's of
36:22
Speaker 2: course a world leader on this issue and is now
36:24
Speaker 2: using planthropy.
36:26
Speaker 1: Like just an absolutely lovely, amazing person.
36:29
Speaker 2: I now even more strongly agree with you that she's
36:32
Speaker 2: a lovely person because she thought that twenty million dollars
36:34
Speaker 2: are that money in fact forty million dollars because twenty
36:37
Speaker 2: million went into another fund that Gary Barker, who runs
36:40
Speaker 2: an organization called Equamundo that does a lot of stuff
36:43
Speaker 2: on masculinities and reducing violence particularly. So what happened was
36:49
Speaker 2: that twelve people were each asked to direct twenty million
36:52
Speaker 2: dollars through a donor advised fund, and I was one
36:56
Speaker 2: of those people that was fortunate enough to be chosen
36:59
Speaker 2: to do that. So in support of gender equality, Melinda
37:03
Speaker 2: French Gates has decided that should include investments in boys
37:07
Speaker 2: and men. I think that's an important signal, an important moment. Obviously,
37:11
Speaker 2: the money is important. I'll say a bit more about
37:15
Speaker 2: that in the moment, but I just I don't want
37:16
Speaker 2: to get past the significance of someone of her stature
37:20
Speaker 2: signaling that she's beyond the zero sum framing of this
37:25
Speaker 2: and has recognized that we do rise together, and that
37:27
Speaker 2: actually ignoring the problems of boys and men is not
37:29
Speaker 2: good for anybody, including for women in the long run,
37:31
Speaker 2: because if men I was floundering, it's hard for women
37:34
Speaker 2: to flourish, and so it's exciting and unexpected. I think
37:38
Speaker 2: it's an accelerant of the debate as well.
37:41
Speaker 1: I think it's let me just say, I think it
37:42
Speaker 1: is very important for exactly the reason I mentioned this
37:45
Speaker 1: to my husband when I was saying I was going
37:46
Speaker 1: to interview. I was saying, I was going to ask
37:47
Speaker 1: you but about this, and he was like, I thought
37:49
Speaker 1: Melinda Gates was supporting women and I was like, she's
37:53
Speaker 1: supporting gender equality. He was like, oh, I guess he
37:56
Speaker 1: was sort of like a moment we were like, oh,
37:57
Speaker 1: I guess this is also an important piece of it.
38:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's interesting I mean, it's still early days
38:03
Speaker 2: in this debate, but I'm seeing in other parts of
38:06
Speaker 2: the world and some other people that Surgeon General has
38:09
Speaker 2: kind of also said, we've got to do we can
38:11
Speaker 2: do both. So I think if you've been an advocate
38:13
Speaker 2: for gender equality for a long time, you've obviously fused
38:16
Speaker 2: that in your mind with the issues of women and girls,
38:18
Speaker 2: and to be clear, and a lot of the world
38:19
Speaker 2: that's still true, and in some places it is still true.
38:21
Speaker 2: But the question that this the question now is with
38:23
Speaker 2: these growing gaps facing boys and men as well, do
38:27
Speaker 2: you expand your idea of gender equality to include them
38:31
Speaker 2: or do you dig in and say no, no, no, gender
38:33
Speaker 2: equality can only ever be about women and girls. And
38:35
Speaker 2: I think what Melinda french Gate has shown here is
38:37
Speaker 2: that she's in more somewhat more of an expansive mindset,
38:41
Speaker 2: which is to at least include some of those issues
38:43
Speaker 2: of boys and men. And by the way, I just
38:44
Speaker 2: think that's an incredibly important message to young men as well,
38:47
Speaker 2: because if they feel like gender equality by definition excludes
38:51
Speaker 2: the issues that they're most concerned about, then you know,
38:54
Speaker 2: they might not be on board with it as as
38:56
Speaker 2: much as they would they would otherwise be Now the question, then,
38:59
Speaker 2: of course, is so it's this and we have full
39:02
Speaker 2: each of us has full autonomy on how to spend
39:03
Speaker 2: the money. It's a little bit of like we'll put
39:07
Speaker 2: your money where your mouth is believes. Yeah, so first
39:12
Speaker 2: of all, of course, my inbox is even fuller than ever. Yes,
39:15
Speaker 2: And I'm incredibly popular, and I had I even had
39:18
Speaker 2: one person who I had been trying to raise funds
39:20
Speaker 2: from the week before approach me and say, well, the
39:22
Speaker 2: shoes on the other foot, Now can I have money
39:25
Speaker 2: from you? If that's really nice? But it is honest,
39:29
Speaker 2: I don't really know yet. I'm going to take a
39:31
Speaker 2: bit of time to think about it. I think there
39:33
Speaker 2: are some programs I'm already interested in. I definitely want
39:37
Speaker 2: to get the themes around mental health and father heard
39:41
Speaker 2: and some of the stuff we've talked about here around
39:43
Speaker 2: like male You know, where are the big pushes to
39:45
Speaker 2: get more kind of more men into education, for example?
39:47
Speaker 2: Is there are they good initiatives around all of that.
39:49
Speaker 2: But it's a very young field, not only academically but
39:53
Speaker 2: also programmatically. They're just you know, there aren't that many
39:56
Speaker 2: and certainly not many that have been kind of strongly evaluated.
40:00
Speaker 2: And so I'm all ears right now, but also thinking like, okay,
40:05
Speaker 2: so you wrote a book, you set up a think tank,
40:07
Speaker 2: and now now you've actually got to spend some money
40:10
Speaker 2: on some people who you think are solving the problem.
40:11
Speaker 2: Oh wait, okay, that's tough for that, that's harder.
40:14
Speaker 1: Well, I'm going to give you my pitch, which is
40:17
Speaker 1: not specific, but is about data that I would love
40:22
Speaker 1: you to think about how you're going to evaluate the
40:24
Speaker 1: things that you find when you do this. So, how like,
40:29
Speaker 1: is there a way to do this such that we
40:31
Speaker 1: would learn about what works while you are also helping people.
40:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, but let me ask you a question in turn, though,
40:39
Speaker 2: because it's a very interesting debate right now. Of course
40:43
Speaker 2: between I'll characterize it horribly, but there's a sort of
40:47
Speaker 2: RCT or bust. You know, everything has to be pure.
40:50
Speaker 2: I need a fantastic identification strategy and great power. And
40:54
Speaker 2: then there's the other group that like, well that's just numbers.
40:57
Speaker 2: You know, Actually, my lived experience is something very different.
41:01
Speaker 2: You know, You've just got numbers, I've got experience. And
41:04
Speaker 2: and so there's a kind of lack of kind of
41:06
Speaker 2: humility sometimes on both sides. But I've worried a bit
41:09
Speaker 2: even about myself that in the past I've maybe been
41:11
Speaker 2: a little bit too purests is that a danger?
41:18
Speaker 1: I think I think it is a danger. I mean
41:20
Speaker 1: I would I would have framed it a little bit differently,
41:22
Speaker 1: which is I think sometimes when we run our cts,
41:24
Speaker 1: they are too divorced from the on the ground reality.
41:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't have to have everything to be a
41:30
Speaker 2: randomized control trial.
41:32
Speaker 1: You don't have to have everything can be randomized.
41:34
Speaker 2: But no, or it can be quasi random, or it
41:37
Speaker 2: can be you know, I could do we could start
41:38
Speaker 2: talking about different differ in a minute, and.
41:41
Speaker 1: You know tomorrow. I feel that the producer is going to.
41:47
Speaker 2: But I also just think like and there's obviously a
41:49
Speaker 2: replication problem to Actually, someone said to me the other day, said,
41:52
Speaker 2: you know what, the best measure of whether or not
41:54
Speaker 2: something's working well is staff turnover, Actually the data. So
41:59
Speaker 2: just just just measure turnover the data on whether something's
42:03
Speaker 2: doing good work in the world. Actually, just look at
42:05
Speaker 2: the real preference of the people working on it. And
42:07
Speaker 2: if people are coming, if people aren't sticking around, it
42:09
Speaker 2: probably means it's not great. If people are sticking around
42:10
Speaker 2: for a long time. That probably means it's great.
42:13
Speaker 1: I also think there's so much in so many of
42:15
Speaker 1: these programs which really have to do with the person
42:17
Speaker 1: at the top and whether that person is running a
42:20
Speaker 1: shop people want to be engaged with and is thinking
42:23
Speaker 1: carefully about you know, how the program goes. And that's
42:26
Speaker 1: that's really hard to measure. And it gets back to anyway,
42:29
Speaker 1: data is not Data cannot tell us everything. I can't
42:32
Speaker 1: end with that data is very useful.
42:34
Speaker 2: Data is beautiful.
42:35
Speaker 1: Data is beautiful. Richard, thank you so much for joining me.
42:38
Speaker 1: This is a delight.
42:40
Speaker 2: Oh thank you for having me. I loved it.
42:57
Speaker 1: Parent Data is produced by tomorrow. I'll be shy with
43:00
Speaker 1: support from the parent Data team and PI Rex. If
43:03
Speaker 1: you have thoughts on this episode, please join the conversation
43:06
Speaker 1: on my Instagram at prof Emily Oster and if you
43:10
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43:12
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43:16
Speaker 1: weekly posts on everything to do with parents and data
43:19
Speaker 1: to help you make better, more informed parenting decisions. For example,
43:24
Speaker 1: earlier this year, parent Data published an article called Why
43:26
Speaker 1: Adolescent Boys Are Struggling, which takes a close look at
43:29
Speaker 1: many of the issues that Richard raised in this episode
43:32
Speaker 1: and focuses specifically on what parents can do to support
43:35
Speaker 1: their sons, as well as a list of resources to explore.
43:38
Speaker 1: Check it out at parentdata dot org. There are a
43:42
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Speaker 1: Penelope right. We'll see you next time. H