RE-RELEASE: Parenting beyond pink and blue with Dr. Christia Brown

Today I join forces with Malaika Dower of the How to Get Away with Parenting podcast to interview Dr. Christia Brown, who is a Professor of Developmental and Social Psychology at the University of Kentucky, where she studies the development of gender identity and children’s experience of gender discrimination.    Dr. Brown’s book, Parenting Beyond Pink and Blue (Affiliate link), helps parents to really understand the scientific research around gender differences in children, which is a harder task than with some other topics because there’s just a lot of bad research out there on this one.  I ask about theories of gender development while Malaika keeps us grounded with questions about how this stuff works in the real world, and we both resolve to shift our behavior toward our daughters just a little bit.    Related Episodes  Interview with Yarrow Dunham on how social groups form  Interview with Kang Lee on children’s lying (yep – your kid does it too!)    Jump to highlights 00:30 Introduction to the episode and guests Dr. Christia Brown and Malaika Dower 02:47 Are there real brain differences between young boys and girls? 06:22 Why boys report more confidence in math than girls, despite similar ability 08:11 A striking finding: parents use three times more math talk with sons 12:38 The myth of girls being more verbal, and where it comes from 16:09 A classic study: the same baby dressed in pink versus blue 20:39 What's really going on when a child is mistaken for the "wrong" gender 22:01 How elaborate gender stereotypes show up by age three or four 24:19 Why pointing out stereotypes explicitly matters so much 36:02 "Boys will be boys and cows will be cows": how children reason about gender 39:22 How gender segregation in play reshapes the brain through synaptic pruning 41:35 Practical ways to counter gender segregation outside of school 44:43 Why this effort is worth it: what happens as kids get older    References  Brown, C.S. (2014). Parenting beyond pink and blue. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press. (Affiliate link) 

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Taylor, M.G., Rhodes, M., & Gelman, S.A. (2009). Boys will be boys and cows will be cows: Children’s essentialist reasoning about gender categories and animal species. Child Development 80(2), 461-481. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01272.x