Home

My children each approach school so differently.

My daughter will sit with a test or a paper revision and go through it with a fine tooth comb. She looks for ways to improve, makes sure she understands the content or the error, and comes up with a plan to not make that mistake again. My son approaches the exact same activity like the test was out to get him and he has to prove that he knows more than the test. Same table, same assignments, completely different energy.

Because I am me, my brain immediately went to, “Is this just their personality, or is any of this about gender?” It turns out that while boys and girls are more similar than different, research has found some interesting patterns in how they approach school.

The first is exactly what I saw around my kitchen table. There are gender differences in academic motivation. Girls tend to focus on addressing deficiencies by working hard. Boys are more likely to defend their proficiencies, showing a pattern of self-promotion and competition.

Second, there are differences in how they see their own competence. Boys tend to base their sense of competence on past successes, their perception of their own ability, and social comparison. They are also more likely to ignore negative feedback from a teacher. Girls, on the other hand, place a great deal of weight on feedback, are often less confident in their performance, and can be more devastated by failure. Boys tend to shrug off initial failures, attributing them to something outside their ability, which lets them hang onto a high level of confidence.

Oof. Of course my next question is, “So what does this mean for them later?”

For my overconfident son, some of these tendencies might open doors. For my daughters, the same patterns could start to weigh them down, especially as the work gets harder and the world gets louder with opinions and comparisons.

And this is where the numbers get uncomfortable, especially for those of us raising daughters. Although 59% of bachelor’s degrees are awarded to women, only about 26% of math and computer science degrees go to women and only 24% of engineering degrees. In education, 77% of all educators are women, but women hold only about 30% of leadership positions, which is almost a full flip.

Why does this matter? Because careers in STEM fields are often some of the more prestigious and financially rewarding paths right now, and leadership roles in any field come with influence, impact, and, yes, better pay. Those “AI guy” bonuses you may have seen in the headlines are not imaginary, and they are, more often than not, going to men.

So what can we do at home to help all of our children flourish in their academic motivation and in every content area?

First, we recognize that these patterns exist, without deciding that they are destiny. For our boys, maybe we lean into that “prove it” nature instead of always fighting it. When they are resisting an assignment or studying for a test, we can reframe it as a challenge: “Show me you really know this.” “Prove to yourself that you can do this.” We use their confidence as a tool to get them through the assignment instead of a wall that keeps them from starting.

For our daughters, maybe we handle feedback with extra care, because we know how heavily it can land. We lean into their desire to improve and use that language: “I can see all of your math thinking here. I wonder if we can improve how you show it to your teacher by using graph paper to line everything up.” We point out both the effort and the growth, not just the final grade.

Second, we pay attention to the expectations and little comments we toss out without thinking. When your child gets that Unicorn Soap in a Box kit as a birthday gift, do you talk only about the beautiful colors and glitter, or do you also talk about the science behind it? The way you blended ingredients, melted a solid into a liquid so you could pour it into the mold, and then watched it resolidify?

If you are wondering, I fully talked about the glitter with my daughter and missed the science opportunity. And when my son got the gross slime science box, we barely commented on the color at all. So if you are realizing you might be doing something similar, you are in excellent company.

As we head into the holidays and think about the gifts we buy, the ones our children receive, and the time off we will have with them, it is worth holding some of this gender stuff in mind. We want all of our children to grow up feeling both competent and confident, in every subject and every space they walk into.

And if, somewhere between the glittery unicorn soap and the questionable green slime, you forget to name the scientific principles and just say, “Wow, that is… something,” do not worry. There will always be another kit, another project, and another chance around the kitchen table to help them see just how smart and capable they really are.