Women and math have a checkered history in the popular imagination. Remember the Barbie doll that said “Math class is tough”? Mattel removed that phrase from the doll’s repertoire in 1992 after an uproar from women’s groups. Thirteen years later, Lawrence H. Summers, then president of Harvard University, suggested that women may be “innately less able to succeed in math and science careers” and later apologized for those remarks, although he eventually resigned his post. The debate gained new life in January when University of Leeds psychologist Gijsbert Stoet and ... Read More
Why Isn’t Climate Change on More Lips?
December 14, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
What do most Americans know is happening, but few talk about? Global warming. Eighty-three percent of Americans believe the Earth is heating up, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsons poll. Yet most live as though global warming isn’t taking place, even while knowing that it is. That’s understandable. Thinking about the life we’ve known on Earth changing inexorably, often in harmful ways, is so horrifying that you may feel like clicking away from this article right now. Who can stand such distressing feelings? “Well there’s nothing I can do about it," so many shrug. ... Read More
Making Science Girl-Friendly Pays Gender Dividends
July 14, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
If you want to interest girls in science, show how it will help them investigate stereotypically feminine concerns like caring for their skin and hair, says a just-published study in the British Journal of Educational Psychology. After examining a wide array of science textbooks, University of Luxembourg educational researcher Sylvie Kerger concluded that most present real-world examples are "embedded in masculine contexts." But wrapping scientific subjects — at least initially — around female-friendly topics could kindle interest in scientific fields under-populated by women, Kerger ... Read More
Parenting’s Asian-Jewish Connection
April 8, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Asian-Jewish couples share remarkably similar values — but they're not rearing their children like Tiger Mother Amy Chua, a new study reports. Noah Leavitt and Helen Kim — a married couple and both sociologists at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash. — interviewed 37 Asian-Jewish couples over two years. The families lived in Northern and Southern California, Philadelphia and New York City. They included Asian-American men married to Jewish women and Jewish men married to Asian-American women, as well as straight and gay couples. Their ages ranged from 20s to 70s; some were parents ... Read More
College Reversal?
January 18, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Some research has found that once Asian-American kids hit college, they no longer outstrip white students academically — if they’re living away from home. For example, a study of 452 students at UC Irvine led by University of Denver psychologist Julia Dmitrieva found that while both white and Asian-American students’ freshman year grades dipped below their 12th-grade GPAs, Asian-Americans’ fell dramatically, while white Americans’ dropped only slightly. “There’s a reversal of ethnic differences in college grades, at least temporarily,” Dmitrieva says. That reversal ... Read More
Do Asian-American Parents Push Their Kids?
January 18, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Asian-American parenting might look pushy and pressuring to Western eyes. But that’s not so, say researchers, pointing to studies where Asian-American kids say their parents’ guidance is warm and loving. Of course, these researchers didn’t look at the parenting of Amy Chua, author of the just-published Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Chua rightly thinks parents should hold high expectations and encourage kids to work hard and achieve competence. But she tells of doing so herself through harsh pressure, such as threatening to take away her daughter’s toys, holiday presents, and even ... Read More
Asian-American Parenting and Academic Success
December 13, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Why do so many Asian-American kids do so well in school? Researchers are zeroing in on one important reason: the unique style of Asian-American parenting. A visit to the University of California's most selective campuses shows how very well Asian-American kids do academically: While Asian Americans constituted 14 percent of the state population in 2008, this fall they made up about 40 percent of the freshman class at UCLA and 37 percent of the entering class at University of California, Berkeley. But it's not just in California, and it's not just in college. The 2000 Census found that ... Read More
Great Expectations Create the Best Teen Scholars
July 30, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
"Cut that cell phone umbilical cord, and push those kids out of the nest!" may be the zeitgeist message to parents of teenagers, but research shows the opposite: Kids do better when their parents stay involved with them during their teenage years and even throughout college. In his book Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-parenting, Carl Honoré skewers parents with chapter headings such as "It's the Adults, Stupid" and "Leave those Kids Alone." "Leave them alone" is likewise Tom Hodgkinson's rallying cry in The Idle Parent: Why Less Means More When Raising ... Read More
Are Parents Too Involved With Their Children?
April 6, 2010 • By • 3 Comments
Despite media fondness for reports of hyper- and helicopter parenting, the short answer to this question is a resounding no. While some kinds of parental involvement with kids are better than others, say researchers, any kind of involvement is better than none at all. Psychologist William H. Jeynes’ found that — regardless of race or gender — the more parents were involved in their kids’ lives, the better their children’s grades and test scores. The California State University, Long Beach, professor analyzed more than 140 other studies of elementary and secondary school students, ... Read More
