"Boys are sinking. Let's throw them a doll"

Article here. Excerpt:

'Feminism has been good for girls, and that's something to celebrate. We take it for granted now that a girl can grow up to be just about anything her abilities and drive allow, including corporate titan, combat troop, or even president of the United States. In fact, in some circles, opting to stay home and raise children is now a countercultural choice, much as wearing pants and going to the office was 70 years ago.

Boys are doing fine, for the most part. But they're falling behind, at least in school, according a whole body of research and most recently a major report on 15-year-old students and gender by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a club of wealthier nations. In particular, more boys are failing spectacularly than girls are.
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Today, Legos is selling pink boxes of Legos "Friends" for girls alongside blue boxes of (increasingly co-branded) Legos for boys — as my colleague Elissa Strauss noted recently. Boys play construction and ninjas and pirates and superheroes; girls build relationships. Strauss makes a strong case for why "girl" play is good for boys' development — but it's largely an aspirational case at this point. Nobody would think twice if a girl still decided she wanted to play with Lego spaceships — they would probably, and rightly, applaud. But imagine the looks if a boy wanted to buy some Lego Disney Princesses.

So what? Let's return to the OECD report. "Whether because of socialization or innate differences, boys are more likely than girls, on average, to be disruptive, test boundaries, and be physically active — in other words, to have less self-regulation," the study's authors write, citing previous research. "As boys and girls mature, gender differences grow even wider.... As teenagers, boys tend to be less self-disciplined than girls: They are less likely than girls to be able to delay gratification, plan ahead, set goals, and persist in the face of frustrations and setbacks."'