Ok, I've spent some time trying to figure out how to make an important statement out of this, but no matter how I approach it, I have to admit that it's pure fluff.  Still, like many moms, I'm really interested in baby names and trends, so the annual release of the top names of the last year by the Social Security Administration is always a matter of curiosity for me.  Anyway, the top ten (U.S.) names for boys in 2007 are:

1)   Jacob

2)   Michael

3)   Ethan

4)   Joshua

5)   Daniel

6)   Christopher

7)   Anthony

8)   William

9)   Matthew

10) Andrew

All fairly solid, handsome names as far as I'm concerned.  What I find really interesting are the trends that are more indicative of cultural sub-currents, though they rarely make an appearance in the top 10.  For example, the trend towards naming boys things that rhyme with "Aidan" (like Jayden, Kaden, Braeden, and on and on in numerous phoenetic and spelling variations), or the rise and fall of celebrity names and celebrity baby names.  One of the most curious things between the boy and girl lists that I've noticed is how much more likely it is that parents of boys stick to more classical names.  It seems to be the girls who consistently get the more fanciful names--from the religious, like Trinity, to the emotive, like Miracle.  (Yes, Miracle made the top 1000 for girls.)  What makes it most interesting for me is how much what we name our children reflects our own wishes, hopes, and ambitions for our children (not to mention various tricky socio-cultural factors).  As much as anything else, I wonder how much that plays into the tendency to give boys more classical and girls more fanciful names.

As I admittedly spend quite a bit of time in this space lauding single-sex education, it should be no surprise that I get a lot of inquiries about what options are out there for parents seeking all-boys programs.  Unfortunately, the availability of single-sex classes in public schools is still limited--though I would like nothing more that to see this grow.  It is discouraging to talk to a concerned parent who would like his or her son to have the advantage of an education focused on boys' needs and learning styles, only to have to tell them that there isn't much available in their area.  However, there are still options.

The most important thing to remember is that if you want to see more opportunities for single-gender classes in your school district, the power to make that change lies in your hands.  Get a group of like-minded parents together and approach the school board and administration.  Boys and Schools can help give you information about how incorporating an option for single-sex classes can be good for both boys and girls, but the schools won't introduce changes unless they know that there are parents out there that will support them.

In addition, I'd like to introduce you to another resource for those interested in boys' schools--the International Boys' Schools Coalition.  This organization offers information and resources regarding boys' schools, including a database of schools.  They can be a good source of help for anyone looking to learn more about boys' schools and education.  (And are darned good people as well.)

How about some scary education statistics?  I know that we like to throw these things out every once in a while to demonstrate just how bad things are, while still failing to make any real change.  Anyway, the Chairman of the National Academy of Sciences "Rising Above the Storm" committee informs us that:

 Nearly 60 percent of the patents filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in the field of information technology now originate in Asia.

 

The United States ranks 17th among nations in high-school graduation rate and 14th in college graduation rate.

 

In China, virtually all high school students study calculus; in the United States, 13 percent study calculus.

 

For every American elementary and secondary school student studying Chinese, there are 10,000 students in China studying English.

 

The average American youth now spends 66 percent more time watching television than in school.

I will confess that one of the things that always gets me about these kinds of lists is how they don't really delve into differences in cultural schooling systems, colleges, etc.  But that's not to say that there isn't plenty to be worried about here.  Aside from the television point, the thing that I find most disquieting is actually the factoid about IT patents.  It seems like a small thing, but I think it may bode ill.  After all, one of the arguments that is often made in an attempt to refute concerns about the Boy Crisis is that men still dominate America's information technology fields, which is a booming and expanding industry.  (And which, claim the naysayers, doesn't necessarily require the same kind of formal education that boys have been dropping out of.  I'm not entirely sure that I agree with that claim, based on a quick glance at the want-ads, but that's beside the point.)  More to the point is this--if we start to stagnate or fall behind in information technology sector as well, it really makes me wonder what that might mean for the next generation of boys entering the workforce--and what it means about how well they're being prepared to enter the workforce now.

So, this video apparently comes from some CBS news report, but I'm not sure exactly when it aired.  Still, I think it's pretty interesting in light of the battlefield that Title IX and athletics in general have become.  Apparently, it has become common at many colleges to have a practice squad made up of guys to help the women's basketball team practice.

To be honest, this didn't really surprise me at all.  I never played basketball, but I did play a lot of tennis, where it wasn't at all unusual to practice with someone of the opposite sex.  I (and really most female tennis players of any ability level) wasn't really likely to beat an equally ranked male tennis player in an actual match, but it was good practice to hit with the guys, as they helped you to learn to play with someone with a certain amount of power and quickness--what's more, since men and women don't play each other, you wouldn't be practicing with a potential opponent, so the world of strategy didn't have to enter into the practice session.

Obviously, the situation is somewhat different with a college practice squad, since a practice squad is by definition made up of people who (for whatever reason) would not be able to play on the team.  But while I may not have found it particularly shocking to hear of male practice squads for women's teams, apparently some people are a little offended.  I understand that it takes little to no effort to be offended in this day and age--heck, sometimes I wonder if it's a new national pastime.  But I do think the objectors here are way off the mark.  Is it so hard to accept that men are often faster or more powerful or that they might be good practice partners?  Clearly, these squads are not made up of players from the men's team, but I think that if the women's teams and coaches are able to determine that this is the practice squad that will help their team win, then they should be able to use it.  Do we need to be so ridiculously even-handed that we need a gender quota on practice time for people who didn't make the team, regardless of what might be best for the team?  Seriously, I find the whole controversy absurd.

What gets me most of all (and this is my tennis bias showing through again) is that the objectors seem to assume that this is some kind of denigration of women's athletic skills instead of an attempt to refine them.  Really, at upper levels, a lot of sports are so markedly different (not better or worse--just different) between the men's and women's levels, that I don't know why we can't stop trying to measure them against each other and just enjoy them for what they are.

Way back when I was in college, taking women's studies courses (hey! it was the Nineties, didn't everyone take a women's studies course back then?), I remember learning about the whole "voiceless girl" theory of classroom inequality.  At the time, the Carol Gilligan studies about girls different ways of knowing/thinking/etc. were very big, and one of the things that had received a lot of attention was the "finding" that boys tended to receive a lot more teacher attention in class.  Now, in retrospect, we find that there wasn't a particularly good distinction made in the study between positive and negative attention.  And the whole thing was flawed because it started from the assumption that receiving less attention necessarily correlated to lower self-esteem for girls.  But at the time, the big thing was to point out that boys were getting more classroom attention and that this intimidated girls into not participating in class.

Of course, the big problem with this set-up is that it is boys, not girls, who have been demonstrating lower test scores, grades, clasrrom engagement, college attendance, and so on.  Whatever kind of attention boys may have been getting in school (in whatever quantities), it certainly wasn't doing anything to help their literacy scores.

And then today, I came across this article from the Guardian, which suggests that the problem is more or less the opposite of that old women's studies axiom.  Rather than intimidating girls into silence, it is possible that boys may be hiding in the background in English classes, where girls tend to shine.  The study suggests that as the proportion of girls to boys in an English class rose, the boys performed more poorly.  Converesely, in classes with a smaller proportion of girls, boys tended to perform better.

None of this is to suggest that this is somehow the girls' fault, or that it's not a good thing to have active, intelligent, and engaged girls.  But it is suggestive of the value of single-sex classes in certain subjects where different learning styles may be creating a class of "voiceless boys."  I wonder what the women's studies department would make of that?

So, this is admittedly completely off-topic, but I found an excellent time-waster today in the form of Nerve and IFC's list of the 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time.  Alas, not all of the entries have working links, but enough of them work to put a serious dent in your afternoon.  I could try to drag this back on-topic by discussing Christopher Hitchens' work about men and comedy (short version: men are better at comedy than women), but not only do I not want to touch that claim with a ten-meter cattle prod, but I'm not entirely sure that Hitchens himself isn't being a tad controversial purely for the sake of controversy there.  Of course, I did once write an essay for a college scholarship about why there were so few great female lead guitar players.  (Yes, I had forgotten about Heart.  No, I did not forget about Courtney Love or Lita Ford.)  But that only because that kind of pop culture riffing is a lot of fun to do--not because I think there's any great insight to be found there about the battle of the sexes.

So, to drag things back on topic, albeit kicking and screaming, I've heard a bit of the outrage about the provacative Miley Cyrus picture for the cover of Vanity Fair.  Seeing as I get up every morning and thank God that my house has so far been untouched by the Hannah Montana craze, I wasn't exactly aware of the issue at first, but it seems that Ms. Cyrus has made quite a name for herself as a wholesome Disney 'tween star, and that the Vanity Fair photos are not exactly compatible with that image.  I do know that parents of girls are upset (and rightly so in my opinion) that a major celebrity (and role model) who has been marketed to their pre-teen daughters as a wholesome "regular girl," seems to be going down the same tired sex-kitten path that Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, and company have travelled.  And I do sympathize with this view--I don't like the message we send to young women that this kind of early sexualization is something to be admired or emulated--or that it somehow is connected to being glamorous and popular.  But I don't think that this is just a problem for young women.  I think we should also be aware of how these same messages affect young men.  Because if we are teaching girls that this is what they should be, then we are also teaching boys that this is what they should expect and admire as well--and I don't see that as any healthier for young boys than it is for girls.

I sometimes feel like it's it's almost too easy to jump on the anti-video game wagon when it comes to pinpointing problems with boys.  They can be a handy punching bag, especially when you consider the fact that they don't punch back.  But I'm limited by my own biases--namely, that I like video games and don't think that they're universally bad.  Just that they require a lot of parental knowledge and awareness.

For example, today is the US release of the game Grand Theft Auto IV, the latest in a blockbuster game series, and virtually guaranteed to become one of the biggest selling, most popular games of the year.  It's also the game series that pioneered the ability to pick up prostitutes to help your health in the game, and then shoot said prostitute to get your money back.  So, it's not a kid's game.  With that said, the reason it's so popular is because it's well made, well-scripted, and interesting to play. Heck, it's even interesting to watch.  (In one of the previous titles, James Woods voiced the character of a rogue CIA agent who constantly dropped references to his part in wild government conspiracies, and Dennis Hopper played an anarchist hippy.)  There are moments in the game that challenge movies for watchable entertainment value.

The main issue though, is that we're talking solid R-Rated movies here, not harmless action movies featuring plucky kids or talking animals.  I think that some people get a little misled by the word, "game," in video game, and think of harmless Atari and NES era pursuits, like eating power pellets and swinging over lakes of crocodiles.  (I maintain that it is impossible to jump over the three crocodile heads in the originial Pitfall without the swinging rope.)  But the truth is that the spectrum of games now is so wide, that there is such a thing as a purely adult game.  Unfortunately, we parents aren't all on the same page, so making sure that your children aren't playing (or exposed to) titles that are too mature for them requires research and communication.  And there's a certain amount of personal judgment that goes into it as well.  Some might have no problem with games that involve violence so long as their kids are older and the game takes the side of the "good guys" (e.g. you play as a soldier fighting terrorists--believe me, when various games let you play as anything from a mafioso thug to a professional hitman, this is not an insignificant difference).  Other people might put a moratorium on all games that involve any kind of violence or gun play.  And some parents might not have any limits at all.  So it's up to us as parents to communicate and do our homework about what kind of game play is appropriate for our kids--and to respect other parents' boundaries if they are a bit more restrictive than you.

Of course, I'm focusing on content here rather than time spent playing games, which is its own problem, and arguably as serious an issue as game content.  Clearly, both need to be managed by careful parents, since umpteen hours playing Hello Kitty's Island Adventure can be just as harmful in its own way as 20 minutes spent playing Hitman. But it's up to us to us--not the gaming industry or the government--to police these things in our boys' lives.

This little piece of news has been getting a lot of coverage--I think because it lets headline writers indulge their love for cute pun-related headlines--but I still couldn't resist.  Apparently, there may be a connection between a mother's diet before she conceives and the gender of the baby.  More specifically, a good appetite, with a lot of potassium-rich foods (like bananas, hence the journalistic puns), and not skipping breakfast seems to raise the odds of having a boy.  The theory goes that the extra calories and nutrients may be needed to help boy babies grow, and that the diet somehow (err. . . .how to put this delicately) makes for a more hospitable situation.  (Maybe that was too delicate.)

Anyway, the opposite of the higher calorie, high potassium diet can be associated with low blood sugar, which seems to be a problem for male embryos.  It all makes sense (sort of), as it's fairly well established that boy babies tend to be more likely to encounter complications in utero, so I wouldn't be surprised to hear that they do better with more calories and nutrients available.  Needless to say the scientists behind the study (as well as any good nutritionist or doctor) advise against changing one's diet drastically in order to influence sex selection--it's not necessarily healthy, nor is it guaranteed to work.  So, if you're not a fan of bananas, take heart.  I hate bananas myself with the passion of a thousand fiery suns.  (It's the texture--they're so mushy.)  But I did have two boys.  I will admit, however, that I probably had the 400 extra calories a day covered.  I don't know if that influenced the gender of my babies, but if so, that's about the only good thing I can say about it.

So, tomorrow is the official, "Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day."  If you're familiar with the history of TODASTWD (no idea if that's the official acronym or not, but I really hope not--though if anything ever needed an acronym, it would be this day), you know that the inclusion of "and Sons" in the day counts as a minor victory for boys.  Or at least a recognition that it's a bit unfair to dismiss the needs of schoolboys altogether.

If you remember back when it was first introduced, it was just "Take Our Daughters to Work Day."  The whole concept was started by the Ms. Foundation, and it fell nicely into the whole "You Go, Girl," style feminism that was so big in the '90s.  Obviously, the point was to teach girls about how empowered they were to succeed by taking them to work.  This may be the ultimate in upper middle-class ideas.  I can just imagine everyone getting excited at the meeting where they first introduced the theme, with people thinking about all the little girls who would be learning about Mommy's law office or PR firm or college faculty meetings.  Or maybe, as someone who has done everything from waiting tables to cleaning on construction sites, I'm just a tad bitter.  Anyway, what a lot of people don't know is that when they first publicized TODTWD (note the lack of, "and Sons,"), boys were left more or less out in the cold.  In fact, some of the suggestions about what to do with the boys left behind in school on TODTWD revolved around spending the time teaching boys about the glass ceiling, sexism in America . . . you know, the fun stuff that wouldn't alienate them at all.

Anyway, I've never actually been in or known an office that participates in TODASTWD, so I don't know if offices actually follow the recommendations on the Foundation website for how to spend the day, but it looks like it has maintained a shred of its roots.  Apparently, workplace coordinators are given a number of suggestions on activities to do with the kids that have been brought to work, and several of them are of the, "discuss stereotypes about gender roles in the workplace," type.  As it happened, my own dad did take me to work, long before TODASTWD ever existed.  I did what most children do when they end up in workplaces where there is actual, you know, work to be done rather than conscious-raising sessions: I drew on pieces of copier paper, played with the stapler, and probably bothered his secretary more than I should have.

This is not to say that I don't understand the value of the intent behind TODASTWD.  When I was a little older and desperately interested in being a journalist, my parents had a journalist friend of theirs take me to work with her.  She covered the Bullets (yes, it was that long ago--they were still the Bullets), and I got to go sit in the press box, watch the reporters work on the story, and attend the post-game interview.  It was definitely one of the coolest days ever.  And that is the kind of mentorship and inspirational opportunity that can be incredibly valuable to kids--boys and girls.  I would just rather the whole Take Your Kids to Work thing focused more on a valuable mentorship or inspirational experience rather than being a day to forward politicized goals.

We talk a lot about the health risks that men face based on behaviors and choices--that is, the fact that men are less likely to see a doctor at the first signs of a health problem, or that certain ilnesseses (like depression) manifest themselves differently in men and boys.  But another side of the issues in male health is the fact that the age-old stereotype of men as the stronger sex is more than a little flawed.

I'm not talking here about stronger in the, "how much ya bench?" sense.  It shouldn't be a revolutionary statement to point out that males have greater upper body strength than women and are generally physically stronger.  (I say, "shouldn't be," because of course there are plenty of people that would get all worked up about that statement--as though there's some kind of connection between physical ability and moral worth.)  When I talk about the, "stronger," myth, I'm thinking about general health.  And, from facing higher risks of miscarriage and complications in utero to having a shorter life expectancy, health-wise, you can make a pretty firm argument that males are actually the weaker sex.

Take heart disease.  It's the number one cause of death among men, regardless of ethnicity.  It's also the number one cause of death among women, but not only do more men die of it, but men also tend to develop heart disease earlier and are more likely to die of it before age 65.  For a long time, men's health behaviors, from poor diet to avoiding doctors, has been blamed for the high rate of heart disease among men, but now research has indicated that this risk may be present from boyhood.  A study to be published in the Journal of the American Heart Association suggests that changes during adolescence (even among healthy boys) raise boys' cardiovascular risk, while girls may be protected somewhat during their childbearing years.  It's truly startling to think that the risk for heart disease starts increasing even during what many would consider the peak physical period of young adulthood for men.  Hopefully, considering the profound devastation that early death from heart disease causes men and their families, this study might lead to more ways to reduce that threat.  But it is sobering to realize how vulerable the health of our strong men and boys can be.