"Why Failure Hits Girls So Hard"

"Jessica Lahey’s new book, The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed, says young women like Mary are in trouble. They’ve been so protected from mistakes, usually by their parents, that they fear failure, avoid risk and value image over learning. By the time they go to college, they are more vulnerable to depression, anxiety and stress.

Lahey says parents defail their kids’ lives in order to minimize kids’ pain and extend their need for mom and dad’s support. When kids are dependent on parents, mom and dad can enjoy kids’ wins as evidence of superior parenting...

In observational studies, teachers corrected girls for mistakes related to ability, while boys tended to get more behavioral interventions (“Pipe down!”, “Stop throwing that paper airplane,” and so on).

Other studies have found that girls are more likely to give up in the face of a stressful academic situation. In one study, fifth-grade students were given a task that was intentionally confusing. It was the girls who were derailed by the confusion and unable to learn the material. Notably, the highest-IQ girls struggled the most... when girls buy into the stereotype that they’re bad at math, they don’t see a missed problem or poor grade as a correctible issue...

Professors Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan, pioneers in the study of motivation, say girls are more vulnerable to having their autonomy and motivation threatened. Because girls are raised to please others, they tend to care more about feedback from teachers and parents — and so are more sensitive to feeling controlled."

http://time.com/4008357/girls-failure-practice/?xid=tcoshare

A lot of this feels really true - at least in my hometown, our generation was raised with a certain fear of failure and these sort of absolute standards with this spectre of perfect-college-perfect-career looming over us all the time.

And I'm also really appreciating my parents and my girl scout troop, because I encountered a lot of non-intrinsic ideas about skills from them. It was always clear that it was about work and commitment and motivation.

Related: parenting book by Stanford Dean

FB: I found this really insightful -
"Females, Deci and Ryan have written, “pay particular attention to evidence of having pleased the evaluator when praised.” That’s why multiple studies find that girls show more negative outcomes when they are praised in ways that pressure them to keep performing at a high level."