What they are finding is fascinating and chilling. By age 9, most boys have learned to repress all primary feelings except anger. Boys are four times as likely as girls to commit suicide. Boys are three times as likely as girls to be victims of violence, even when rape and incest are figured into the statistics. About 3 million U.S. schoolboys are being treated with Ritalin after being diagnosed with attention deficit disorder.
Boys are three times as likely as girls to be diagnosed.
Ninety percent of the world's Ritalin is used in the United States. A black boy in an urban area is more likely to die of a gunshot wound than was a black U.S. soldier who served in the Vietnam War. Boys drop out of high school at higher rates than girls. More women graduate from college and graduate school than men. Step one in coming to a better understanding of how boys grow up is a biology lesson.