"Girls Are So Much Better at Languages"

From #BoyMom to other language stereotypes like, "girls are chattier" and “women talk more than men”

Image by Kunj Parekh, Unsplash

A few weeks ago, I posted a quote from the wonderful article by Rachel Vorona Cote in The Washington Post titled, The Case Against ‘BoyMom’. I loved it not only because I agree wholeheartedly with Vorona Cote we need to rid our lexicon of #BoyMom once and for all, but also because of this paragraph:

“The term “BoyMom” is a cutesy, nuance-annihilating addition to parental vocabulary, already laden with infantilizing slang that makes its users nearly as childish as their offspring. And yet, I understand its impetus. Motherhood, as far as I’ve experienced it, baffles attempts at keen linguistic approximation. How does one evoke its physiological avalanche: the wonder, the banality, the depletion and, above all, the thrilling, terrifying, metamorphic love? For all its marvelous capacities, language is limited by its very humanness. Still, for our own sake, and for the sake of the kids we shepherd through life, we ought to do better than BoyMom.”

Infantilizing slang! Keen linguistic approximation! Be still my heart! As for language being limited by its very humanness, I agree, there are limits to our language(s), but humanness is also what makes language so exhilarating and boundless. There is also a growing canon of work by writers who have poignantly and brilliantly captured this “physiological avalanche” of motherhood, but it is not easy. It is an arduous task to put into words what is so often inexplicable, so I also understand this reference.

I couldn’t stop thinking about two language-related topics after reading the article, and my experience of being a mom to both a boy and a girl. Forgive me here for already highlighting the gender binary and I should add boy/girl gender as assigned at birth, but I promise, it is relevant to the conversation considering how differently I see people often treat my daughter versus my son because of gender stereotypes. On one hand, I know how minor some of this stuff is compared to what so many children are facing right now, simply for wanting to live life as themselves. But there is a snowball effect and minor can become major quickly. As my favourite motto goes, it is all connected.

Vorona Cote’s use of “slang” in the paragraph is important as she later writes, quoting a language source, that #BoyMom is inclusionary language because slang is part of an in-group vernacular where all members of a specific group know the language. Here, that in-group is moms of only boys. I get it. Finding connection in motherhood with other moms is one of life’s greatest gifts. But with inclusion, there is always exclusion, or “othering”. The implication here is if you don’t have only sons, you couldn’t possibly understand what #BoyMoms deal with. And yet, mothering experiences are different because mothers are different, children are different, and circumstances are vastly different. Of course, there is overlap and similar experiences mothers can and should connect around, but gender is not one of them.

This article in Jezebel (cited by Vorona Cote) on the topic dives deeper in what it means to perpetuate stereotypes like #BoyMom. The perceived and perpetuated gender binary in childhood is a huge topic but bottom line, it is dangerous and damaging. I see daily how ideas about little girls versus little boys play out. Look no further than T-shirt slogans for boys versus girls.

I am going to slightly contradict myself here but stay with me. The real problem is not the hashtag itself because language is never the only issue even if it is rarely neutral. But it is about the idea that something is inherently masculine versus inherently feminine (think: A #BoyMom has inherently masculine children and everything that is associated and perceived as the masculine). The use of the hashtag creates a pattern (literally!) and patterns have a way of embedding themselves in society and influencing how people think, without those same people even knowing why they think this way in the first place.

After reading the article, I immediately thought of two language-related gender stereotypes I hear all the time about children:

1.     Girls are more talkative (chattier) than boys and as kids grow up, this turns into women talk more than men.

2.     Girls are better/faster at (learning) language(s) than boys.

Let’s start with the first one. Deborah Cameron’s The Myth of Mars and Venus is the ideal source to reference here:

“The folk-belief that women talk more than men persists because it provides a justification for an ingrained social prejudice,” Cameron writes online.

As her book outlines, there is no belief about gender differences like this one that gets repeated and passed down generation after generation without so little research to back it up. Research has shown that in most environments, there is little difference in how much women and men talk. In business settings, or what are deemed “more professional” environments, research shows men talk more than women.

As for the second stereotype, I hear “girls are just better (faster) at learning languages than boys” all the time. It makes me want to weep. In 2015, an article in the Washington Post looked at a study that showed women, in certain parts of the world, were better than men at learning English as a second language. The headline read: Women are better than men at learning English. That’s not necessarily a good sign.

The article points out the parts of the world where women are better at learning English are also where there is low gender equity. The countries where there is little difference are the ones with high gender equality. Women are so often pushed into the humanities like languages, away from sciences, maths, engineering because of this stereotype. And guess what? Jobs in the humanities pay a lot less than jobs in science, math, engineering.

This is not my area of research and there are many studies on the topic that discuss how girls and boys learn language(s) is possibly different, but also how this so-called language advantage disappears as children get older. But it is complex and always, nuanced. Most people don’t do deep dives in the scientific research and simply perpetuate the ideas that girls are better than boys at languages without really knowing where that idea comes from.

From “girls are just better at languages”, comes “girls are better listeners” and then, “girls are more maternal”, followed by “girls are better at nurturing”, “girls are better caregivers”, “girls are better at domestic labour”. It spirals quickly.

I see some differences between my daughter and son depending on the language and situation, but mostly, because they have had vastly different language-learning experiences and they are different people. There are so many layers to it and yet, if I mention one positive thing about my daughter and language, people are ready to pounce: “Well, you know girls are better at languages”.  And yet, when I tell someone how cool it is to watch my son enthusiastically learn Spanish, his third language, all I get is a variation of, “that’s great”.

I was reading a new language book the other night and it reminded me of something relevant to this much bigger discussion on language and gender. The question of grammatical gender of inanimate objects is often noted in language books and how people describe something depending on whether that object is grammatically masculine or feminine. English of course does not gender inanimate objects so this refers to other languages. For example, in German, bridges are “she”, in Spanish they are “he”. In cognitive science experiments, German speakers consider bridges pretty, elegant, and beautiful. Spanish speakers describe bridges as strong or sturdy.

My brain couldn’t come up with a witty ending to this newsletter so I am ending with a “pretty” photo from my home city in Canada where I grew up. It is sometimes called the “City of Bridges”. Not all the bridges are this “pretty” but they all seem strong and sturdy.