Masterminds and Wingmen / Queen Bees and Wannabees (Wiseman)

[cahn]

These books describe social roles for boys (Masterminds) and girls (Queen Bees),particularly in the teen years, as well as discussing general parenting for the teen years (including video games, porn, etc). They were recced to me by E's best friend's mom, who has two boys and who said she saw the dynamics in this book taking place as early as kindergarten ...These books scared me, as it sounds rather like raising older kids is even more fraught than I'd thought.

I will heavily caveat these books by saying that they aren't at all (as far as I remember) researched in a methodical way. Wiseman has worked with a bunch of teenagers in groups and individually, and she had a group of boys serve as "editors" for Masterminds. So it's not just her opinions, but it... kind of is just her opinions, in a large way. And especially in Masterminds (she has two boys), she will often refer to her own parenting and use it as an example.

In Masterminds specifically, Wiseman identifies a large portion of the boy dynamics as dependent on what she calls the "Act Like a Man Box," where there are certain specific (American-centric -- this was clearly written for an American audience) qualities that are considered positively masculine, like being good at (particular) sports, downplaying emotion, a quick sense of humor, etc. Because of this, she claims, boys feel forced into acting in a certain way that drive them into particular "roles" in a hierarchical society (where the more you "fit in the box" the higher you are, generally speaking), and things like showing emotional pain are very hard.

I don't know how prevalent this is; as I said, the parent who recced it to me says she saw it happening in their public elementary school. At the private school we're now both at, the dynamics are quite different, I think, because the sorts of parents it attracts generally try very hard not to put their kids in that box (or have kids who don't fit in that box, or both), and because it's so small. (Recently I was in a conversation with three other moms from that school, and I was the only one with a child at the school who didn't like to wear skirts. I also had the only girl of the four of us at that school.)

Queen Bees and Wannabees I confess I skimmed. Okay, so, were all the other girls out there attuned to all the girl-politics that were apparently going on in our middle schools and almost all of which I seem to have entirely missed by hiding out in the library? Like, I was vaguely aware that there were girl-politics going on and that I couldn't hold my own and that occasionally my life would be made miserable (and I will always be grateful to the one popular girl who specifically rejected being mean as a life strategy, even in middle school) but... I didn't know any of this stuff was going on! BFF-breakups-and-getting-back-together, friend group dynamics and hierarchies, interactions with boys and how those interacted with BFF-ness and friend group dynamics... all of it was alien to me. Not quite totally alien, because I've read my share of teen novels, but I think part of me always thought it was made up or exaggerated, that real people didn't actually interact this way! It was very odd because it was basically a sociology book dissecting... my life... and coming to conclusions where I was unaware there was even data, if that makes any sense. (And also when I was a junior and senior I went to the gifted high school where the dynamics were very different.) It's not wrong, either! Any of you who know me and my mom in RL will not be at all surprised that my mom turns out to have been way more clued in to the girls' dynamics than I ever was, and occasionally we have these conversations where something comes up about how X and Y interacted with Z and cut out W and I'll be like "...what??"

Relatedly, no discussion of ASD girls the way there was of ASD boys in Masterminds, probably because the latter was written later.

I skimmed this one because it's just... not going to be relevant for E, for the same reasons it wasn't relevant to me. Like me when I was an adolescent, she doesn't even have the apparatus for detecting all this going on. (I am encouraging her to read books about ordinary kids (not just mice or people with swords, which she prefers) so that at least she has minimal access to this. She is now willing to read Ramona and Superfudge, so: progress!)

Anyway, these were both interesting for me to read, even if as alien sociology rather than explicit parenting guide. I may buy Masterminds for reference when A. gets older (I checked them out from the library). I'll almost certainly buy Queen Bees for my sister, as it's going to be relevant for her daughter.

I am really interested to hear, though, how those of you with older kids have seen these kinds of social dynamics working out (or not), and how they do or don't work out for those of you (like me) with younger kids.

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

I don't know how prevalent this is; as I said, the parent who recced it to me says she saw it happening in their public elementary school.

We definitely saw the Queen Bee stuff start at elementary school, super early.

Daughter (L, now 18), had the toughest time in elementary school actually -- not, I hasten to say, all that tough, but in K or first grade (neither of us can remember which, but I think it was K) she was closest friends with a girl who was friends with another girl who would orchestrate all this "love triangle" stuff you read about -- "you can't be my friend if you're her friend" -- and there was a lot of angst and on-again/off-again friendship with the tug-of-war girl. There was drama, and the teacher got involved, and the girl caught in the middle would write apologetic notes to L for excluding her, and then it would all start again. This kept going on for most of the year, IIRC, even though we kept telling L to just... be friends with people who wouldn't treat her like that -- and she did have other friends who were OK, but kept getting drawn back into the love triangle drama. Then the next year L and the tug-of-war girl were in different classes, and everything was fine.

There was a second bout of drama at the end of middle school, but it was a bit different. L had the same group of close friends from third grade on -- they called themselves the Magnet Gang. They started middle school together, but at the end of the first year of middle school (sixth grade) the Magnet Gang girl whom L was closest to, who was sort of the linchpin of the whole thing, ended up having to transfer schools. I don't know if it was related to that or would've happened regardless, but the other founding member of the Magnet Gang turned really mean -- L wouldn't tell me what her specific problem was, but she said that this girl for example made fun of another girl in their friends group who had not started going through puberty yet and was very sensitive about her height and lack of chest -- and basically drove away everyone else. L found a new group to be friends with, but continues to seriously resent the mean girl to this day.

Then in high school she had a semester or so of floundering to find the right friends group. Only one of her middle school friends ended up at the same high school, and they did stay close, but didn't have any classes or lunch together, so they couldn't actually hang out AT school. At first L made friends with a group of girls who seemed prone to drama, but after the first semester she met some muh more interesting folks, who liked reading and were interested in history (including the one I occasionally talk about in my LJ as Awesome Friend Ali). AFA was a theater person, as was L's middle school friend, and through them she ended up becoming part of the "theater kids" crowd, despite not being ever involved with theater herself. Ironically, the "drama kids" were pretty drama free, at least when it came to friendship -- there was some relationship drama.

With my son (O, now 16), there was very little drama in elementary school for him speicfically -- starting on the first day of K, while we were waiting for teachers to show up, all the boys coalesced into a blob and commenced merrily chasing each other. But there was a Queen Bee girl in their kindergarten class who would make disparaging remarks about how other girls dressed (to the enormous embarrassment of her parents, who were not like that at all). Elementary school was relatively drama free, although O drifted apart from one of his best friends from K, who grew up into an annoying kid, and there was stupid stuff like the boys playing rough and accidentally breaking each other's things or hurting each other -- but it just seemed like dumb stuff, not bullying.

In the first year of middle school there WAS some drama for him -- one of his closest friends from elementary school suddenly gave him the cold shoulder, and although O didn't say much about this -- he is not one to talk about emotions -- he was definitely hurt. But he quickly found a different group of friends, some kids not from his elementary school, and some elementary school friends that he just got closer with -- and most of them are still his friends now that he's in high school.

High school has been entirely free of friend drama so far, and O's gang (orchestra kids, mostly) interact in an interesting mix of sarcasm and support. We were traveling for O's birthday, as usual, and he woke up to elaborate Instagram wall posts, with, like slide shows and edits and videos full of inside jokes. I don't know about showing emotional pain -- O is private about that, so it's not like I can tell if he's suppressing it in front of his friends vs his normal baseline -- but I've been pleasantly surprised by how non-stereotypical-masculine O's group of friends is. And he has several close friends who are girls who share his interests (comic books, fencing).

These were all public schools btw -- neighborhood elementary school with ~450 kids, the middle school it feeds into with ~1200 kids from a bunch of different elementary schools, and the city's academic magnet high school (~2800 people). And it may be relevant that the demographics are probably a bit different than a lot of other American schools, too: the elementary school they went to is 80+% Asian (mostly Chinese-American), with a lot of first and second generation immigrants; the middle school and magnet high school are also ~65% Asian.

[cahn]

Wow, that is super super interesting, thank you! So interesting (and kind of frightening) that it began so early -- but also heartening that it doesn't always seem to be the case, particularly in high school.

I do think the demographics must make a huge difference. And with an Asian group, in particular, academics (and meaningful extracurriculars) are going to be more highly stressed and more important. (One of the assertions Wiseman makes is that academics aren't generally considered as important as social and sports prowess, and that this is a culture thing.)

[hamsterwoman]

So interesting (and kind of frightening) that it began so early -

Yeah, we were pretty shocked -- I knew to expect that sort of thing, but I did not expect it from FIVE YEAR OLDS!

I do feel like that maybe having those early experiences, and having a student body that had more kids who were encouraged to show interests in academics/meaningful extracurriculars, as you say, meant that there was both an impetus and a way to opt out of later drama. I don't know about the boys, but L reports that there is a clique of the more stereotypical high school girls -- but they're a minority and quite easy to avoid, and are not any sort of "force".

And with an Asian group, in particular, academics (and meaningful extracurriculars) are going to be more highly stressed and more important.

For sure. And I know there's a negative side to this, too: my coworkers who live in Silicon Valley talk about how intense the academic pressure is in those schools, how students feel depressed and occasionally suicidal because their 4.0s and 1400 SAT scores are not good enough for the expectations they are setting up for themselves (regardless of if the parents are pressuring them to excel academically). But my own experiences (I went to the same middle school and high school as my kids did) and those of my kids have been entirely positive -- a focus on academics without going overboard.

O's friends group is almost entirely Asian. He is the kind of kid where I would worry about peer pressure -- if his friends jumped off a roof, he'd definitely be tempted! -- but his friends instead are peer pressuring him into things like taking extra AP science classes and keeping up with violin instead of quitting. It's awesome! XD

[cahn]

*nods* Yeah, for the wrong kid I could see it being a not very good environment.

Lol, O sounds like my little guy A. A is only 4, so we'll see what happens later on, but at least right now he seems like the kind of kid where I'll worry about peer pressure. Unless he gets into a group like O's! :D