Boys need girls in preschool for developmental edge, prof says

Posted: Mon, 11 Aug 2008

If you want to give your son a developmental edge, enroll him in a preschool program where there are lots of preschool girls. That's the key finding from a study conducted by Gettysburg College psychology Prof. Arlen Moller and published online in Early Childhood Research Quarterly. His research was also featured in ScienceNews magazine, Detroit's CKLW radio, and Yahoo.com, and several other news websites.

Moller's research indicates that preschool-aged boys who attend preschool programs in which the majority of their classmates are girls tend to achieve far greater social, cognitive, and motor skills gains than preschool-aged boys who are enrolled in programs in which the majority of their classmates are boys. He also noted that the gender composition of the classroom does not affect the girls' development, positively or negatively. Girls tended to achieve at the same rate whether their class was made up of mainly boys or mainly girls.

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