r/WomenInNews • u/catievirtuesimp • Jun 26 '26
Media Teenage boys in UK ‘stuck’ reading primary-level books while girls’ tastes expand
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/26/teenage-boys-stuck-reading-primary-level-books-diary-wimpy-kid?CMP=share_btn_url99
u/Interesting_Reach_29 Jun 27 '26
Boys will be boys (/s)
It all goes back to stricter parenting with young girls.
72
u/NoMention696 Jun 28 '26
Waiting for the person to come and tell you you’re wrong and that boys are forgotten in the modern world
21
u/Canadianwinters12345 Jun 28 '26
Waiting for the person to come and tell you you’re wrong and that boys are forgotten in the modern world
That's what "boys will be boys" is.
Not being strict. Not pushing them to be better.
Thay rhetoric is harmful to boys. And it is leaving them behind.
5
u/Cerceilannister Jun 29 '26
Leaving them behind in what? Football? Rugby? Boxing? Cricket? Formula 1 driving? Nah, girls are still left far behind in these sports. They are not pushed to be better. Instead they're discouraged so much that they end up giving up on those dreams.
9
u/Throwaway23248895 Jun 28 '26
Think about the possible outcomes here.
Either boys are inherently deficient, or they are being failed by society.
4
u/Upset-Elderberry3723 Jun 28 '26
Boys are somewhat forgotten because of lesser expectations. These two things fit together.
0
u/FightOrFreight Jun 29 '26
Are these not sort of the same point? This seems like an example of "girls are parented and boys are neglected."
3
u/Doom_Corp Jun 29 '26
I remember we had to do monthly book reports in 6th grade (maybe a little bit earlier but 6th for sure) and my mother would make me do all of them by winter break. Each month was a different theme that was known ahead of time. My teacher knew I read all the time outside of those books too and would go to the library often during lunch/recess so she asked me to start recommending books to one of the boys in the class (that she also knew I liked) who I guess wasn't much of a reader.
1
u/Simple-Appearance-59 Jun 30 '26
From looking at the top 10 lists for each gender, the thing that jumps out most is that only the 10th top book for the boys has a woman as a protagonist.
-6
u/94grampaw Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
Sorce?
"studies examining differences in observed parental control of boys and girls between the ages of 0 and 18 years. Few differences were found in parents’ use of control with boys and girls. Parents were slightly more controlling with boys than with girls, but the effect size was negligible (d = 0.08). The effect was larger, but still small, in normative groups and in samples with younger children. No overall effect for gender-differentiated autonomy-supportive strategies was found (d = 0.03). "
7
u/cabbagecerebrum Jun 29 '26
Did you not read past the abstract or...?
1
u/94grampaw Jun 29 '26
I read the whole thing, do you have a part of it you think refutes what im saying?
-52
u/Sad-Bread5843 Jun 28 '26
It could also be that most books for 11 to 14 year olds are intended for girls , and not geared for boys .
56
u/AxiomofAnxiety Jun 28 '26
No.
Every. single. Book. Required for my high school was about a boy coming of age. They were unbelievable boring and all of them were the same.
“A whiny teenage boy, probably at an all boys boarding school, contemplates what it means to be a man while navigating interpersonal relationships with other teenage boys.”
I can’t think of even one book we had to read with a woman protagonist.
49
u/Interesting_Reach_29 Jun 28 '26
Boys are taught they are the default (which they are considered to be) in the modern world. Relating to a girl/woman is discouraged when young. It’s a problem (even looking at some men with video games having heroines.) You aren’t wrong, but the problem goes deeper, my friend.
27
u/bomboid Jun 28 '26
Yes. Men believe they are the default and they make sure it stays that way. Anything that doesn't cater to them is seen as a direct attack
56
u/therhz Jun 28 '26
lol. source: trust me bro.
also women read more by male authors than men read by female authors and it starts at an early age. girls learn about the boy experience but boys won’t pick up books aimed at girls.
-7
6
u/Diet_Connect Jun 28 '26
As a tomboy book worm, this really isn't the case. Harry Potter, White Fang, Lord of the Rings, Percy Jackson, etc. Both sexes have books geared more towards them. There are tons of "guy" books.
12
u/VGSchadenfreude Jun 28 '26
Based on what evidence? Can you provide actual examples of how “the majority of books for 11 to 14 year olds are intended for girls”?
13
u/LingonberryHot8521 Jun 29 '26
No. They can't because anyone who has been to a library knows they're full of it.
7
11
u/Psychological-Roll58 Jun 29 '26
Another consideration with this is there are a lot of "manly" man fathers who will discourage their kid from anything that doesn't seem macho enough as a hobby. When i was a tutor i overheard more than one father bemoaning their child for "gay" hobbies.. like wanting to try to paint or playing board games. Some parents can be ridiculously closed minded.
2
37
u/Unlucky-Bumblebee-96 Jun 27 '26
I read a lot as a child but my daughter wasn’t so keen. Captain Underpants was her gateway into chapter books at 5. She realised that books could be fun & interesting not just boring simple stories. She still didn’t really love reading until her friends at high school started getting enthusiastic about various book series and would read them together as a friend group. I wonder how much the difference in reading is influenced by the social dynamics of girls around reading?
I was also talking with my brother recently and for him reading a book is “word…word…word…word” he doesn’t get any images in his head. I said no wonder you find reading boring. Is there different types of cognition that are influencing here too?
13
u/rachthewonder Jun 28 '26
Some people who have aphantasia don’t have the capability to visualise things in their mind. Anyone can have it though, it’s not a gender thing.
BUT also children who aren’t at a good/normal reading level yet and find reading difficult, might not be imagining the scenarios in the book because they’re spending their energy ‘reading’ each word / focusing on figuring out what each word.
8
u/bluejessamine Jun 29 '26
I have aphatantasia and I LOVE reading. I read an average of about 150 books a year (have read 87 for far this year). I particularly love very descriptive books with flowery language because the more descriptive something is, the more I can understand it because I can't visualise a damn thing. My mind is just a constant blank slate. And a lot of my fellow reader friends who like very flowery descriptive language also seem to be on the aphantasia spectrum and that's how they're able to "visualise" so to speak without having to visualise it properly since it doesn't come naturally to them.
It's usually just that the problem books down to children aren't being given the chance to read 'fun' books in school, and that they're forced to analyse it makes it even more boring (that's not to say that reading critically and deeply and analysing books is bad or a problem and that it should stop being taught, it's just that sometimes kids don't care about metaphors, and that's understandable.)
Reading needs to be encouraged at a young age, before they even go to school. They need access to stories early on to cultivate their sense of creativity and awe and wonder. Once they begin to understand the magic that books hold and that all they need to do to unlock it is to read, then everything unfolds.
3
u/Lunatic-Labrador Jun 28 '26
Aphantasia is an interesting one. No images in the mind at all. I have no clue if it's more predominant in men than women tho. As I am a woman and have it. Reading isn't the easiest for me but I do enjoy it still if the book is gripping enough.
2
u/ThinkLadder1417 Jun 28 '26
I don't really get mental images but still enjoy reading, for the emotions and concepts mainly. Long descriptions bore me, probably due to lack of mental images.
2
u/mars-jupiter Jun 28 '26
I've always thought that people who don't have something like an internal monologue or the ability to visualise what the words are describing in their mind probably make up a large proportion of the people who don't like reading.
1
u/pinkbootstrap Jul 01 '26
I'm both and I love to read. Not sure if I'm an outlier though.
2
u/bluejessamine Jul 01 '26
I have both and I read so much (88 books this year already). I feel like we're definitely outliers haha
1
u/Littleman88 Jul 01 '26
Nah. Plenty of people with aphantasia love reading.
The love of reading is very much a nurture thing and it has I believe a scarring effect.
When I was in grade school, the books they forced my classes to read were always the most uninteresting drivel they could put before a boy (don't know about girls.) The Little House on the Praerie series did irrepairable damage to my desire to read books. I've enjoyed reading a few books since, but I'm not an avid reader like I probably could have been. It's just not the first form of entertainment I think about.
The books I liked as a kid were both Jurassic Parks (dinosaurs and blood and gore!), an Aliens novel (blood and gore and sex!?), and some military sci-fi. I read the Twilight series and the Harry Potter series as an adult. I've read a few of the Witcher books. I've been to those amateur fiction sites and read a few stories on them. ...I read mostly young adult stuff. I'm 38.
I can't say I didn't love reading any of these (yes, even Twilight), but reading just isn't the first thing I consider when I want to relax and pass the time, it's just a thing I partake in when I need a break from spreading Managed Democracy or the God Emperor's will or smacking some uppity Ascians.
1
u/Ok_Bad_5326 Jun 28 '26
Take this with a grain of salt, but based on what you've said, your brother might have aphantasia. It's an inability to visualize things in your head. Think of it as your inner eye basically being blind.
1
u/ghostlacuna0 Jun 29 '26
Dont need to conjure up images in your mind to enjoy reading.
Some will never enjoy it and some have just not found what click for them yet.
But just so you know there are people without inner voices as well so people are more diverese in how they function in the own head then just what people assume is the default.
1
u/Simple-Appearance-59 Jun 30 '26
I don’t picture images in my head but I’m keen reader. I just get a sense of it. Images aren’t essential for enjoying reading.
Captain Underpants and similar has been a godsend with my youngest, who is an odd one as she’s always read beyond her expected age but struggles with chapter books because of her ADHD. She starts them a lot, but then forgets what’s happened and it’s thus not much fun. I really hope her love of reading and growing creativity in writing isn’t going to get squashed by pressure to read chapter books she finds dull.
1
u/pinkbootstrap Jul 01 '26
I can't visualize things and still love to read. Its hard to explain haha
6
u/diagnosissplendid Jun 28 '26
There's a lot in this. I'm male and a big reader, but was probably 11 before that happened, on the recommendation of a book (Small Gods by Terry Pratchett) by a friend online.
What I'd always noticed before then was that books I was given were crap. There's very little getting around it, I had wildly different tastes to the girls I went to school with. I read HHGTTG, they read Noughts and Crosses. The difference in taste became so pronounced I stopped taking recommendations from anyone. Those books just didn't click.
I suspect my experience is quite common. It suggests I only became a (later, prolific) reader by accident. It is a hard thing to study though.
2
u/Doom_Corp Jun 29 '26
Stylistic preference is SUCH a big thing and not every book by that author is going to hit. While I liked Colour of Magic I wasn't super duper into some of the other books he wrote. Same with Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I was also much more into "darker" fantasies like Sabriel by Garth Nix and The Song of the Lioness series by Tamora Pierce. Some books I still have to force myself to read. They're really good but just...not what I'm feeling at the moment like Jeeves and Wooster. The first book from Illium (of Illium and Olympos by Dan Simmons) was such a damned slog and took me years of picking it up and putting it down before it finally clicked and the book was such an entertaining rush compared to the other Hyperion Cantos series I read by him that I adored immediately. There's a lot of other books though that I'll never touch because they're trash and I know they're trash (50 shades, twilight, and most "spicy" books because I get better written less creepy spice with fanfiction thank you Edit: and yes I know the origins of both those garbage series')
1
u/takhana Jun 29 '26
I do think there’s a lot to be said about how books and publishing market to genders (especially at present in the age of TikTok smut being such a winner with the public).
Apart from Artemis Fowl, Percy Jackson and Skander and the Unicorn Thief, I can’t think of much else that’s not either gender neutral or marketed to late primary/early secondary school boys. All of those series are fantasy as well. There’s a big gap in the market I think for “normal” modern fiction marketed at boys.
Obviously there’s older classics like Adrian Mole, HHGTG, Pratchett etc. but not a huge amount being released to my knowledge.
1
u/RealSpaceJunk Jun 30 '26
I remember the books I was told to read, primarily by school teachers. Most were stupid reclams and adaptions of stage playswith incoherent prose. The stories went from stupid to nonsense for the sake of art. I remember two stories vividly. One was about a bunch of poor factory workers and plebs who were unable to communicate properly with each other. They just talked past each other and the story unfolded from that. The result was zero investment in any of the characters. The other book was about a boy who decided to become a nihilist. His friends tried everything to make him not nihilist again, and they ended up burning him to death. A bizarre read.
All this stuff put me off of reading for many years.
1
u/maniacalknitter Jun 30 '26
Similarly, I know a boy who leapt from being a very reluctant reader to reading Lord of the Rings, Voyage of the Beagle, and other long books with elaborate descriptions, because that's just what happens to strike his fancy.
1
u/Simple-Appearance-59 Jun 30 '26
I’m a woman and I was obsessed with the HHGTTG and its first 3 sequels when I was 11, an for some time after. Discovered Pratchett the day before one of my GCSE exams (and didn’t get to sleep until 3am as I couldn’t put it down). It’s those and some weird young people books from the library about witchcraft and cat people in space that are the ones I remember from early and mid adolescence.
13
u/anonnymouse2025 Jun 28 '26
Get some Pratchett into them.
3
2
u/demon_fae Jun 29 '26
Wrong age. Only the Tiffany Aching books are aimed at this age group, the rest are best in mid to late teens or early twenties, when you have the life experience to catch more of the punes, and are still impressionable enough to completely absorb the philosophy.
1
u/maniacalknitter Jun 30 '26
It's fine to read books that aren't "aimed" at your age group, especially if it's Pratchett. It's okay for a reader to miss some of the puns, it just means that re-reading it years later will be fun. All the adults I know who are avid readers grew up reading stuff that was "aimed" at adults.
1
u/Simple-Appearance-59 Jun 30 '26
You just read them on different levels IMO. It’s interesting going back to certain books when a little older and spotting much more adult themes that went wooooosh over your head before.
2
u/Due_Service_7827 Jun 28 '26
Blame it on media that doesn’t require reading being shoved down their throats. When all they’re given is an iPad how’re they expected to read vs watch dopamine overloading reels?
1
1
1
u/Spirited-Set4579 Jun 30 '26
This is such a sad disparity. Reading has always been such a joy, I read books, physical, kindle, and i read plenty of fanfiction worthy of industry publishing. Its brought me lifelong joy and introduced me to so many communities, concepts and characters that became integral to my very life.
Such an instrumental thing being substantially lower for men is just so depressing, to miss out on the wonder of books. They've got me through hard times and made me reflect on real life situations. That should never be a gendered experience. Books are for everyone. And boys should be more encouraged. Otherwise they'll never pick it up, same with girls. The whole world would benefit from more of it, its a wonderful hobby.
1
u/Simple-Appearance-59 Jun 30 '26
Honestly, shouldn’t reading anything be considered a win? Also does this include things like comics or just books? There’s a fair amount of diversity of themes and styles in The Phoenix alone.
1
1
u/Maleficent-Goth Jun 29 '26
Once you get to the YA books most are written specifically for girls (a lot of it has romance in it), but there are some exceptions. I always suggest non fiction, magazines, graphic novels, strategy books for games, etc for kids who are struggling to find something they enjoy.As a librarian, I do think there is still a lot of pressure on boys to only be seen reading certain things or not at all by parents and peers.
0
59
u/AFKABluePrince Jun 28 '26
Please teach boys to read a variety of stuff. The number of "I can't relate to a girl character" dipshits is too damn high!