The Trouble With “Ban Bossy”

As a footnote to my colleague Emily Ekins’

post about the “Ban Bossy” movement, I’ll link to Mollie
Hemingway’s
article on the subject in The Federalist. The whole
thing is worth reading, but this is the passage I want to
highlight:

even if there were a sex differentiation…it’s not the
one described by the campaign here: “When a little boy asserts
himself, he’s called a ‘leader.’ Yet when a little girl does the
same, she risks being branded ‘bossy.'”

For crying out loud. Has anyone been near a public school classroom
recently? I have never in my life ever heard anyone call an
assertive little boy a “leader.”

You might be able to convince me that the term “bossy” gets
applied to girls
more than boys. But it’ll be hard to make me believe that
people across the country are telling bossy boys they’re budding
leaders. Teachers and other school staff tend to find that sort of
behavior disruptive, and as for the kids—well, they’re certainly
capable of following the lead of other children, both male and
female, but in my experience they’re not prone to throwing around
the l-word. In any event, bossiness and leadership are not the same
thing.

Beyond that: Of all the things kids call each other, is
bossy really one we want to discourage? Call me a crazy
anarchist, but social pressure against bossing people around
strikes me as a good thing. Of course there are ways to do
this that are constructive and ways to do this that are mean; and
it isn’t always obvious to a kid, or even a grown-up, which is
which. I say this as the father of an eight-year-old girl who’s
been complaining recently that a friend is too bossy but who
doesn’t want to offend her by telling her so. Learning how to
navigate that kind of social dilemma is an important part of
growing up. Telling children to strike the word “bossy” from their
vocabularies adds absolutely nothing of value to that learning
process.