When the brains of nine- to 17-year-old girls who had suffered extreme stress were examined, scientists found a part of the brain linked to empathy was significantly reduced. With boys who had similar experiences, the opposite was true. This might be why more girls than boys suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, the researchers mused. More work is planned.
These findings join an ever-growing bank of competing evidence that tries to understand childhood and how our shared aspiration for our children to grow up well can be realised. For something that is by definition universal, with which we all have a profoundly personal experience, the joys of childhood remain, for most people, largely unexplained.
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