the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Boys commit 86 percent of all adolescent suicides.No word yet from Women's Studies departments on the fact that adolescent girls doesn't seem as "oppressed" as teenage boys.
Eighty-six percent.
The number floored me, particularly as the mother of a son. Yet not a single e-mail, phone call or letter about the column mentioned the striking statistic.
It occurred to me that if 86 percent of adolescent suicides were girls, there would be a national commission to find out why. There'd be front-page stories and Oprah shows and nonprofit foundations throwing money at sociologists and psychologists to study female self-destruction. My feminist sisters and I would be asking, rightly, "What's wrong with a culture that drives girls, much more than boys, to take their own lives?"
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Boys are 86% of all adolescent suicides
The Joan Ryan reports:
