Left vs. Right -- Why?

It's difficult to estimate the number of lefthanders in the population at large. Part of the reason for this is the traditional antipathy towards the left hand on the part of most cultures.

Sources as to why this is the case are hazy, but there are a number of indications that it stems from the historical association of the left side of the body with femaleness. Eastern statues of deities that are half-female and half-male always show the left side as female, and this may explain the spurious story of the Amazons, warrior women who removed their right breast the better to pull a bow. To late era historians, these statues suggested this myth, based solely on the fact that a statue half-male and half-female would have as its most glaring characteristic a missing right breast. Other correspondences surface in the study of medieval coats of arms, where a bar slanting to the left signified bastardy -- someone who reckoned their lineage through their mother. This bar was also called a bar sinister.

The word "sinister" is almost exactly the Latin word for left-handed. (Dexter meant right-handed.) Through religious antipathy to the left hand, the modern meanings of these words as "evil" and "able" became more common. This has the amusing result of illuminating the meaning of the word ambidextrous -- "right handed on both sides." Even other languages suffered from this -- the word left is from an old saxon word "lyft," meaning worthless. In French, left is "gauche," also meaning clumsy.

Growing Up Lefthanded

Many people in earlier times (thankfully no longer) often tried to "cure" left-handedness in children by forcing them to write right-handed, a practice which certainly did render the majority of lefthanders "gauche," or clumsy! This is a disastrous practice, one that can induce dyslexia, stuttering, and other forms of motor difficulties in the child who is unlucky enough to endure it, not to mention terrible frustration and hatred of school and schoolwork.

Other older but still somewhat durable myths are those that accuse lefthanders of being rebellious, unstable, clumsy, or unintelligent -- all are directly connected to the attempts throughout the years to "convert" us to righthanders. Forcing a child to use their nondominant hand will result in surreptitious attempts to use the proper hand -- thus "rebellious." Punishing a child for behaving as they are meant to in using their left hand will also result in tears of frustration -- hence "unstable." Handwriting will be nearly illegible -- "clumsy." And after years of this frustration and persecution, a lefthander may turn away from school and learning altogether -- "unintelligent."

Handedness is a result of complex cognitive factors and originates in the physical structure of the brain, so changing it by mere force accomplishes nothing but to damage the child cognitively and make them despise going to school. This will impact his or her academic development. I am aware that some cultures prefer righthandedness, but I must strongly urge you not to interfere with your child's handedness, as disastrous learning disabilities can result. Asking the question "Were you forced to become righthanded?" on the Usenet newsgroup alt.lefthanders will elicit similar tales of abuse and punishment.

As well as being a dangerous practice, it is also predicated on a baseless prejudice. Indeed, when left to write with the hand we prefer, lefthanders are often found among the highest ranks of artists and scientists, far out of proportion to our numbers in the population at large. Lefthanders in school tend to be both bright and unconventional, so take your lefthanded child as a gift and not as a deviation to be cured.

The only real problems that a lefthanded child are likely to encounter in school revolve around learning to write. This is not a problem with lefthandedness, but simply due to the fact that most teachers are righthanded and have no clue how to teach a lefthanded child to write longhand properly. The best way to do it is to hold the tablet tilted 90-degrees to the right -- place it such that the top of the tablet is on the child's right side, completely tilted. The child then writes "down" toward their body, conveniently keeping their hand from smudging the ink or pencil as they do so. Problems will still crop up as it is very difficult to find lefthanded desks in most schools and this causes a southpaw child's arm to cramp up painfully after writing for any length of time. This problem doesn't really go away until you hit college, when you can appropriate the desk next to you and thumb your nose at anyone who complains. :-) Basically, don't freak out too much if your child hooks his or her hand while writing. Penmanship is after all a product-oriented art: as long as the result is clear and legible, you don't get points for form.

However, if your lefthanded child has a difficult time writing longhand, the best thing to do is introduce them to the keyboard. I have heard of several children who did poorly in school regards turning in assignments only because writing them out was literally an ordeal. Once introduced to the keyboard, or shown how to write by a lefthander, their grades skyrocketed. I know that until I was lucky enough to begin using a typewriter, my own writings were sporadic and infrequent.

Be prepared, though -- many teachers will attempt to "correct" this and render your child's penmanship almost illegible; this inability of most teachers to teach left-handed children to write properly is the reason behind the traditionally abysmal left-hander's penmanship, though there are exceptions to this rule. And a dislike of writing can impact your child's academic development seriously.

If you suspect that your child's teacher is pressuring him or her to write in a manner that is uncomfortable or to switch hands, bring this to the attention of the school principal as this practice can induce learning disabilities, as well as a good deal of pointless frustration and hatred of school and schoolwork. If your child's teacher is wasting time forcing your child to do something pointless, he or she is not teaching your child how to add, subtract, read or any of the other things a child is supposed to be taught in school and will forever imprint upon your child that schoolwork and learning is always accompanied by pointless, tearful frustration!

Facts and Myths About Lefthandedness

Some advantages based in cognitive science accrue to being left-handed. The corpus callosum, the bridge between the two halves of the brain, is statistically more likely to be thicker (I've heard the figure "11% thicker" quoted but have not tracked it down so far) in left-handers than their right-handed kin, resulting in efficient information transfer and redundancy in the brain. Skills that are normally found in one or the other side of the brain can be found in the opposite side or on both sides for left-handers. For example, while language skills are located on the left side of the brain over the ear in right-handed males, they can often be found on the right side or even on both sides for left-handers (and also for women; especially for left-handed women such as myself, they can be located anywhere). This results in a greater recovery rate for left-handers from stroke and other head or brain injuries.

There are a number of interesting biases that people have noticed, and some may be urban legend. The first is that men are more likely to be left handed than women -- I've heard figures of 20% of men and 8% of women, so this appears to be unevenly split according to gender. Certainly the cognitive differences associated with handedness are also unevenly split with respect to gender.

Another uneven split occurs when examining the homosexual population compared to the hetero one; lefthandedness, according to urban myth, has as high as a 50% incidence in the gay population! While I have not taken hard data on this and have seen no explicit research, it is common knowledge among gay/les/bi people that lefthandedness is very common among them and their kin. If lefthandedness is indeed related causally to the size of the corpus callosum, this impacts the search for a genetic component to homosexuality greatly. Something as complex as the size of a major brain component is a polygenic trait -- caused by the interaction of possibly hundreds of genes. If it is related in any way to homosexuality, this indicates that that is also complex and polygenic and the current facile search for a "gay gene" is doomed to failure. As well, the search for a lefthanded gene is rendered impossible, far beyond the facile and simpleminded search for one dominant-recessive genetic pair.

Another myth recently dusted off and brought out is that of the increased mortality of lefthanders. Such a claim is "proved" by studying the percentage of lefthanders in each age group. As the age of the respondents increased, the percentage of lefthanders decreased, and it was concluded that sinistrals die younger than righthanders. This has been attributed to everything from depressive personalities resulting in suicide to increased rates of accidents through having to use righthanded implements to, as Coren claims, a faulty immune system. The true cause of the decrease in the percentage of sinistrals is quite transparent -- older people were more likely to have been "converted" to righthanders while in school. Other scientists have also attempted to study this data, but to date these results have never been borne out.