LITTLE ROCK — Now some folks might think that raising daughters is easier than raising sons, but I beg to differ. Having almost a sixty-forty spread between sons and daughters and almost enough - with nine sons and six daughters - to make it a valid scientific study, I’d have to say that boys are much easier to raise than girls.

When they’re young, daughters seem to have more sense than sons. They steal your heart and are much less prone to try stupid things like skateboarding down slides, sledding down hills laden with yucca plants and boulders, or even shooting each other with BB guns - though I did have a daughter who joined her brothers in such stupidity on an occasion or two. And when it comes to broken bones and stitched up wounds, I think my sons outdid my daughters by at least five to one.

But then come those teenage years, and even those years just before the big 13! My boys still did their share of stupid things, but all of my girls, with the exception of maybe one, just seemed to lose all common sense.And they didn’t get it back again until they were close to 20 and some of them a little later.

What do I mean? Well, my daughters just went boy crazy! You would think that having more than a half dozen brothers would teach them that boys just can’t be trusted and are a total waste of time, but it became quite apparent that around the age of 12 or 13 all common sense had somehow been deleted from their minds. And it seemed, too, that no matter how hard I tried to reinstall just a bit of wisdom into their brains, there was no more memory available. They would say, “Yes, Dad, we know,” but then they’d go on as if they didn’t.

My boys at least acted as if they paid some heed to my words of warning.Perhaps they believed me when I described some girls as bitter poison in pretty packages, or maybe they thought I was capable of the threatened punishments if....

My girls, on the other hand, would listen to my words of warning about boys, including a description of the way boys think I won’t repeat here, and then assume they knew better.

After all, why would any sensible young lady think it was so important to be “hooked up” with some guy? I know what guys are like - a scary thought - and it just doesn’t make any sense at all, and especially when they are still in junior high or high school and there is almost no possibility of any responsible or life-long commitment.

Sometimes, I think, the girls want to have a boyfriend more to impress their girlfriends than because they really like the guy, and that never seemed the case with my boys. I’ve had daughters tell me that their boyfriends were “total retards,” but they still went out with them. Why?

Having a boyfriend must be kind of like a status symbol for teenage girls. Why can’t they just save up and buy a car? It would be more dependable! Better yet, studying hard and getting a good education will give them a lot more respect in the long run. And, if it has to be, even nice clothes might be more enduring than some of their relationships with boys.

Thankfully, somewhere in the range of 18 to 22, some common sense started to return, thoughI must admit that a few have tended toward relapses into senselessness well into their 20s. I don’t know why common sense starts to return, but perhaps it’s because they have finally started to learn that us guys are not all we’re cracked up to be.

No, I wouldn’t trade any of my daughters for more sons - and especially now that they’re all of age to have recovered some sense and seem to have a little more respect for the wisdom of their dad. But then there are those relapses to fear. I’m wondering how old they have to be before that danger is entirely gone.

Randy Moll is the managing editor of the Decatur Herald and the Gentry Courier-Journal. He may be reached by e-mail at randym @ nwanews .com.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 02/17/2010