Sibling violence...boys will be boys?

[aaaaaAAARGHandbreathe]

Generally a lurker on the Feminism threads and apologies for making my first F post a thread about a thread but....

have been really shocked by some attitudes displayed on an AIBU thread at the moment where the OP is (IMO quite rightly) refusing contact with a previously violent brother (and therefore his wife and new baby too.)

Seems to be a really complacent attitude to brother vs sister violence to the extent that OP has been told she is denying her child a relationship with cousin etc.

Is this a gender thing? Other posters who have told their similar stories (and from personal experience, one of my friend's suffered the same) have spoken of lack of support from parents at preventing or acknowledging violence against them. It has really incensed and saddened me. I just feel that there's a horrible underlying feeling of 'oh well boys will be boys' and not taking the violence seriously.

I understand it is a horrible position for the parents to be in (and they would of course be wondering what they had done wrong for this to happen?) and would feel as if they were choosing one child over another, but surely the aggressor has to be removed if another child is not safe? Has anyone ever experienced/advised a parent in this situation? Does it come down to a gender issue or is it simply the difficult situation of trying to help the aggressive child by not alienating them further? Would an aggressive violent daugher be removed from the family home/asked to leave any quicker than an aggressive violent son? And if so, is it because a violent woman is more 'unnatural' and therefore obviously 'wrong' than a violent man? Has just got me thinking...

[JessinAvalon]

Interesting thread and funnily enough I have just had a (very annoying) conversation with my mum who is staying at the moment. I have 2 brothers and they were bigger than from a young age and both did judo and karate. My older brother found it funny to hit me and to reduce me to tears on a pretty much daily basis.

I said something to my mum about how bored she got with us fighting and me running to her in tears but....guess what, it wasn't that bad and, anyway, her brothers hit her too...

She seems very much to have an attitude of 'boys will be boys' and this extends to adulthood...'men will be men'. It seems to indicate an underlying sympathy for boys over girls and men over women.

Sorry-I'm not really contributing to the discussion much but did find it interesting that you posted this just after I'd had those same thoughts myself. I think that my mum is quite sexist (suspect that is a product of conditioning) and accepting boy/girl violence is just another way that this manifests itself.

[scallopsrgreat]

I too was shocked by the comments on that thread - especially the early ones and I felt sorry for the OP having to repeat herself and justify herself.

I don't have any experience of violence in a brother as my mother had a conversation with my brother once he got stronger than me (although he was younger than me so slightly different). But the fact was she addressed any potential problem before it arose. I hasten to add all we ever did was a bit of play fighting. If either of us had really hurt the other one we would have been mortified. I think that sense of respect was also instilled by my parents - acknowledging that we needed to let off steam but still have boundaries.

On the thread I also found the reaction to her (when she was a child let's not forget)pulling a knife on a brother who was trying to beat her up, shocking! Women are definitely being measured by a different stick to men. The whole boys will be boys inevitably leads to men will be men and excusing their bad behaviour because of their sex.

Are men really intrinsically more violent than women? Or is it learnt behaviour or even because they can get away with being more violent as no-one makes them accountable?

[hester]

Yes, I was concerned at that thread, too. I have brothers and we fought throughout childhood, but all very evenly balanced, nothing too rough or painful, and it stopped around adolescence. I absolutely don't accept it is normal for siblings to brutalise each other, and I don't think children should be expected to live in fear of anyone.

[booooooooooyhoo]

i fully believe it is learned behaviour. i am totally open to being told that because of higher testosterone levels, men have a tendancy towards more violence. but i don't think that a tendancy means they should act on it or be allowed to act on it by anyone. we all have urges and we all learn to control them violent urges should be controlled and parents should insist on this as much with their sons as with their daughters. i have two boys. violence is totally unacceptable in this house, regardless of sex. we are people in a family, we are not boys versus girls.

[aaaaaAAARGHandbreathe]

Phew. I know there were other posters thinking along the same lines as me so I was not alone but it seriously made me think.

I only have a DS (10 months old) so very little experience in parenting but I can't imagine tolerating anywhere near that level of violence/aggression ever, whoever it was directed at. Glad it wasn't just me thinking WTF?

I do agree ScallopsRgreat (both with your post and yes, Scallops are indeed great) - I think that there is too much parental eye rolling and shrugging of shoulders here, as if, gosh boys ARE violent and aggressive aren't they so what can you do? Makes me sad for the boys too.

I should imagine that biologically, testosterone does influence a person's level of aggression but not to the extent that it is ever excusable and they have no control over it.

[aaaaaAAARGHandbreathe]

and Jess. People do repeat parenting patterns so it may not be a generational thing for your mum - more likely to be because she had suffered the same thing. So weird that people do that - rationalise it as not that bad/one of those things and then proceed to do exactly the same thing with their own children. Hope you have a better relationship with your brothers now? Did it die down in adolescence?

[grannieonabike]

The instances of violence that some people are talking about (on this and the other thread) sound serious - and I have no idea what I would do if one child was attacking another like that.

I think some children can come across as violent when they are just boisterous, and don't know their own strength. Or maybe they are trying out their own power as they get bigger. Or maybe they are settling old scores with a sibling who taunts and teases them verbally. You need to know why they're doing it in order to make them stop it, imo. And clearly they must stop it, even if they don't realise what they are doing, because it's hurting someone else.

I don't think it does any harm to tell boys that one day they will be men, and that men get sent to prison for hurting people. You can say the same to girls who bully siblings too. There needs to be zero tolerance of this, imo.

[OptimistS]

I have boy/girl twins, which has really opened my eyes to feminism in a way I don't think I would have thought about had there been an age gap.

WRT violence, they are treated identically - any form of physical violence in this house results in an immediate time out. Where appropriate, I will use the time out to explain to the other child how their behaviour might have provoked a physical response, so that they can learn that behaviour has consequences, but ALWAYS the emphasis is on the fact that a physical retaliation, no matter what the provocation, is unacceptable.

However, I find it interesting to see how differently people respond to my DTs based on their genders. DS is noticeably encouraged to behave more physically than DD and I guess that violence is at the end of this spectrum, although no one's actually encouraged violence, obviously! (As an aside, DD is more stereotypically 'male' than DS, so it makes no difference anyway). More interestingly, I find among several of my female friends that while they wouldn't tolerate DS hitting DD, they are more likely to let DS get away with bad behaviour than DD generally. I point this out where I see it and am ashamed to say that I find myself having to think about it from my own parenting POV more than I would like to admit. It's a lot harder to avoid sexism in reactions (e.g. disciplining bad behaviour) than it is to proactively fight sexism by encouraging boys and girls to do activities outside their traditional gender stereotype. It's something I have become very watchful about.

[aaaaaAAARGHandbreathe]

Interesting post Optimist - especially good point about reactive/proactive parenting and how you can be pushing a good balanced proactive approach on one hand and feeling subtly influenced on the other.

I wonder whether, tables turned, people are less likely to jump on DD if she hits DS or more likely to assume DS hasn't been hurt/is overreacting to being hit by DD (stiff upper lip/machismo and all that?

[nooka]

I think that the thread in question started out as appearing to be about fairly normal family dynamics and then it became clear that something had gone very wrong indeed. My initial reaction (I didn't post but read it when it was a way through) was that it was a pity that peace couldn't be sought, because I have seen family ructions cause a huge amount of pain due mainly to people being incredibly stubborn (my dh hasn't spoken to his father for two years, and granted his father did hugely disappoint him about something, but to me forgiveness is important,and I find it very hard to deal with).

My ds and dd are very close in age and in size, they like to fight and we generally let them get on with it until the noise level gets annoying. But they are quite evenly matched and generally like each other. when they were very small it was generally dd (the younger) who was more likely to lash out, although if you weren't watching you'd have thought it was ds who had hurt her once they got going (ds pretty stoic, dd total drama queen).

[ClimberChick]

I too was shocked be some people reactions on that thread.

Me and my brothers fought a lot as children. It was always frowned upon. We were close in age (3years max) and once we got to adolescent, the fighting naturally petered out. (I wasn't going to fight someone I would lose to)

I think that in families where this isn't, a very damaging mentality in then instilled. Women: if men are bigger than you, they can beat you up and
Men: you can beat up people smaller than you for power and fun.

[grannieonabike]

Here's a song about it.
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