Boys and Girls *aren't* born that different:

[blackcurrants]

just saw this link in the pregnancy section and thought it might be of interest to some. My Mum insists that boys like cars and girls like dollies as if it's some kind of natural law - despite that fact that I never liked dollies.... yes, despite evidence. So perhaps for her it's more of a matter of blind faith.
I wonder if sending her this chapter would change her mind?
Heh. Doubt it.

[rockinhippy]

Maybe it just depends on HER own experience,

As very much a Tom boy kid, I would of swore blacks white that babies are born without gender steriotypical behaviour ingrained into them.

but once my DD came along, she soon put pay to any thoughts I had on that, shes out & out Girly, even down to going through a phase when first speaking, of insisting, "ladies don't do this or that" everything from driving, to drinking ....certainly never anything she would hear or see at home from either me or her Dad or anywhere else

[sethstarkaddersmum]

Rockinhippy - my dd is the same! But you can't prove the differences were born into her, because it is estimated that influences at home only account for about 20% of what a child sees. For instance, she has probably been exposed to books, tv, other friends, other grown-ups, what she sees in shops etc - unless you have been keeping her in a box all this time! So it is just as likely to be the result of general influences around her as the result of initial brain differences.

There's been some really interesting research done on how people treat tiny children differently without realising it - it starts from day 1 in that if you give someone a baby dressed in pink and tell them it is a girl they are more likely to rock it and soothe it and say it is pretty than if you dress it in blue and say it is a boy!

[OneHandFlapping]

Rockinhippy, I would hazard a guess that she has picked those attitudes up from somewhere, rather than them being innate.

Mine were all very keen as pre-schoolers to identify what girls should do, and what boys should do, even though at home DH and I were careful to avoid this. But you can't lock your child up from external influences. Other children may have picked up gender attitudes from their parents. It's obvious on TV that men and women dress and behave differently. And some children are more conformist than others.

[BertieBotts]

Zombie thread.