Why do I find this Irritating?

I took my b/g twins to the dentist yesterday. My daughter has a mouth full of molars, my son, not. They're 7. The dentist said that boys often got theirs later. I vaguely wondered if that was related to the 'girls mature faster' thing. Then I went back to my magazine....

Male babies are consistently heavier than female babies and grow faster and taller, even before they get to be preferentially treated in the playground.

The fact that some people are trans makes me think that there's something in your brain that is innately gendered- if you're trans you're born trans, not conditioned trans or raised trans, so there must be a male brain and a female brain.

I believe there is no biological difference in make and female brains at birth and I think there is little innate difference in physical strength etc before puberty.

Of course, if the boys spend break time running around playing football and the girls spend it doing more sedentary activities, then differences may develop earlier.

Do you think there is no biological difference between girls and boys? It is not all culturally defined. I am a gym nut but cannot lift as heavy a weight as a man of my weight and height. Androgens have a trophic affect on muscles.

Maybe that's all the difference there is, but I doubt it.

There are some children who are better suited to forest schools, who are not inclined to sit quietly colouring in. I see that and I wonder if the skew is societal or biological.

I hope that my children take every opportunity offered to them. And I fight ferociously for them to have the same freedom of choice. But I think it does them no favours to pretend that they do not have a different experience of the world, even outside the patriachy

It would drive me mad too. It also labels boys as 'thick', allowing them to create the culturally assigned persona as the gender that doesn't work so hard and mucks about. The whole 'boys will be boys' thing that allows boys to be more violent than girls. It's all bollocks but so, so insidious and prevalent everywhere

It also diminishes girls' achievements - also something that will be done for the rest of your DD's life. She did great but only because she has a uterus. Great that she got a promotion but we all know it's only because she's pretty.

You're right to be irritated.

Is the appropriate response that's she's cleverer and better suited to classroom learning? Or just well done, with no comment about the differences?

Don't compare reports.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

As you have found out

Sure it is, but for whatever reason, my boys are behaving differently in the classroom to my girl. I can entirely see why saying 'that's because they are boys' may be unfair, but at the same time I can appreciate why James-the-person has been slightly outpaced, if you like, by Phoebe-the-person, because they are different. Maybe that's because he's a boy, maybe it's not.

Bander, it's impossible to separate "innate" from "socialised" in those kind of studies.

My understanding is that the evidence is there of an innate difference between most boys and most girls- that girls are more advanced socially at an early age because of superior linguistic skills. That doesn't mean every girl of a certain age will be more mature than every boy of the same age, but the trend is there. I know my two sons are kinesthetic learners, like many boys (and some girls), and that isn't always easy to accomodate in a classroom, hence why my daughter will outperform her twin brother in terms of 'getting gold stars at school'. And she does.

It's that thing- equal, but not the same. I'm really proud of how all three of my kids have done this year, but it would be fair to observe that my sons have had that extra barrier of having a classroom environment that doesn't necessarily match their learning style or their personalities.

Thanks, Branching.

No, as far as I know, but they did use techiques to control for a huge number of background factors and then look at a number of factors in isolation, including season of birth.

There haven't been any studies on a comparable scale since the single point of entry was introduced in 2008, so it is probably one of the best sources of evidence at present. Though it will be interesting to see if the new large study begining this year, I think, will have any findings on this point.

Anyway, the OP asked for evidence so I thought that it was relevant...

Well, talented and gifted early education consistently has a higher percentage of girls admitted, at a 3:2 ratio. Some think the basis for that is that girls are better generalists and boys better specialists.

Branching, I'm not sure if those studies corrected for the fact that younger children all used to start school later.

In fairness, large studies have found that season of birth does have an influence on children's attainment.

The EPPE study of 3000 children (followed from age 3 to 16) found that children born in the autum term on the whole did better than those born in the spring and summer terms respectively.

In Delusions of Gender' Corselia Fine discusses the idea that girls tend to do better at school because they are socialised into being quieter and are expected to sit quietly from an earlier age etc where as boys aren't and loud, noisy active play is greeted with shrugs and 'boys, eh' type comments.

I would be irritated too OP and of course you'll want to share a good report with close relatives. shame they've reacted in this way

I think there are different expectations for girls which translate into more mature behaviour, even when the girl herself may not be more mature by some measures.

Yeah, sorry, I wasn't clear. I don't think it's an innate truth - though expectations of behaviour can lead to differences in behaviour.