Single sex birthday parties

math Firstly how can you know the 'sex' of your children's friends? Are you doing DNA tests? Or asking to check their genitals maybe?

Assuming not, then you only know their gender and not their sex.

So this discrimination is on gender not sex.

Secondly, if this doesn't happen in other countries (which apparently it doesn't) then it is indeed a local problem. Though it may of course be a local problem in multiple possible different places across the world. The point is that it isn't systemic. It can be tackled...we just don't challenge it enough in the UK.

Thirdly discrimination by skin colour is also perfectly natural. We feel more relaxed and secure around people who look like us. Totally natural evolutionary bias. The only reason kids don't think it is okay to only have white friends is if we show by example that it isn't.

So the two cases are comparable. The only reason you think sexism is okay and racism isn't is because you have been conditioned to think racism is less socially acceptable than sexism.

Having gone to my ds's party you might not have guessed he wanted it to be a boys only party, because there was a girl there and his female cousin.
Yet, he wanted boys only (his best friends).
I'm in Portugal, btw.

Once again, IceBeing, it's sex, not 'gender', and once again, this is not a 'local problem'.

During latency (a Fruedian term) the libido is transferred from parents to friends of the same sex. Latency is an important stage in terms of identity development. Children very much tend to form friendships of the same sex, and there are many psychologists who theorise that the quality of those friendships is as important in formation of the adult as the quality of parenting, for better or for worse.

Sex segregated education is very unusual in the US. Friendship between men and women is perfectly acceptable and happens a lot. Friendship involving teenage boys and girls is also very common, happens a lot. Elementary schools -- while mixed sex, children tend to form friendships with members of their own sex from age 5/6 up to age 12 or so. This is without input from school (children tend to be seated boy/girl and there is no segregation of recess play).

And IceBeing, you can take your silly effort at a race analogy and 'put it somewhere safe'. Your attempt to cast people whose children are behaving perfectly normally as akin to people who accept racism is mean spirited. Sexual development that involves exclusively same sex friendships is normal and natural and it happens in a way that has been extensively described in scientific literature.

Kerala1... obviously we cannot change this easily because it seems engrained in the society. My dd only has female friends and my ds only male. It is politically correct/acceptable/normal in the UK for this to happen. Contrary to other points made above, this is not 'natural', or a stage in a normal child's development.

In other cultures, and I have referred to Spain, this would be the exception. I am yet to go to a single sex birthday party in Spain (any age, children or adults). I lived my childhood and teenage years without ever considering a single sex birthday party - and I have never done a 'whole class' one.

Segregated education is also frown upon by the majority of the population. It does not mean Spain is less sexist than the UK (although according to some recent data, the gender gap is smaller there). Relationships between male and female are just more normal and natural. Mixing is the norm. My closest friends are female, but I have male friends I go out with every time I am back in Spain too. A couple of them I know them since I was 5 and two more became very close in a professional environment.

The question is why does it happen. From my experience, it is not 'natural' at all.

But why though? Why would you condition your children to only be friends with one sex?

Couldn't disagree more with Icebeing above. My dd1 has always sought out female only friendships - as a feminist I certainly haven't encouraged that or modelled that. DD2 is friends with mostly boys.

Would love to see you patrolling the playground enforcing 9 year olds into friendships that are (in your opinion) "acceptable" i.e. gender / race /neutral. I hope your own friendships meet your strict pc requirements.

camaleon how interesting to hear this is a local problem. As you say in a mixed race class it would be unthinkable to say 'lets only invite the whites or the blacks coz that will half the numbers'. People also wouldn't be so accepting of the idea that it would be okay for their DC's friends to be with only the white half of the class - even though there would be some natural inclination to segregate that way, the teachers and parents would be much more active in preventing it.

I wonder if my statement of it being shameful to have children whose friends are all of the same gender sounds as ridiculous to people as a statement that it would be shameful to have children who only had white friends even though their class was half white and half non-white?

I think both situations would show a serious lack of leadership on the part of teachers and parents.

I also wonder if 'its natural for kids to form same sex friendship groups at certain ages' is actually true or is true in the same way that 'girls naturally prefer pink, boys naturally prefer blue' which is that it isn't at all true unless you condition them to that state!

I was going to come back and say my DCs both have February birthdays.
Parties in the park or anywhere outdoors would not be a good idea...dodgy enough depending on the weather in the summer ... and museums - struggling to think of one that would appreciate me turning up with a group of almost 30 DCs -and I'd need to rope in quite a few helpers to keep them together, make sure they behaved, not lose any.
(I recently supervised 15 9-10yos at a swimming party just in the changing room. They could all get changed etc on their own in cubicles. My job was keeping them together, sorting lockers/locker keys, finding lost socks/shoes etc etc - it was hard work...)

You see them all the time in the US, beyond a certain age (maybe 5/6). This is also the age beyond which children don't normally have the whole class for a party. From 6/7 on, parties tend to be in locations away from home that may or may not accommodate large groups. Some parts of the US are not great for outdoor large-crowd parties due to weather. It gets very hot and humid or very cold -- you couldn't have a large group outdoors for long periods.

Additionally, in US schools that have more than one class per year the children tend to be regrouped every year, so you might not know many of the children you start off the school year with, up to about age 8ish. If your birthday is in the early part of the school year then you might have some friends from your previous year that you would invite in preference to children you don't actually know at all.

By the time children are 7 and over they have most likely had all the children in their year in class with them at some point, but this depends on how many children there are in a year. If three or more classes, then perhaps not.

Plus, children really do prefer the company of their own sex for a few years in the middle of childhood.

It is also a cultural thing. I have lived in the UK for many years now, but I still don't understand why this is so normal here and not normal elsewhere. You would never see a single sex birthday party in Spain, for instance. Totally weird.

It would not be acceptable to say: this is an easy way of cutting down the number of guests (!!).

In the UK it would not be acceptable to invite only blond/brown people for instance. It is fine to invite only girls/boys because there is a widespread acceptance of segregation based on sex here, which is not universal.

Sex segregation is normal and culturally acceptable in the UK. I would love to know why and why the kids replicate it. It saddens me to see my kids following this 'only girls'/'only boys' model, but can't do much about it.

We aren't talking about children whose friends are all boys or all girls but more about the way in which girls whose friends are mostly boys or boys whose friends are mostly girls get excluded when parents hold gender-specific parties.

Who's "we"?

We don't even know if the case mentioned in the OP is a parent holding a gender specific party. It could be the child insisting on only having boys (like my DS this year).

DS2 is having 7 children to his 7th party - 6 boys and 1 girl.
The only remark he has made about the girl was to ask whether he needed to invite her twin sister (I said he didn't).

It's at soft play where he plans to spend the play time in the football area.

Gender didn't even enter his head, or if it did it wasn't an issue worth mentioning.

When my daughter was very young she invited a couple of boys to her party. Now only girls. I'd love to invite the whole class this is the only way to be truly inclusive. However I'm not prepared to invest the energy or money so it's not going to happen. If my daughter is invited to a party I'll just enjoy the free child care.

We aren't talking about children whose friends are all boys or all girls but more about the way in which girls whose friends are mostly boys or boys whose friends are mostly girls get excluded when parents hold gender-specific parties.

I would be frankly ashamed if my child only had friends of one gender

I'm so glad other posters have pointed out what utter tosh this is.

This is the first year ds is having all boys to his birthday party and is only because as he's got older I've reduced the numbers. If he could still invite half the class there would definitely be girls coming but as he can only choose 6 this year he's chosen friends who happen to be boys.

I have two ds's and have that ds1's class has always had a mix of girls and boys at parties right up to year 6 but ds2's class seemed to stop being mixed after yr1. I blame Frozen myself.

'Funny how feminist now is supposed to mean including men or boys, as if girls or women are letting men and boys down if we don't include them, or as if a group of girls or women is deficient.'

Indeed. But this seems to crop up more and more. The notion that feminism is about women and especially girls doing exactly the same things as men and boys, rather than it being about women and girls having rights.

"I would be frankly ashamed if my child only had friends of one gender"

Wonder if this is actually one of the daftest things I have read on mums net!

Exactly mathanxiety.

Funny how feminist now is supposed to mean including men or boys, as if girls or women are letting men and boys down if we don't include them, or as if a group of girls or women is deficient if males are not included.

"I would be frankly ashamed if my child only had friends of one gender"
Presumably your child is quite young still?

They are free to choose their friends in my family and can use any criteria they want when choosing, and I am not ashamed of any of their choices or their criteria.

DD1 chose nerdy girls from the hippie fringe of her class from age 5 to 13. About age 13 she turned into the queen of prep, and she and her friends went to different secondary schools. She became friends with a girl from her primary school whom she had never had much in common with up to then and they are BFFs now (aged 26). DD2 chose nerdy girls from very devout Catholic families of German heritage from age 5 to 13. They are all still friends though their circle has widened considerably and includes many boys (men now since they are 20). DD3 chose a wide variety of girls from age 5 to 13 though she had one close friend from whom she has drifted apart in secondary as they were never in class together or at the same lunch. Weirdly, most of her current friends are dedicated dancers though she herself has never danced apart from two years doing Irish dancing. DD4 chose a wide variety of girls who had in common the fact that they were all only children. I wondered what she was trying to tell me, as she is the youngest of five.

The DDs all enjoyed their friendships, their fights (in hindsight), the sharing of interests, being in girl scouts, being on girls' sports teams. They learned lots from spending time with other families, and had a good time with their friends at home too.

DS had different groups of friends in primary, all boys. He felt a bit intimidated by the girls in his class, all very kickass, bright, outgoing girls. There was a group of (boy) jocks that he hung around with for a while but drifted out of. He didn't enjoy being mashed into the ground during an afternoon of football. The boys all knocked together well in secondary, which was the time when DS settled into one particular group of boys, all of whose members he had known in primary school. They are all still friends even now after university when they went their separate ways, and spend a lot of time together, though the circle widened to include girls long before they all went off to university. Their interests as teenagers included Lord of the Rings, nerf darts, sports, sports, sports, sports, sports, basketball, football, baseball, football, hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey. (Did I mention sports? Did I mention hockey?). DS as an individual added cavalry and artillery of WW2 to the previously stated interests in his teen years.

Should I have forced DS to take an interested in clothes shopping? Should I have forced him to be as interested in art as DD1 was? Should I have forced DD1 to become familiar with the marvel of engineering known as the T-34 tank? Should I have forced DD4 to be as interested in art as DD1 was? Should I have forced DD1 to ditch the preppy outfits and dress like DD2 in neon t-shirts and sport shorts and sweatpants?

There were girls in their classes and on teams with whom the DDs never clicked, and girls who were pretty much soulmates. DS for his part gravitated to boys who were interested in highly technical details of whatever they were doing. There were boys who were very different from him and personality-wise they had little in common and they did not spend time together. It's a bit ridiculous to suggest this is a case of all girls being friends together vs. all boys being friends together. There is a lot of discrimination within sex segregated groups.

Sex segregation seems to happen at quite specific times though. Four year olds don't usually segregate by sex, eight years olds usually do and thirteen year olds usually don't.

If it is down to socialisation, why does it strike at that particular age?

I also think it is about groups of the opposite sex, not individuals. Children often have opposite sex best friends out of school but find a whole group of opposite sex children overwhelming. I think home schooling is a red herring. People (including adults) act differently when they spend most days in group environments. They start to form smaller groups within the larger group.

I wasn't accusing you or anyone else on this thread KERALA1 But you surely have come across such attitudes?

So what should the right thinking feminist mother do if her 9 year old insists on an all female (or male) friendship group, apart from feeling dreadfully ashamed?

Insist on inviting boys anyway despite protestations? Do you yourselves ensure that there are always men included when you meet up with friends - just to be inclusive? Interested to hear actually.

For example, the only activity DS has been engaged in that is virtually all male is football. Even so they have a girl there who is a good player too. It's something that he has decided he likes and pestered me to do it.

Even the self defense class he was in had many girls, including the adult classes, and I participated in them too.

DS still chooses to socialise mainly with boys.

I resent being accused of any of the above listed twattish behaviour.

On the other hand I am not going to sacrifice my daughter's social life to prove my feminist right on credentials either.

I do think parents play a part though. If you tease your dd about playing with the boys, or shout at your ds for wanting to play dress up with the girls, or automatically enroll your dd in dance and gymnastics (because that's what girls do) or insist your ds plays football on a Saturday - or any other variation on the gender laden fuckwittery enacted on our children each day - then you are, in fact, increasing the likelihood that they will only have friends of the same sex. I do believe that the degree of sexual segegation we see in our playgrounds and schools is far more heavily due to nurture than nature, although elements of both are present.

Exactly Lweji! And if you meddle you are one of "those" helicoptering horrors who gets over involved in their child's friendships! So you can't win!

I have (with the same upbringing) one DD who has been strictly girls only from the off and never had a male friend, the other is friends with all boys, the odd girl. Loving that I should be "ashamed" of myself because of DD1's friendship choices over which I (rightly) have no control!