"Boys are a handful"

I'm not sure....

I'd like to think young girls and boys are inherently the same, and the only differences are the socialised ones. You know the ones I mean, dressing girls in delicate glitter dresses and telling them to be kind/nice all the time, let's play nurses and play cooking, where boys are dressed appropriately for outdoor activity, encouraged to play Lego and shooting games etc etc.
All that 100% will shape a child's behaviour, personality and understanding of their world.

But since I've become a mum and teacher, I think I'm having to admit to myself that from a very young age girls and boys do seem to have inherent differences that come through despite their "neutral" parenting and teaching environments.

The differences I find are that boys do seem more assertive and confident and not as sensitive compared to girls.

This is purely anecdotal, but I was at a child's birthday party at the weekend, myself and another mum were impressed with how well behaved the children were. She said "yeah look, it's mostly girls isn't it" and I realised out of about 25 only 5 were boys. I'd never been to a party with that balance before normally it's 50/50 or in the case of my boy children it'd be mostly boys and total chaos.

It's interesting anyway, the nature Vs nurture discussion.

I probably would’ve taken the same position as you at one stage but now (over 20 years of parenting experience, 1 son, 2 daughters, 3 sets of parent-friends - one for each kid - all of whose other children, male and female I have witnessed growing up) I do believe there are tangible differences between the sexes almost from birth.

we are mammals, after all, and sexual dimorphism is a thing.

However, it’s a bell curve thingy and so there is a lot of overlap, and all children are unique so there is absolutely no reason to confine individuals to pink or blue boxes painted with the broad brush of sex stereotypes.

Sex differences exist but that doesn’t mean boys are better than girls.

The idea that boys and girls were exactly the same and it’s all just nurture/socialisation was an important concept for achieving work based rights for women but it’s also had the unfortunate side effect of ‘girls would be just as strong/fast as boys if they had better training/more money invested in their sports divisions’ and that’s just not true.

As an example, the reasoning behind ‘men should not hit women’ isn’t benevolent sexism, it’s because on average men are bigger and stronger and more likely to inflict serious damage on a female body than if the same man were to hit a male body with exactly the same force (see all the stats re women being injured in car crashes as an illustrator).

The reason we need single sex spaces and services and sex based rights in the workplace is because we are a sexually dimorphic species and that isn’t going to change.

I have two girls. They have completely different personalities.

When my eldest was little I had a friend constantly commenting how much tiring out her same age boy needed. Meanwhile my non sleeping toddler had been to nursery for 3hrs, walking the 15mins there and back, gone to the park for an hour, enjoyed her favourite dance DVD and was now running around the garden. We nicknamed her Duracell...

Yanbu that it's all about individual temperament.

My son never went through terrible twos and threenager stage and my teen dd gets angry and slams her bedroom door like twice a year.

Im from a family of all girls and have 2 boys now, my mum constantly tells me that my 2 boys are more exhausting than all her girls 😬 she said we would somewhat quietly play with pens, dolls, imaginary etc but my boys just want to run around daft/be entertained all the time.

I've pointed out she was in her late 20s with us and now in her 60s if she watches her grandchildren so that could be the difference! Also reminded her that all her girls were enrolled in amateur swimming from a young age to 'tire us out'! Think it's just peoples personal views!