Real boy and girl differences

[EveryoneLoves09876]

There is so much debate about real differences in sex (as opposed to gender and culture norms). You also get so much gender disappointment and I know mumsnet is mostly girl preference, but I've had jobs working in communities where boys are enormously favoured, so don't feel too sorry for boys lol. This doesn't give the real picture.

I'd be really interested in seeing what mumsnetters think are the main differences are between their girls and boys - if they have both!! Or do you really think the differences are nothing to do with their sex?

I have a baby boy and try to be as neutral as possible, giving him all sorts of toys and clothing (e.g. dolls as well as trains, clothes from boys and girls section although I haven't actually put him in a dress!) I don't want to bring him up in a sexist way but I'm sure I am without realising it! I try not to see his traits as sex related, although family already go on about his energy and appetite as if that's a male thing. I have no daughter to compare him to!

Do you feel like this is a real difference and what are they if so?

I had a daughter first who was very placid, then a boy who was into everything, would open all the kitchen cupboards and pull everything out, in the end we gave him his own cupboard with plastic stuff to pull out!! He loved wheels and balls. But then he also played with dolls cos we had them in the house, when my daughter came first we had no 'boy's toys'. They're teenagers now and have turned out ok.

Once they get a bit older there are real differences (remember there's massive variances) my girls ate a lot less, always did and no matter what gender neutral/boys toys you have them they turned them into dolls accessories (eg they built hotels for their dolls from Lego and the trains were for going shopping on! They are adults now, one is an engineer so it didn't do her any harm

I don’t particularly see that at my school @YouJustDoYou What I see is that the children (often boys) who play football outside of school like to do that in school, but other than that there’s surprisingly little gender difference in play styles. Out of the many children I’ve taught I’ve seen equal numbers of quiet, neat, calm boys & girls. And equal numbers of cheeky, noisy, rule breaking boys & girls. I’ve split up fights between two boys, between two girls and one of each! When we do free flow tasks, you get equal numbers who want to do Lego or colouring or play outside with the water tray. The only time I would ever see a difference would be if I brought in toys which children recognise as targeted at one gender. So if I brought in a pink Barbie, some (not all) boys would reject it. But if I brought in some similar sized boy and girl dolls they’d all play with them.
I do think this changes as they get older though, with many children starting to take on the stereotypes of gender they think adults expect of them. For little ones this is very superficial - liking pink and hair bobbles or liking superheroes and toy guns - but for older ones I think it is more about play styles and ways of interacting with others.

That BBC video is great! Also shows that if you dressed them in opposite clothing they'd be completely different. People play with them completely differently due to their sex, even if they think they're not sexist.

So maybe it's puberty where it starts to change if there had been no difference before.

Its not letting little boys wear frilly dresses that is damaging. They tend to grow out of that, but the damage is done by actively encouraging them to deny their masculinity. Only buying pink dresses and insisting a four year old boy has long locks is likely to see them teased at nursery. That’s not either child’s fault but the parents. Why would people want to use little ones for politically correct, north London trendy, point scoring?

Not teaching how to be good men from a very early age is hugely damaging. “Give me the child before he is seven and I will give you the man.”
Children need to learn that boys are biologically stronger and faster but must use that strength to help and not to hurt.
Girls need to understand they have an advantage using words and recognising emotional responses and how to use that for the greater good and not to put down their brother.
Boys need to know that their physical courage and bravery are good things and can save lives. They need to understand they were made taller to protect, to reach things put up high and not to look down on others.
Girls need to learn they have beautiful, softer bodies to cuddle, to comfort and protect not to flaunt across the Internet.

Leaving it until puberty to teach children how to be comfortable with their bodies and sex based differences is too late.

That whole twaddle about ‘letting them choose’ and ‘be who they are is a gross misunderstanding of the impact of nurturing and socialisation. Parents, as the most significant early influencer, decide who their children are and what they like.

But @cherrypavlova what about the boys who aren't strong and tall and brave? The ones who are emotional and sensitive and cry and like to sit quietly and cuddle and talk about their feelings? What about the girls who aren't soft and emotionally attuned to others but are strong and adventurous and act before they think and get irritated when people waffle on about their emotions all the time? It's not so straightforward to say boys are strong and will protect and girls are soft and nurturing. I know and have taught so many children over the years and I really have to disagree that they naturally fall into these two distinct types. Most people overlap all these traits and reinforcing gender stereotypes simply makes people who don't fit into them feel bad about themselves. Sure, I'll encourage my boys to be active and strong and protective of other people; but I'll also encourage them to be caring and thoughtful and compassionate. If I had a girl I would parent her the same way. Physically, yes, there are differences but people are more than the sum of their body parts.

Even tall, strong boys can talk about their feelings - that is where the nurturing comes in, surely?
It’s about not dismissing sex based attributes and negating maleness. My son wore frilly petticoats and likes cuddles still.

It’s not about repression but about not forcing an ideology about ‘sameness’ or ‘gender’ onto impressionable young children. That’s the way to screw them up, psychologically. Should we insist girls only push dolls in proms? Clearly not but should we encourage them, probably in as much as telling them baby looks like she needs to be changed now is encouraging.
Should boys only be bought dolls and made to sit quietly in toddler yoga but denied opportunity for rough and tumble play? Probably not. They need to be praised for reaching the top of the tree and helping carry logs in.
It’s not about pushing anything onto children or failing to treat them as individuals. It’s about not dismissing the sex based characteristics.

Both boys and girls need dolls and rough & tumble! All children need to explore all aspects of their personality and learn a range of skills. If I gave girls and boys different opportunities in the classroom I’d lose my job! It’s the same at home. If personal preferences start to emerge, that’s fine. But you shouldn’t give up on exploring new skills and expanding children’s knowledge.

Ive got 3 of one and one of the other. I think the only difference I've really noticed is reading, girl followed the normal stereotype of girls enjoying reading and the boys were very uninterested. Balanced up as teens when one of the boys became, and still is, an avid reader and DD wasn't as interested.

I think it is easy if you have one of each to think differences are due to sex but maybe just need a bigger sample eg. two of my boys are sport mad, watch anything and take part in anything that involves a ball but DD totally uninterested so is that a boy/girl thing. Then I had boy 3 and he is no more interested than DD so just a personality thing.

Two of the boys do fairly neutral jobs, one son does a job that people tend to identify as a woman's job and DD in an area normally thought of as male.

We tried to not follow stereotypes and let the boys play with dolls/prams etc and DD to do "boy" stuff, not worry about pretty dresses much (occasionally for a dress up occasion like a wedding.)

I have a 4 year old DD and 2 year old DS. My DD is more physical, always wanting to wrestle with DS.. crawled and walked three months earlier than DS. Always on the go, loves climbing rocks, tree trunks etc.. Pretty fearless.

But she also has an amazing imagination and vocabulary, talked early and loves small-world imaginative play and will spend ages playing with it.

DS a lot more laid-back, calmer and cautious to start with, though I think he's learning from DD.. Also loves climbing. More interested in drawing from an earlier age than DD but only just starting in imaginative play in a basic way (whereas DD was making up grand stories from about 20 months!). Good vocabulary but probably slightly behind DD. Very gentle with his baby dolls and loves pushing a pushchair. Probably slightly more interested in vehicles (loves a tractor!) but not overly so. More interested in building blocks and towers.

So I would probably say personality

What about the girls who aren't soft and emotionally attuned to others but are strong and adventurous and act before they think and get irritated when people waffle on about their emotions all the time? It's not so straightforward to say boys are strong and will protect and girls are soft and nurturing. Makes me think of a little girl who was at school with one of mine, she was soft although you would probably say as emotionally attuned to others as any child, but she was strong and adventurous. She won a gold medal at the Olympics one year and although I haven't seen her personally in many years she has grown into the strong competitive woman who was apparent in primary school.

Two girls here. The differences are pure personality.

Incidentally both mine were very physical toddlers and young children - climbed and walked steadily from 9 and 10 months. Both talked well early too, and still love getting muddy at 9 and 10.

You always see on these threads that one will say boys are lazy or placid or calm and another will say boys are physical, boisterous and need wearing out.

Or girls are calm and kind and nurturing, or don't like getting dirty, or are bitchy (having worked in a male environment bitchiness runs to both sexes).

It is literally just personality.

No massive differences but I would agree about younger boys being more physical in their play. Ds wants to run around jumping off various furniture and dd would sit playing story time with dolls action figures at the same age.
They share a playroom toys are for both, some toys in their bedrooms are very much ‘their’ toys but rest of the house is a free for all so I don’t think we pushed him to a boyish boy if that makes sense.
I think it’s telling what people notice about their personalities especially teachers/family members for example my ds is very thoughtful and sensitive to others which is always noted but I would if it would be mentioned as much if he were a girl? Similarly for dd she loves a debate and will hold her ground in discussions again this is noted a lot in her feedback (not negatively think her teacher is quite impressed) but would that be raised as much for a boy? Hmm don’t know my musings anyway.

I only had girls.
One was fairly typically girly, the other definitely wasn’t.
My non-girly dd has a girl who loves dolls and pretty dresses, - both of which were resolutely shunned by her mother, so there was no ‘steering’ at all.
Her ds, albeit a loving little boy, is a human hurricane, loves chucking, bashing and play fighting.
Although he will still play with his sister’s ‘babies’ and other so called girls’ toys sometimes.

The differences between them are very marked, and I believe are innate, not a result of any ‘conditioning’ - IMO there was an awful lot of rubbish talked about this in the past, as if the only difference between little boys and girls was their bits, and it was all down to sexist influence.

As with my dds, there can obvs. be wide differences in the innate personality, though.

They need to be praised for reaching the top of the tree

Yes and so should be girls. But often someone helpfully screeches that the girl must be careful and she will fall, and anyway climbing trees is not ladylike, and soon the girl won't even try to climb any trees..

My 3 year old was playing in the garden when his wee friend came past. She had her dolly in a sling. He was running around. She told him to stop running cos the baby was sleeping. He replied he couldn't because he had a booster in his bum that couldn't be switched off.
That, I believe summarises the difference between boy and girl.

Unless the children talked about here grew up alone and on a deserted island, you can't say it's innate and there have been no influences. Do they not see any other children? No TV, no books, no toy advertising? There was a period when DS was very carefully scrutinising any toy ad, to see if there are boys or girls shown playing with the toy, and he declared toys based on that as either suitable for him or not. Refused to wear his favourite sneakers as other children had been saying they are girly. Nothing innate about it, he still loves sparkles, but in secret now, as he has been told he is not supposed to.

Where on earth do people find all those girls who are sitting quietly while their baby dolls sleep, and who never run around and make noise? Is mine defective somehow?

My first is extremely active, played with cars, climbed everything, loved bikes etc. My second likes drawing and Lego and dancing.
They are both boys. If the second was a girl I would assume this was an innate sex difference I suppose, it's just their personalities.
Once they start nursery they learn (not intentionally) that some things are not for them. Gender differences become more rigidly observed.

@socktastic

My 3 year old was playing in the garden when his wee friend came past. She had her dolly in a sling. He was running around. She told him to stop running cos the baby was sleeping. He replied he couldn't because he had a booster in his bum that couldn't be switched off. That, I believe summarises the difference between boy and girl.

No, it simply shows the difference between two individuals.

My almost five year old has spent the last forty minutes getting baby ready for bed, that means supper, bath, pjs on, story, song time and cuddles (and occasionally telling me off for waking baby). My almost five year old is a boy.

I have a girl (14) and a boy (12). Aside from dd's brief pink, princessy phase age 4, they've been really quite similar in outlook, interests and energy levels. The one difference which conforms to stereotypes is that dd is absolutely miles more emotionally intelligent (and better at tact or manipulation) than ds, and has been since a very early age.

Well we have no way of knowing if the differences are related to sex but...I have one of each and they’re very different but I don’t think it’s because one is a boy and one is a girl. They both have a mix of typically masculine and feminine traits, albeit different ones.