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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To not understand why so many women seem to like their sons better than their daughters?

79 replies

HeathcliffMoorland · 26/09/2010 18:17

I've read all the threads...

But a few things have been said that genuinely confuse me.

One woman had a dd and then a ds, and said if she had another girl she'd push it back up... I know it's not meant literally, but...

I also heard a 'baby boys are cuter'. They look the same... The only real difference before a certain age is the clothing!!!

And I also hear all about boys loving their mummies... my dds seem to like me just as much as ds does.

Another elsewhere said she never wanted a ds, but had one, and was now always in danger of favouring him over her dd.

I know loads of women who give their sons larger portions, or praise them highly for nehaviour that would be seen as just normal/right coming from their daughters.

I love all my children.

AIBU to be a bit confused?

OP posts:

Original poster

HeathcliffMoorland · 26/09/2010 21:12

CDA, it's possible that it would occur incidentally, but if it were the case that boys are like mothers and girls were like fathers as a rule (or vice versa, for that matter), then that would go against what any basic genetics textbook would tell you.

Between random meiotic divisions, embryogenesis and expression of dominant genes, it's just not how it works.

Beyond nature, we can look at nurture. This may account for a certain proportion of your observations (and we can include observer bias, etc.).

OP posts:

YaddahYaddahYaddah · 26/09/2010 21:22

Waves at HeathcliffMoorland a few pages back. Which Irish pareting site - surely not Magicmum - land of the practically perfect and ((((((((((hugs))))))))))?

edam · 26/09/2010 23:09

I always imagined I'd have a daughter. Don't have any brothers and my parents separated when I was quite small. Although I had plenty of cousins and close friend who were boys, I just never ever wanted a boy. And then I discovered I was expecting a ds... huge shock. Took me quite a while to get over it.

Then I started to enjoy the idea and wonder what he'd be like. And the minute I held him in my arms I let go of that imaginary daughter and was jolly glad I had HIM not any other child.

OTTMummA · 27/09/2010 00:45

I always knew i would have a boy first.
Everyone kept telling me they thought my baby was going to be a girl, but i knew he was a boy.
I grew up in a house with mainly girls/women and tbh i hated it.
i moved out as soon as i could.
Im not a girly girl, and find it hard to be around female company constantly :S
Im glad i have a boy, but i would of loved my baby if it had been a girl, but there is a part of me that finds dealing with boys easier.
Probably due to my messed up mother/daughter issues lol.
My stance on this is slightly weird though as my mother always prefered boys, and caused problems for us sisters at times.

gibbberish · 27/09/2010 00:58

Agree with jojay but from the opposite point of view. Have 4 daughters and seem to spend a lot of time justifying why I am conpletely happy with my lot in life despite not having had a boy. Which is apparently a terrible downfall according to many. What does it matter? Neither is better than the other and we should just appreciate what we have. I certainly do. Haven't there been enough of these threads now for that point to have been adequately made?

squashimodo · 27/09/2010 01:13

NO you are not being unreasonable. I love all my boys, and also my dd. I don't have favourites, they are all special to me for different reasons.
But h definitely loves dd more than the boys, it is patently obvious. Maybe because she is the last baby, I don't know.
Maybe because she hasn't reached terrible twos tantrum stage yet, she is 1 soon.

Lavenderboo · 27/09/2010 09:37

Just to throw a bit of 'science' into the mix:

I don't know that its about mums 'liking' sons better than daughters, so much as response to gender.

There's a study that found mums will respond faster to sons crying compared to daughters, which concluded was because we believe real men don't cry.

If this is true, it might be counter intuitive. Just look at the relationship threads on MN to see how women tip toe round grown men and jump to attend to their every emotional and physical need.... and oh dear lord, Im just as guilty of this as anyone else.

PutTheKettleOn · 27/09/2010 10:01

what is it with all these gender threads lately?! I love my 2 DDS, don't crave a DS, but I'm sure if they were boys or one of each I would have loved them and treated them just the same. Because they're my kids.

It is their personalities that make them unique, not their gender!

proudnglad · 27/09/2010 10:08

Of course all mothers do - and should - love their sons more than their daughters!

I keep my daughter locked up in a cage with stale crusts and water.

My son resides in his own wing and feasts on caviar and foie gras.

Morloth, Pagwatch and Shiney I am so with you. Big fat sigh.

edam · 27/09/2010 11:20

I know people sometimes expressed sympathy for my Dad having three daughters - especially as he has a hobby that is predominantly enjoyed by men and they thought he missed having a boy to share it with. Oddly enough this was often mentioned when they met my father at a railway and we were stood there with him, covered in coal dust from being on the footplate... (my Dad has never, ever been anything than delighted with having three girls, btw).

edam · 27/09/2010 11:21

(Obviously that's about Dads not mothers but opposite point of view is interesting and it still puzzles me quite how stupid these people were...)

BuntyPenfold · 27/09/2010 11:28

edam I remember my father being openly commisserated with, as he had 4 daughters.

He never said a lot in reply. The truth is he and my mother were desperate for a boy , but she would often say so, and he held back a bit.

edam · 27/09/2010 11:30

ouch, Bunty, that really is thoughtless of the other people and not v. nice of your parents, either. Even if they did feel that way, they should have kept it to themselves.

BuntyPenfold · 27/09/2010 11:35

Well, I suppose it made me determined to be different with my own children.
The odd thing is my mother strongly prefers her granddaughters, and does not bother a lot with her grandsons. People are weird.

duchesse · 27/09/2010 11:42

All my DC, 1 boy, 3 girls are equally tricky lovely. I love them all to bits. My son is definitely harder work than his sisters, always has been, but handsome and intelligent. My daughters are beautiful and intelligent. My daughters were just as cute as babies as my son (I've never understood that one either) I am a lucky mother.

I will never understand why my own mother was so hard and quite cold really with her 4 daughters yet worships the ground my brother walks on. He was never expected to do any housework, she never stood up to him about where he was going or what he was doing, never challenged him about any aspect of his behaviour really. He has turned out to be a lovely man, but I think that's more to do with his personality than his upbringing.

Actually I think it was quite common in the 50s for women to feel inferior to men, and by extension for them to defer to men all the time. My mother is just a product of her era.

duchesse · 27/09/2010 11:44

Bunty- my father once said:

"All I wanted was one genius, but what I got was four breeding cows and an idiot." *

*My father is really quite deranged. I understood that as an adult. As a child his attitude was catastrophic.

ChickensHaveNoEyebrows · 27/09/2010 11:48

I think that women prefer to have sons because they can't stand the competition when a younger, prettier version of themselves gets all the attention

Actually, all this gender preference is getting right on my tits. I have two DS's, and I think the sun shines out of their nether regions. I expect mothers of girls, or mothers of both genders, feel exactly the same.

BuntyPenfold · 27/09/2010 11:49

Oh god, duchesse, and I thought mine were bad.

As an adult I know my parents were stereotypical 1950s misogynists. Yes ,at the time it was very hurtful. Less so now, but it hasn't gone altogether.

edam · 27/09/2010 12:28

Chickens - I often tell my littlest sister quite how irritating it is to be forced to look at a MUCH younger version of yourself and realise how different you now look. She has no sympathy, the porcelain-skinned little minx.

edam · 27/09/2010 12:28

hastily at little sis who is an MNer...

Lovethesea · 27/09/2010 13:10

I think becoming a parent can bring up fraught interesting reactions to your own experience of being a child.

My DC are too young for me to know how I'll find relating to them both (DD 22 months, DS 3 months), but I am already aware of my own mother-daughter relationship as I observe myself with DD. My mum wants me to be as close emotionally as a best friend for her, but I can't meet her needs and am quite different in personality which gives us a fair amount of friction.

I hope I have a close parent-child relationship with both DD and DS, and I'll be interested to see if my father-daughter relationship comes into my head as DS grows up, or whether this really is a mother-daughter dynamic in particular.

goodnightmoon · 27/09/2010 13:13

what nonsense. yabu.

OrmRenewed · 27/09/2010 13:19

OK...have been thinking about this a bit more. I have both. I love them all. Am I more protective of the boys - I think in the past I might have been. Not because I loved them more, but because I didn't know how they ticked. In a sense I know girls, I was one, I am a tough old bird, I was a very level-headed child, I cope with stuff, I sort of assumed a girl would be like that. Boys are a foreign territory. They make me nervous - I'm afraid of getting it wrong.

Of course that is so much bullshit. I realise that now. My DD is not the same as me, my DS are not that different.

But I do think there is a problem with thinking that all boys are strong and need to be toughened up. All the 'boys don't cry' bollocks - who wants a world peopled 50% with emotional cripples?

jellybeans · 27/09/2010 14:42

I like mine all equally. However, my teenage girl has been the hardest by a mile. My other girl doesn't seem so bad in that area but is yet to hit the teens. Boys are younger and hard by being boistrous but then again my DD2 was very boistrous until about 5 and now is quite 'tomboyish'. So i think it is more about personality. eg a more determined character may be a more awkward teen than a sensitive child regardless of whether they are male or female.

ChickensHaveNoEyebrows · 27/09/2010 14:49

YY jellybeans. I am dreading DS2 hitting the teen years

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