gafhyb, yes and I did say all through my posts that I was speaking only from my own experience which, not being a psychologist or specialist in child behaviour, I can only do. Each of us can only speak from his/her own experiences which always amuses me when people speak with such 'authority'. Surely you can only go off what you have seen and experienced throughout your lives?
Fwiw, I don't buy into the whole gender notion and have avoided gender toys or treating children any differently because of their gender. You'll just have to take my word for that.
What is the difference between assuming that perhaps parents treat different genders differently or have different expectations from them and assuming that different genders are just different? Each one is utterly without scientific evidence yet each one is held up as proof for a different argument.
I think both are probably true. There are some parents who DO treat their kids differently and let boys get away with a lot more than girls, but there are also boy who ARE different. How can they not be when they have different hormonal balances in their bodies? What about the argument that testosterone is responsible for some of the natural assertiveness that men seem to possess? Or the argument that progesterone is responsible for some of the nuturing qualities of women?
Yes it does sound terribly sexist and I can understand people wanting to stamp down on any perceived difference, but I don't see their evidence as outweighing the other evidence.
I think on this thread that there are a lot of people who want to believe that boys and girls are exactly the same. Well hasn't this experiment already been done? There was a scientist who firmly believed in nurture over nature so when one of a twin had a horrible accident during a routine circumcision, he chose that baby as his 'proof' that a child could successful swap genders and be brought up as a different gender. That little boy was turned into a girl (this was the late 60s I think so they didn't see that they had any other choice). The baby knew no different and the scientist (sorry I forget his name) held her up as an example of how right he was. That gender differences are chosen by parents and society. However he wasn't right at all. He was wrong and the child, now grown-up was the subject of a documentary. He had turned himself back into a man and was saying how he knew all through his life that something was wrong, that he was occupying the wrong body. Several studies since on other babies who have been born with both sexual organs and the medics have had to choose a sex for them, have shown that some of those children went on to have sex changes because they just 'knew' that they were the wrong gender.
This debate will rage on and on but personally I do not think that we as a society have as much influence over gender difference as we like to think that we do.