to not like it when people say 'typical boy'

[bejeezus]

AIBU to be becoming increasing irritable, when people say?.

?oh, typical boy!?
?he?s such a boy?
?boy behaviour?
?boys are so different to girls?

It is usually provoked by some unwelcome/less than good ?something?, that said boy is doing

Is it not a bit of a cop-out? Or are boys really different to girls? I appreciate that hormones must play a part?

But I don?t like it

I probably don?t like it because I have dds; one is cuddly and compliant, the other is a lithe mass of energy and activity. She never stops moving (at approx. 100mph) and she never stops chatting

And where does that leave her/us? And other high energy girls?.

It seems to give a spectrum a little like this;

Quiet Boy > Typical Boy > Typical Girl > Naughty/difficult/high maintenance Girl?

I know that all these ?typical boy behaviours? are not necessarily naughty/difficult/high maintenance?.but that is certainly when the phrase is uttered

Not completely related to the original OP, but feel that I must share this. My 3yo DS is currently madly into anything hello kitty. We were shopping last week and DH treated him to a hello kitty doll thing which came in a pink handbag. He was allowed a treat and it is what he picked. So, I'm at the check out and The cashier asks me "is that your boy there with the pink bag", to which I replied "yes, he loves pink". Cashier then asks me a) what my husband thought of that, and b) if I was worried that he might grow up and want "to change". I was gobsmacked. Whatever happened to the age of innocence.

I have 2 boys - DS2 and I go to various toddler groups (he's almost 3) and I'd say 90% of the 'bad behaviour' (snatching, hitting, aggression) that I see comes from boys. I don't believe for one moment that it's innate - I just think that some parents let boys get away with that kind of behaviour (maybe in some cases even encourage it) as 'boys will be boys'. Very depressing.

DS1 is one of the only boys in his class not into football and I think he feels a bit left out to the extent that I almost wish he was into it to help ease social interaction. But very few of my male friends like football so hopefully as he gets older it'll be less important!

My 2 are so different in the way they play, their preferences, way they communicate etc that I'd never assume any other 2 kids of the same gender should behave the same.

BambinoBoo - what did you say?

WhatWould I think that's just as much your prejudice as the parents

No way is '90% of the bad behaviour from the boys'. Maybe you just notice it more.

I must admit I thought boys and girls were different. Silly me.

WhatWould, I completely agree about expectations of boys and girls being different. I constantly hear stuff like 'he's a boy, he needs to run around', 'he never listens to me, is it because he's a boy?' whereas girls are expected to wait, listen, be kind to others, share, take turns etc at a younger age.

I must admit I thought boys and girls were different. Silly me.

This thread is bizarre.

why do you think it's bizzare?

I think it is bizarre that people are so bothered by it. Boys and girls are different. What is the big deal? In school and nursery both sexes are exposed to the same education, the same toys, the same kids. They are not encouraged to choose "girl" or "boy" things to do.

I'm surprised that people think that so much of boy/girl behaviour is social conditioning.
How are they conditioned to behave in a particular way? Their behaviour is different before they are aware of the media or before they have the capacity to decide how they are expected to behave.
I think we have moved on a great deal in the last few decades. When I was at school in the 1970s I was told by my teacher to get out of the construction corner because it was for boys. The boys told me that girls weren't allowed and the teacher went along with it!!! I was told to go and play with dolls. I was outraged. There is no way that could happen now.
I now work in the construction industry but that does not make me like a man.

Migsy1 - how do you know boys and girls are different? Beyond the physical? If you have the answer, you've beaten thousands of years of philosophy, science and sociology.

Boys and girls are encouraged into different things. Of course they are. That's perfectly plain when you see pink "girl" toys and multi-coloured "boy" toys. Or when you see pamper parties for 5 year old girls. Or when the teacher at my school says "lovely" and "beautiful" to every little girl and "funny" and "enthusiastic" to every little boy.

see, I notice it everywhere. Not in my son's nursery so much (He's only small) but on clothes they sell in supermarkets 'Daddy's little monster' vs 'mummy's princess' or 'born to be king' vs 'when I grow up I am going to be a princess'...

I notice that little boys are called 'cheeky' while little girls are called 'cute'

family tell me 'you're going to make him gay' because I made my son a toy kitchen.

My 19 month old loves pushing doll prams (and any knd of cart) and playing with mops, hoovers, toy kitchens, brushes. His father pushes his buggy and uses hoovers,mops etc so why not?

I have never seen an issue with it. He is a baby and they are just interesting things to him. He also likes wearing my shoes and his dad's shoes. I'm not sure he has even grasped the concept of gender although he knows which clothes are mine and which are his father's.

I really hate gender apartheid.

"Their behaviour is different before they are aware of the media or before they have the capacity to decide how they are expected to behave."

This simply isn't true I am afraid. Young babies, viewed objectively, actually behave very similarly. We, as members of a gendered society, often project different behaviours onto babies (see my comment above about how a photo of a crying baby is more likely to be labelled 'scared' if the participants in the experiment are told it is a girl, and 'angry' if told it is a boy. From the same photo).

As they get slightly older, long before they understand the concept of gender, children understand positive reinforcement and also negativity. Parents are far more likely to praise physical behaviour in boys (in experiments, this includes those parents who insisted that they parented their opposite sex children identically). They respond to that, and are more likely to be physical. From about nine months, scientists start to see differences in behaviour. Yes, this could be innate, but we have no way of knowing because the conditioning is so all encompassing in our society. Similarly, from birth, girls are praised more for their appearance.

As they begin to understand the idea of gender, children pick up very strongly on signals we send them. Children are trying to understand and categorise the world at all times. They therefore start telling each other that a pram is a girl's toy and a car is a boy's toy, etc. They have picked up that information from society.

We have moved past the point of saying 'you are a girl, you can't do woodwork', but actually much of what goes on now is just as potent, and more insidious. We have moved a long way from the 1970s, but there is still a long road to travel.

And why are people so bothered by it? Because it stifles many of our children and stops them living to their full potential - who knows where any child, of either gender, would excel in a gender neutral society. Because it upsets the boy who wants to play with dolls and the girl who is labelled a 'tomboy'. Because our scientific institutions and engineering businesses are missing masses of great female minds, and this could be part of that. Because many of the gender stereotypes perpetrate homophobia. And a million other reasons...

It bothers me because gender stereotyping limits children's choices.

So, at 5, MIL told DD1 that Lego was not for girls. At 16 I was told that I couldn't do chemistry because the boys who were also doing physics took priority. It works the other way too, DP was not allowed on concentrate on art, but could add physics and maths to do architecture.

Oh, and this wasn't all that long ago. I'm 28, DP is 29.

At the toddler groups I go to, or even meeting other mothers with babies in cafes, the boys and girls are pretty similar but girls get pounced on much quicker and told to be 'gentle', 'mind the baby', 'careful' and hovered over, while the boys' mothers seem to let them have free rein much more, with the result that the obvious aggression comes from the boys because the girls are usually told off before it gets that far.
And don't get me started on how girls are told to look at my baby and isn't the baby sweet, say hello to the baby - whereas the boys' parents may point the baby out but never order the boy to play with it!

Youlllaughaboutitoneday I love your post! And maybe I also love you a bit!

I hate this when referring to grown men too. Like when men don't lift a finger to help with childcare or housework they are being "typical men". No they're not, they're being dicks and were probably conditioned to be like this as children. My dp is a man and he was brought up to do his fair share around the house by his enlightened mother and continues to do so as a grown up and also contributes as much to dd's care as I do.

My mother on the other hand waits on db and df hand on foot, and I think she secretly feels sorry for my dp for being "made" to do housework. I know which way I am going to bring up my children...

I had a bit of an odd situation recently. I teach English at the moment in a summer school to non-English speaking kids.

One child turned up in my class who wasn't on my register. He was Italian and he had a name that is a girl's name here but a boy's name in Italy. He had curly hair and quite a feminine face (although he was only 10, I guess a lot of kids are ambiguous at that age if they don't have certain gender signifiers).

For the entire day, until I had a chance to look at his record, I thought he was a girl. And I was SO confused. This child was super boisterous, wouldn't stop talking, was very physical with other children...when I realised he was a boy, it suddenly all made sense.

Very odd, because it made me realise that even though I try very hard not to treat boys and girls differently, I must do, because I had no idea how to treat this child.

SuddenlyMadameGlamour Yes, I hate this "typical man" stuff. It's ridiculous. I also hate the way that feminists are accused of hating men and yet people who perpetrate these "typical man" stuff are obviously the ones who have such a low opinion of men that they don't even think men can act like adults.

Men get off with a hell of a lot of stuff just because they're a man.

yellowraincoat - It's a bit of a bugbear of mine. I am always getting faces from people when I pull them up on using phrases like 'man up' or 'cried like a girl'.

Your story about the boy in class is totally understandable given the society we live in. People are confused playing with a baby in a white babygro when not told that baby's gender. How much harder must it be with a child with a definite personality.

On a slightly related note, have you noticed how often we refer to gender in every day life? When we see a dog in the park, our language structure means it quickly becomes awkward not to ascribe a gender to that dog when talking about it. I have to intentionally say she sometimes to balance things, but my default setting is 'he'. We are always saying things like 'good girl' when a child does something well - why do we pick on that characteristic of the child? Why would it feel so odd to say 'good blue eyed child' or 'good curly haired child'. We teach children, every single day, that their gender is one of the most important/notable things about them.

Hmmmm

I dont think its really that negative though?

I have 2 quite boisterous DS, and sometimes I use this phrase

they have quite different characters, but the rowdy/climbing/dangerous thing they have in common

My default setting is definitely "he" and I try very very hard to change that. It feels awkward in the same way that saying to a boy "you have lovely hair" does. It trips off the tongue when you say it to a girl, it feels easy and natural. To a boy, it is weird.

I try to equal opportunities compliment in my class, but God, it feel unnatural.

It totally does. Fake it til you make it yellowraincoat

youlllaughaboutitoneday that's a very good point about language. We genderise people from pre-birth, and these days even the newborn sleeping bags they sleep in are genered and the muslins we wipe their dribble with are gendered (yes Mothercare, I've seen your stupid pink/blue muslins ) and then every single thing that happens thereafter is gendered - first bicycles are now pink and sparkly or brown and camouflagey, pink/blue scooters, pink/blue globes even.

I also hate the phrase "such an old woman" or "a bit of an old woman" meaning someone overly fussy and anxious. I realised also that I often hear it used in relation to men - particularly much older men who have become a bit unsure of themselves. So clearly not particularly a female trait but the negative expression we have about it relates to women.

I think believing males and females to be exactly the same means you have to believe that at some point a certain group in pre-history decided to socialise and treat them differently. There has to be a trigger for this socialisation.

Socialisation happens, for sure, and also not all boys are the same and not all girls are the same. But that doesn't mean all these differences are caused by socialisation. That doesn't make sense.