To pray that smug mothers of little girls are ...

[ReallyTired]

....sent a beautiful bouncing baby boy torando as their second child.

Those of us with two children realise that nature has a huge affect on a child's personality and ablity to behave.

I have two children and both of them are lovely now. However my son was permamently on the move as a two year old and we used to call him captain chaos. He was the sort of kid who would be into every cupboard, had the wooden spoon in the baby olympics or baby ivory league. (ie he had no desire to read Pride and Prejudice at the age of 2)

My daughter has a very different temperment. She is far more compliant, loves drawing jigsaws and isn't a muck magnet. I am sure that if she had been my first I would have been unbearably smug.

Boys take longer to grow up and my son at the age of eleven is lovely most of the time. He is still a muck magnet, but he has plenty of friends and doing well at school.

My DD likes nothing better than scuffing around on the patio and garden, eating mud. Stones appear to be her favourite thing ever. And my partner and I are delighted. I don't think girls as a group are naturally more docile or neat and tidy than boys as a group but I do think we all have to be wary of societal expectations.

I've never met these smug girl mothers.

My friends who have two or more DD's always seem to be telling me about their DD's tantrums (I'm not talking about toddlers here).

You could swap DS and DD in the OP for my two

Does that make me a smug mother of boy ?

YANBU

However, your ds sounds exactly like my dd was. She has been far more into things than her brothers were.
She's the size of a bloody rugby player, has gone from petite to bruiser almost over night.

I don't think it can be extrapolated either way, but the lively girls talked about on this thread has brought back a lovely memory of me desperately re-shelving a load of books my girl, then about 18 months, had cleared onto the floor with her arm at the library story time before commando crawling away under the shelves. I was just fishing her out by her feet when a mum nearby with two angelic-looking boys sitting crossed legged either side of her listening intently to the story, made an amused comment about my 'busy' little girl. I doubt she found me smug!

Ah, yes, Steve Biddulph.

He went down a storm on a live webchat.

Those of us with two children realise that nature has a huge affect on a child's personality and ablity to behave.

Those of us with more than 2 realise that "nature" in this respect has very little to do with gender.

I had a fairly typical girl
A very typical boy
One who exhibits the typical behaviours of both

However, my typical girl was DS1. He changed into more typical boy behaviour once he started at single sex secondary school which implies that it's not all nature after all. He is still far calmer and more biddable than the whirlwinds that are DS2 and DD, even though he is a hormonal teen.

Wow, a bit of a bunfight, but I get you op.

You have been attacked by the political correctness "brigade"

How very dare you say boys are tornados and girls are princesses, when the whole of mumsnet will argue that the opposite is true and that there are no gender stereotypes only personalities.

Well, it just so happens that in most cases, whether we want it or not, the stereotypes have developed for a reason, by years and years of empirical opining, despite what some people here say boys are more like boys than most girls are, and that means tornados...

I dare say that any mother of a girl who claim her girl is collecting snails so we know nothing of what we speak, have a girl that collect snails in a nice and sedate manner, much like you would do a jigsaw puzzle, not like play drums.

Well, people are just sharing their personal experiences. And certainly mine doesn't collect snails in a 'nice and sedate manner'.

People are giving their counter experiences because of the massive generalisations in the OPs post. And her completely unsupported assertion that differences mean 'nature'. When they could just as easily mean nurture- by the whole community.

Loved reading the Biddulph webchat. Op should take a look.

Do all the feminists with biddable sons and "whirlwind" daughters wonder at the effect of their parenting. It seems, judging from the above posts (someone else with a lot of time can tot them up if they like but, according to this thread there are at least 2 "boy-like" girls for every one "boy-like" boy) that girls are the ones more likely to behave like traditional boys and boys are more likely to behave like traditional girls.

There are two possible conclusions. Society is not merely wrong by 90 degrees but by 180 degrees. Girls are actually the more aggressive, energetic and random sex and boys the more relaxed and biddable sex. The alternative is that many MN parents are engaged in an unprecedented experiment: bringing their daughters up to be more "masculine" and their sons to be more "feminine". Personally I favour the latter explanation. I also suspect that this will cause problems of a cognitive dissonance nature, especially around puberty.

Well Larry thanks for spectacularly missing the point your input

Or larry have you considered the much more straightforward explanation that this thread is not a random sample and people are more likely to comment if their situation contradicts the OP?

You have been attacked by the political correctness "brigade" wink

No, she's been "attacked" because she's talking bollocks based on a sample size of one-of-each.

I dare say that any mother of a girl who claim her girl is collecting snails so we know nothing of what we speak, have a girl that collect snails in a nice and sedate manner, much like you would do a jigsaw puzzle, not like play drums.

I'll lend you DD and see what you think then.

Tarka,

That explanation does not really hold water, to be honest. If you look at other threads, you see the majority of posters citing evidence to agree with the OP. There is no statistical bias on MN (as far as I can see) towards people citing contradictory rather than confirmatory evidence.

There is of course yet another explanation that people are not neutral observers of their own children. They seek confirmation of what they want to see when they observe their children.

Is it a 'feminist' trait (in the disparaging way meant by larry) to not Instantly see any example of boisterous behaviour as a natural consequence of havi g a penis, and any calmer, dare I say it, gentler behaviour as a natural consequence of not having a penis?

What an extraordinary viewpoint.

My 'friend' used to 'jokingly' say I was a smug mother of girls. She had two boys and I think assumed I had gender selected my girls as that is all I could cope with!!!

I think in some ways she was jealous as she conveniently forgot that all through her second pregnancy she wished for her dc to be a girl. He came out a gorgeous boy - and is just lovely. Both her boys are delightful. But she assumes because they are boys they are harder work than my girls, who apparently spend their days colouring in and making necklaces in a quiet and sedate manner.

Sometimes they do behave like this, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they whine for England, sometimes they don't.

They are children - children by their nature are quite hard work. They have lots of needs - being a boy or a girl does not come into it for me.

They seek confirmation of what they want to see when they observe their children

Trust me. I'd like to see a calm sedate sit-down-and-embroider girl when I look at DD. What I often see is a banshee child from hell beating up her brothers.

The "boys are this, girls are that" theory is flawed. Yes, you get examples at the stereotypical ends of the spectrum but there is a huge overlap in the middle.

I would say that the main difference between the boys and girl in my family is that the boys, whilst very different personality wise, are basically simple whereas DD, whose personalty is similar to DS2, is far more complicated.

When I say "simple" I mean "straightforward" - not thick :o

Hothere,

It is a "feminist" trait (in the sense of the blind feminism seen often on this site) of not having any interest in seeing whether being born male confers any different characteristics than being born female. There is more to being male than having a penis. There are differences in many areas of physiology and the endocrine system. To wilfully overlook these and refer sarcastically to the only difference as "having a penis" is, IMO, a somewhat luddite attitude.

"The "boys are this, girls are that" theory is flawed. Yes, you get examples at the stereotypical ends of the spectrum but there is a huge overlap in the middle."

Totally agree with the above. There is a big overlap in the middle. That is how statistical distributions work. I know many "boyish" girls and "girlish" boys. However, when I see toddler parties en masse (and, unfortunately, I do!) I can observe a clear average difference between the sexes.

larry my girl is as far away from masculine as you can get, and I have lived with these children for years...I know their personalities a lot better than you do

Most people have only expressed their own experiences not generalised

Fully agree with tarka I am much more likely to respond to this sort of thread in a contrary manner...partly because it adds to the debate and partly because I am very contrary!