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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

to ask if you treat your sons and daughters equally... and, if not, why not?

169 replies

HelenHen · 03/06/2014 15:16

I have ds (22 months) and Ds (2 months). I've promised. DD that I will treat her exactly the same as Ds. I then realised dh hasn't done the same and I've let him off the bloody hook (gonna rectify that though). He talks about how he's afraid to play rough with her like he did ds and a few other small things. Surely this is just beginning the sexist process at the earliest opportunity? I'm gonna have a word though!

So do all of you treat your sons the same as your daughters? And, if not, why the hell not?

OP posts:
calmet · 04/06/2014 12:58

I worked with under fives for a bit. Some parents would sometimes remark on how different girls and boys were naturally. And they always swore they didn't treat children differently because they were girls or boys. As an outsider it was totally obvious they did. A lot of this is unconscious.

My mother swears she treated me and my brother the same, she didn't. For example, we both had chores, but while I was made to do mine every day, my brother fairly frequently didn't do his, or only partly did them.

TortoiseUpATreeAgain · 04/06/2014 13:06

Here's one post which suggests where Biddulph may have got the idea from.

FrauEnglischLehrerin · 04/06/2014 13:11

Calmet - I run classes for 4-6 year olds. Fairly early on we cover favourite colours. It is extremely rare for any girl in my classes not to name pink or purple as her favourite. Any trends among the boys? Er, no. And yet any individual parent would probably say that girls love pink and that's just nature.

calmet · 04/06/2014 13:19

And they would ignore the fact that pink used to be seen as a boys colour, and blue as a girls colour.

That is how we know these things are not nature, because the rules about what is girls and boys stuff changes over time and is different in different cultures.

TheIronGnome · 04/06/2014 13:30

Yes calmet!!

Nurture has a lot to answer for sometimes.

TinklyLittleLaugh · 04/06/2014 13:36

We have two boys and two girls and when they were little they played together a lot. The toys that got played with the most were things like Playmobile and Lego.

Thinking about it, my boys are not very macho and my girls are not very girly. Although DS1 is sporty and into football, he definitely doesn't do that alpha male thing and is quite gentle and laid back. He also talks to girls like people (and has never had trouble getting a girlfriend). In the same vein my teenage daughters are relatively free of the preening thing. They have lots of mates who are boys and they don't do that coy flirting thing when they talk to them (like some of their mates do with DS).

I seem to have raised a bunch of androgynous kids.

defineme · 04/06/2014 13:58

All posters saying they stop themselves telling dds they're pretty.
I did this with dd til the day she said 'I'm not pretty mummy like the girls in my class I am smart instead'
I now use gorgeous for dd and ds because I dont want her growing up feeling she's a minger like I did with parents who never mentioned looks even though now dm tells me she was always saying to my dad how gorgeous I was but was brought up to believe compliments spoilt a child.

5madthings · 04/06/2014 14:06

Well yes you can say they are pretty but you need to say they are other things as well. The default is to praise girls for their looks.

I tell all my children they are gorgeous, but I make a point of praising their other attributes ad well.

HelenHen · 04/06/2014 14:16

Aww I tell both my kids how beautiful they are!

OP posts:
rachel234 · 04/06/2014 14:22

"Parents should stop telling their children they look beautiful because it places too much emphasis on appearance and can lead to body confidence issues later in life" (recent Telegraph article).

I agree with this. I praise my daughter for trying things out, for achiement and for being kind/friendly. Hopefully these values will help her focus on what really matters in life.

But to answer the op, we have a dd and a ds and we do treat them differently but not due to their gender, but because they are completely different, have different personalities, different interests etc.

funnyperson · 04/06/2014 14:28

In our family we tell the boys they are really handsome and intelligent and the girls are told they are really pretty and intelligent. That these things happen to be true is not the issue. I read some where once that children with high self esteem do better. Although there is a school of thought which says that one should not tell a girl she is pretty or else she will become vain and vanity spoils good looks.
I'm not playing the game properly am I?
However the issue of how we discipline boys and girls differently and how we train boys to behave acceptably towards girls is seriously important given the increasing frequency of verbal and physical sexual assault against girls and women in this age.
For example at the boys school, the mums would encourage their sons to have sex as they felt it would stop their sons being gay and increased the mums sense that they had reared proper 'men'. Any regard for the girl in question or her family or the sons attitude to women and sex in general went out the window.

ReallyFuckingFedUp · 04/06/2014 14:28

I think my kids are the most beautiful creatures to grace the planet nice looking, but I don't make a point of it to them. I know too many people who placed their value in their looks and when the looks faded or changed due to weight/accident/age etc felt really devastated as their whole value was caught up in it.

OutsSelf · 04/06/2014 14:30

Yeah, I understand about self esteem but I'd rather not reinforce the value of looks in esteem building.

ReallyFuckingFedUp · 04/06/2014 14:34

Yes, Outs. It will only work as long as they are conventionally pretty/handsome too. If they suddenly gain a huge amount of weight or suffer a disfiguring accident people will treat them as not attractive and at that point...being attractive matters to them.

I am always intrigued by genuinely beautiful people who don't seem to even realise they are good looking - they just don't think about it.

PleaseJustShootMeNow · 04/06/2014 14:40

I tell DS he's beautiful all the time because to me he is beautiful. I don't think I really see beauty as a looks thing, more a sparkle from within. I find happy, joyful, smiley people the most beautiful regardless of their actual looks. I don't know if it's an autistic thing, but I don't really notice actual features at all.

rachel234 · 04/06/2014 14:41

It is much better building their self esteem on factors that matter in life and that they can actually control - success at school, sport, music, art, sociability, friendship, intersting career - than on imo superficial 'beauty' which will only fade over time anyway.

Protego · 04/06/2014 17:35

No I most certainly would not treat my DS and DD alike! Quite simply because one is three years older than the other and they are very different people with different personalities , likes/dislikes and needs.

I doubt that other parents here would not agree!

What I think you may be asking here is to do with perceived fairness and equality? Perceived on both sides.

Now a child judges such interactions at a moment in time; in the context of a current interaction. They are also likely to choose their own 'spin' on the issue! As a longterm parent your perspective - detailed or not so detailed memories - will be more accurate yes; but that is not really the issue is it?

Many parents do find that they like/love/prefer one child over another. This is inevitable as children are a genetic lottery. To take an extreme example no-one is to blame if your child is a psychopath who tortures animals and is clearly likely to offend seriously - this is in fact a desperate actual situation for some parents. So, though most cases will not be this extreme, they pose questions as to how we choose to respond consciously.

My sister and her husband cannot get up in the morning - in fact they are horrible and cross - but one of their children is an early bird. He saw them at their worst and they actually locked him out of their bedroom when he was six. When he came to stay with us we were all four early birds and morning was a joyous fun time with chocolate and croissants in bed and chatting. He was 9 by then and we talked about how his experience of strife and unpleasantness was not parental choice but a 'conflict of natures'! Not surprisingly young children do not see things from their parents' point of view but in relation to themselves.

But there are in infinite variety of combinations so there are unlikely to be simple answers so beloved of the agony aunt! What we can do when we notice these things or they are brought to our attention by an angry child it to listen (first and always), observe, analyse, share and discuss to gain insight; apologise, accept and work out a way to cope. Above all don't play the blame game - that is not meaningful or helpful. This is perhaps one of the hardest tasks facing a parent - and one that all the books seem to avoid as if mentioning it would be too harsh...

Please don't think that we do not have our issues - we were lucky that our two are wired so like their parents and that suits us. But similarity leads to conflict as well as mind-reading...

I asked my son's best friend who lives here (having been thrown out by his parents for abandoning his A Levels) what his perception was. He observed that we were very fair albeit the youngest by three years did get the best deal! He then told me a sad tale of how his mother had openly treated her boys very differently; he was not approved of. I hope giving him space to explore this has helped him process these experiences and recognise them for what they were.

Best wishes to you all - get stuck in but do not beat yourselves up! After all tomorrow is another day...

DollyWosits · 04/06/2014 19:37

You can't win with telling your kids they are attractive Confused

If you tell them they are attractive then you are promoting the fact that looks are important and that you wouldn't like it if they were unattractive.Sad

If you tell them they are unattractive then that is very clearly wrong Sad

If you don't mention whether or not they are attractive then that's not ok either. Sad

Its a loose/loose/loose situation so I don't bother thinking about it and just tell them they are beautiful/handsome/pretty whenever I want

JaneParker · 04/06/2014 20:04

My parents never said I was pretty (and I probably was) and that did not make me think I looked bad. It just was not a very relevant issue for me as I was the best in the school and had a massive range of hobbies at which i excelled etc etc and picked and have a decent high paid career. All these things including my sex worth come back to not being treated in a sexist way by the family and having feminists going back generations.

We have forgotten vanity is a sin today and that is a huge pity.

Permanentlyexhausted · 04/06/2014 22:21

I tell my daughter that her scars from her operation are beautiful because they look like butterflies.

OutsSelf · 04/06/2014 22:28

Thanks for your scarred.DD, permanent. Scars are scientifically amazing, too, what an extraordinary thing! To knit together a wound; we take for granted a process.the universe took millions of.years to engineer. All around us we.are surrounded by death, fragility, atrophy. And we just heal ourselves right up. Fucking amazing.

Permanentlyexhausted · 04/06/2014 22:43

I agree OutsSelf - it's amazing!

Luckily DD's scars aren't noticeable unless she is getting changed for PE or swimming. She is fine about them now but I can see she might feel more sensitive in the future so I'm trying to instill some positivity whilst I can. I can't make them go away so we focus on what is good about them.

Livvylongpants · 04/06/2014 23:00

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Livvylongpants · 04/06/2014 23:02

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adalovelacelaptop · 04/06/2014 23:12

There was a recent study I read of which said that. People who were confident in their attractiveness irrespective of what other people thought of their looks