to not understand how anyone can think that girls are harder work than boys

[beclev24]

I know all kids are individuals/ there are easy and difficult kids of both genders etc etc. But I've seen various threads on here about how girls are much harder work than boys, and I can't get my head round it at all.

I have 3 boys. It can be like dealing with a pack of wild animals. They are exhausting to parent (lovely and sweet and gorgeous as well of course, just very hard work.) . Tonight we went to a friend's house who has three girls of similar ages. They were so restrained and quiet and cooperative, while mine needed constant policing to stop them from bouncing off the walls. It seems to be similar wherever we go- that it is a constant struggle to get them to behave, whereas for my friends with girls it seems to happen way more naturally. The stereotype is that boys are harder work physically and girls are more complex emotionally, but my boys are also hard work emotionally! lots of tantrums/ big feelings/ complicated wants and needs/ friendship issues etc.

AIBU? Or just a bad parent?

YABU for looking at individuals and generalising. My DD is far harder work than lots of the boys I know, including my DS. Children are people, not just an outcome of their genitalia.

I’ve one of each and it depends on the day as they both have their moments of being the easier or harder child.

YANBU. There seems to be this widely held belief that girls are manipulative and therefore hard work emotionally. I have this particular group of friends who always trott out this tired stereotype and one in particular who will say “oh boys are more honest. They have a fight and get over it but girls can be nasty and play psychological games”. One of the group is a teacher who will profess to prefer teaching boys because they’re more “straightforward”. I’ve even had a woman teaching a group on parenting who used to say this. I don’t know why people think it’s ok to say that girls are complex bitches / divas whilst boys are lovable simple puppies.

I have a DS who was bullied by a group of other lads and I’m telling you the physical stuff was nothing compared to the psychological crap they pulled. One example is they took the only friend he had and kept pressuring this boy to beat DS up as an initiation into their cool gang, their object being to isolate him completely. If that’s not psychological I don’t know what is!

So YANBU. I never outwardly generalise about boys and girls because I think it affects them and I loathe this idea that girls are hard work that seems to be so popular.

I havw DD1 (7) massivly hard work and =2 chuldreb in eber aspect. DS2 an absolute angel who listens,behaves etc and DD2 (1) who is into everutning anf doesnt stop. evrr

As a teacher I think that boys and girls are hard work in their own different ways.

Girls do tend to be more aware of their own emotions and others before their male counterparts meaning that they can be more work in this way. Friendships are definitely more complex and issues last longer.

Boys tend to be more physical.

Of course this is all across a big spectrum but gender-deniers do no one any favours.

YABU because you assume that boys are fundamentally active and girls quiet and co-operative. Alot of socialization there.

I have one of each. DS is by far the big emotional monster with social issues, friendship dramas etc. DD is cool, calm and detatched and doesn't take anything personally. It 100% depends on the kid. YANBU.

YABU - every child is different and cannot be defined by their sex.

However.

My dd (10) had a massive sleepover for her birthday which I naively agreed to. My god, the fallouts, arguments, tears, I felt like a referee. One demanded to go home at 1am as she'd fallen out with another so she phoned her dad. Grumpy dad turned up to pick her up about 1.30. Poor sod.

One of them had been sent to Coventry so I had to have a word with them all and made a fuss of her. Don't think I slept till 5.

Have one of each and have had no trouble from DS except a few mood swings now he's a teen.

Of course this is all across a big spectrum but gender-deniers do no one any favours.

It’s not about denying gender but about not affecting children with our expectations of their behaviour.

It’s also about not saying one way is better than another. There seems to be this popularly held belief that the boy way (simple, physical, to the point) is superior to the girl way (conniving, mean girl, complex).

I remember this PHSE teacher once praising girls in a girls school for the emotional support they gave each other. I remember it clearly as it was the only time that I’d ever heard any adult say something positive about girls as a group. That is depressing and it affects girls to hear so many negative stereotypes about them.

What I’m saying, badly , is that this universal belief that physical = simple & honest / emotional = complex & dishonest is pure misogyny in action.

sofato5miles I actually agree with that. It's hard to unpick what, if anyting is 'natural' and what is socialisation but I'm sure a lot of it is the latter. Unfortunately taht can be quite subtle and we can socialise them in certain ways without even realising we are doing it.

Btw OP, you're definitely not a bad parent. The love you have for them is obvious :)

I bet my DD could give any of yours a run for their money. I see far more variation between individual children of the same sex than between sexes.

I do see boys' bad behaviour being indulged though. When my DD behaves in the exact same way it's shocking but there's a group of boys with really unpleasant behaviours in her year and absolutely nothing is done.

I have one if each. The stereotype of the girl being emotional is true in my case as well as the boy being less prone to such outbursts. I see my dd manipulate her dad emotionally in a way her brother is incapable of. They’re both great - now teens - but def fall into their stereo typical roles in many ways with the exception of the physical thing with my ds. Maybe it makes a difference that he’s an only boy or maybe it’s just him. He loves books, computers, LEGO and cycling. So a quiet person at heart.

I work in childcare and most people I know who work in this sector would find this stereotype to generally hold true. Not for every child but for a larger group - yes. Boys are less prone to emotional reactions and girls less prone to physical retaliation. Whether it’s nature or nurture is open to debate but I see evidence of it from the baby room to 12 year olds. It could be argued that by looking for it I’m seeing what I expect to see - it’s a really interesting area of development I think.

"this universal belief that physical = simple & honest / emotional = complex & dishonest is pure misogyny in action."

No it isn't. People appreciate directness.

I don't think misogyny means what you think it means.

That is very stereotypical but in RL my experience is that girls are much harder work especially as teenagers. My friend has no end of issues with her DD (12) and friendships, the nastiness is horrendous and mind games etc. My DS has been bullied but not by his friend, just a boy in his class. It seems girls and their best friends fall out daily. They exclude one of the group then post it all over instagram etc.

I have just been on holiday with my 2 boys (12/10), 2 friends boys (13/14) plus my niece (13) and I would take the 4 boys rather than my 1 niece if I had to take them alone. She is a stroppy diva TBH.

I would say my experience is limited of course as I don't have girls myself.

I think girls may be "harder work" simply because the patriarchal bullshit in society gets to them from such a young age. They are bombarded with all these messages about their bodies and their place in society which, however hard we try to counteract, gets to them and makes them ever so slightly confused from a young age. Then (and this is just in my opinion) this in turn makes them turn on each other in a competitive way that is often quite negative. I recently overheard a conversation between my DD8 and a little boy the same age talking about school. I like to think DD is a fairly happy little soul generally speaking but I was pretty shocked at how...complex for want of a better word...her view of school life/friendships was compared to this little chap. She would say things like, "yeah so do your friends ever do [insert hurtful thing] to each other?" and he was pretty bemused. I felt quite sad listening to it actually.

@schrodingerstwat

Does it get tiring going through life blaming 'the patriarchy' for every single issue?

We know that men and women differ with regard to skeletons, muscles, hair, skin, eyes, lungs, chemical make up of brains, chemical make up of bodies, metabolisms, physical structure of the brain, response to stimuli such as pain and many other observable ways. Is it hard to be so sure that despite these differences even in the brains that any behavioral differences must be 'the patriarchy' and socialisation?

It seems to me that you're grasping at the last straw. When we can see physical and chemical differences in the brain even before birth but you think this is socialisation it seems like a very weak arguement.

Do you think the observable differences in the brain before birth mean anything?

I would also agree that the emotional stuff in girls can result in deep friendships that can be a struggle for the boys. I’m saying this as a general view in my experience. My dh has friendships with guys going back 30 years and I’m amazed to see how little emotional support is featured in their friendships. I’m judging this on seeing these guys have divorces and bereavements and yes practicalities are discussed but not emotional support ( iwith one exception ).

My dd made deeper friendships than my ds.

I discuss more emotional based stuff with my friends than my dh does with his.

But these are generalizations and in my opinion don’t hold true for everyone so to say all boys react with physical reactions and are simple creatures emotionally and all girls are emotionally manipulative drama queens is unfair on both genders in my opinion.

I don't really know as I only have boys. But harmony is only possible in our house if there are extreme levels of physical exertion regularly.

Both of mine a nice respectful gentle natured kids (one now a teenager). UNLESS they haven't been 'run' when they are likely to be at each others throats snipey and horrible. Much like the dog really.

I know I don't need/can't exercise at quite the same level as DH (and now DS1) so maybe girls just need less exertion to be calm?

"this universal belief that physical = simple & honest / emotional = complex & dishonest is pure misogyny in action."

No it isn't. People appreciate directness.

I don't think misogyny means what you think it means.

Misogyny means hatred of women and I think as a society we subtly but persistently equate the female way of doing things as bad.

Let’s look at your example of “people appreciate directness”. Do they really? When people are being criticised for performance at work, do they take kindly to being told “you are crap. You need to do x, y, z” or do they prefer it being couched in a mixture of positives and things they need to work on? People aren’t robots.

If you were on a train and a fellow passenger had music blasting out of their headphones would you bluntly say “hey! Turn it down!” Or would you apply a bit of indirectness with a “excuse me, perhaps you don’t know but people can hear that..” and appeal to their better nature?

Indirectness is often just politeness used to avoid conflict and it’s a myth that it’s not understood or practised by men. They’re not stupid.

Yet indirectness is undervalued precisely because it’s seen as being practised by women. So yes I’d say that was an example of an underlying misogyny in our societal values.

@bizarreFoods

Does it get tiring going through life blaming 'the patriarchy' for every single issue?

I'm not sure. You'd need to ask someone who goes through life blaming the patriarchy for every single issue whether they are tired or not to get that one answered. I don't know anyone like that so unfortunately I can't help you.

As for the rest of your post: once I got past the eye-aching list of nouns and body parts, I realised that what you are trying so succinctly to say is....

Nope. Sorry. Still don't understand a word of it. I think the second to last paragraph could do with some clarifying punctuation.

There are different types of difficulties raising children. I'd take the whirlwind of mayhem any day over the emotional issues for boys AND girls. There's the issues of friendships. School. Eating properly. Painful shyness. Anxiety. All these things we read about and hear from our friends. Please don't assume high spirited is the only thing which equals hard work!

Is it hard to be so sure that despite these differences even in the brains that any behavioral differences must be 'the patriarchy' and socialisation?

You see, I’m sure there are physical differences in the brain but it’s a big leap from “the shape of the hypothalamus differs in male and female brains” to men are better at map reading and women love housework. (to give an oft held belief as an example).

I’m sure that there are differences but that they are just not the ones we think they are, and certainly not as pronounced as we think they are. There is too much backwards inference going on. We see difference. We look for causation. We used to look for it in skeletal structure, then evolutionary biology, and now the brain.

A lot of stuff might be bio-social. Men are stronger and women give birth. Of that we can be sure. That simple fact gives rise to a whole load of behavioural differences that might be rooted more in circumstance than any “hard-wiring” in the brain.

Take anticipatory empathy, the ability to anticipate the needs of others. There was a study a while back where they switched the power dynamics of people they had paired together in various ways. It was found that those in the lesser more submissive role anticipated the needs of their partner better than vice versa.

That makes sense. Women’s attunement to others’ needs may be a result of the vulnerable circumstances they find themselves in, especially after childbirth. Plus we all know plenty of women who aren’t like that. And we judge them more harshly because we expect it less.

But these are generalizations and in my opinion don’t hold true for everyone so to say all boys react with physical reactions and are simple creatures emotionally and all girls are emotionally manipulative drama queens is unfair on both genders in my opinion.

Absolutely agree with this. My DS is much more sensitive than DD and she's in no way dramatic or manipulative. They're both quite quiet kids.

I have two girls. Twins. One is relatively quiet and sweet and prim. The other bounces off the walls. I and absolutely sick to death of parents of boys telling me how lucky I am that I have girls and dismissing my assertions that one of them bounces off the walls. The first school my girls were at the most challenging child in both my kids' classes were girls, they were both violent and loud and constantly needing intervention for one reason or another.

But so many of the parents of boys constantly lamented how tiring and "difficult to handle" the boys were (whilst simultaneously preening about how "active" and "assertive" they were).

I wish we could stop gendering behaviour in this way and just accept that there is an incredibly wide range of behaviour that children display. Stop looking at them so critically and develop a broader and more accepting and supportive environment for them than current schooling in KS1 & 2.