To think that the way people treat male toddlers....

[Yellowcrocodile]

Is what leads to male entitlement in society?

Name changed for this as potentially identifying.

So I have a 2 year old DD and am currently pregnant with a boy.

Spent the morning at a playgroup in a naice area. I’ve come home feeling furious by the behaviour of some of the children and their parents. Basically there were a few boys 3+ who absolutely ran riot, screaming, running, shouting, snatching and hitting, and generally causing chaos. Their parents just smiled indulgently, and made comments like ‘boys have so much more energy’. None of them told their children off, apologised to anyone or acknowledged that their children were badly misbehaving.

It’s like this every fucking week. My daughter has her naughty moments too, snatches, tantrums etc, but as soon as she starts I tell her off (calmly), explain why she can’t do xyz, and say we are leaving if she carries on. She generally responds and behaves herself, and I’m very embarrassed if she doesn’t, as I have high expectations of her. Almost all of the other girls and half of the boys are the same, not perfect little angels but parented appropriatley and respond to boundaries.

It’s making me worried that when I have my son:
a. He’ll be a horrible little shit
b. I’m turn into one of the terrible parents who attribute his poor behaviour to ‘being boisterous’ or ‘naturally having more energy’

These children are never told off, and their sense of entitlement is growing by the day. This is probably hormones talking, but I can completely see how some men end up not doing any housework, feeling entitled to the best of everything, and go around raping and murdering people, as they are told from an early age that any behaviour is fine as they ‘have more energy’ and they just aren’t held to normal standards of behaviour.

Also, they all seem to be call very boring middle class names like william, Samuel and Benjamin, don’t know what that’s about? The children with names that would raise a mumsnet eyebrow are much better behaved.

So, AIBU to blame toxic masculinity and male entitlement on the tolerance we have for poor behaviour from boys in childhood?!

Or are hormones making me crazy...

I’m determined not to treat my son any differently to my daughter for both of their sakes, but feel really sad about the society they will both be growing up in

so people need to actively encourage girls to be louder, pushier and more aggressive when it's suitable

And they need to be careful with that.

Haven’t rtft but it pisses me off how people gender toddlers. My son is an absolute angel child, polite sweet and wonderful (quite frankly, I have no idea where he came from) DD is wild, can’t stay still and is very much an independent lady. She was playing on a climbing frame in a pink dress and a woman said ‘oh she’s a tomboy isn’t she?

No she’s not, she’s in a pink dress. She’s obsessed with unicorns and pink and tutus (really not my choice!) but she also loves to run and climb. How does that make her a tomboy? They’ve got no hope if they’re getting gendered at such a young age

Fun No more careful than they need to be with male children.

Exactly. But what people have been saying is that parents need to encourage girls to be pushier and more aggressive but boys need to be taught to calm down and be more gentle.

Can you not see how attitudes are changing and it’s sort of going the other way?

I don’t encourage my boys to harm others and be disruptive so I certainly don’t expect a mum of a girl to encourage her daughter to be like that “just out of principle” when my son has done fuck all wrong.

And I know some women find mums of boys irritating when they stick up for their sons but sometimes it has to be done because some people are just batshit crazy.

I think it's just lazy parenting in general. I take DD2 to a fairly expensive group with limited numbers so you see the same 10 or so people week in week out.
Some parents are just rubbish at correcting/modelling behaviour right from when they're little.
So think 18mo keeps pulling at the table cloth to try to reach stuff or emptying other people's bags all over the floor. All the parents do is whine "Oh Chaaaarlie" with a vacant smile while the group leader spends her whole time trying frantically to distract Charlie at the same time as running the group.

DD2 used to be an utter nightmare and for months on end I never sat down at the group as she just couldn't be trusted for more than 5 seconds or she'd pull someone's hair/grab stuff that she shouldn't. I was bored as shit repeating and redirecting but it has worked and now we have a lovely time.
The "Chaaaaaarlie" types are the ones where their children are still doing stuff that they shouldn't except now they're bigger and faster and louder.

And I am not even close to being a perfect parent but I can see how putting that effort in when she was littler has paid off.

I think parents of children usually running riot will come up with any excuse. My son currently pushes on someone's arm to get their attention. I don't stand for it. Funny how It's only girls so far hitting him back (yesterday his nose bled) don't get told off. But I entirely take that to be lazy parents (yesterday the grandmother struggling to control two wilful toddler girls). I don't assume girls or boys are the reasons for those things.

Come back in a year and tell us boys and girls are not different.

I have a girl and a boy. I did find my boy more difficult at 3 than my girl at 3. Conversely, she was a handful at 2 and he was an angel at 2.

At their more difficult ages, I could not get them to listen for love nor money and, yes, before then, I would have judged, too.

But, yes, on the other hand, I hear you. All playgroups have an element of parents who let their kids run riot. They also have an element of parents of easy children who can be easily controlled. It's difficult to say which is which without being there. However, I do know both of the above examples are a reason why I hated playgroups and I didn't go very often and I'm very glad to be past that stage now.

I'm a bit confused about your comment on the naming of children. I love traditional names in both sexes as they don't date as much. I'm not sure how it's connected with their behaviour.

@bluetrampolines of course boys and girls are different, because they’re all individuals.

I think they are also wired slightly differently but that shouldn't be an excuse for poor behaviour

It's amazing to me how many people missed the point. I think OP could have perhaps pointed out that some negative behaviour is encourage in girls too - eg to be a bit helpless, less physical, less in touch with their own desires etc.

To posters asking for actual studies. I've seen loads but can't remember off top of my head. However, there was one article in the FT a few years ago I remember seeing. Here's a link: accounts.ft.com/login?location=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcontent%2Fe25f55a6-28c5-11e6-8b18-91555f2f4fde

Just demonstrating how the way we interact with children is different for boys and girls practically from the start.

When DD was a few months old, DH told me he realised he was actively being more gentle with her. He was annoyed with himself and immediately made a conscious decision to do the same kind of rough house play (age appropriate, obviously) he'd done with DS. It's not because people are BAD that they do these things. We just have all been impacted by societal expectations.

There was a great documentary mini series on the BBC too: www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2017/33/no-more-boys-and-girls

About how children are treated differently in the classroom based on gender, but I'm sure it also showed babies/toddlers dressed in pink/blue and being played with very differently. A PP has mentioned a similar experiment.

Prog well worth a watch if still available.

@Grandmaswagsbag

" I was under the impression that there are no physical differences between boys and girls until puberty? "

You what? Read that back again.

Still no meta studies, just a few popular documentaries saying we're all the same?

Might want to tell that to the trans community and this study of 5000 from uni of Edinburgh. There are physical differences between male and female brains. We don't full under stand them and as the study says, there are more overlaps than differences, but there are differences,

www.thecut.com/2017/04/heres-the-biggest-study-yet-on-sex-based-brain-differences.html

Are people really this thick headed?

Of course there are physical differences between boys and girls. That doesn't for a second imply that the majority of the differences actually seen in boys and girls aren't down to differences in the way in which boys and girls are treated from before birth.

Has anybody noticed that if you praise behaviour in your child then your child is likely to engage in that behaviour again? Has anybody noticed that if you discourage your child from a certain behaviour then your child is (usually) less likely to engage in that behaviour again?

Do you understand that human beings are social animals and INCREDIBLY sensitive to the place they are 'given' in society and the expectations that society places on them?

Do you think it is physically difficult for you to randomly take your top and bra off and walk down the street? Or do you think the difficulty you would feel in doing that is something that has been trained into you by continual interaction with society and its expectations?

You can find all the physical differences you like between boys and girls, and nothing will have anywhere near the same effect as constantly praising girls for kind, considerate behaviour (and looking pretty), while praising boys for being brave, smart and sticking up for themselves.

You can find all the physical differences you like between boys and girls, and nothing will have anywhere near the same effect as constantly praising girls for kind, considerate behaviour (and looking pretty), while praising boys for being brave, smart and sticking up for themselves.

I am really not so sure of this. I (a girl) was constantly praised for being "smart", "dominant" etc by my parents and their (mostly pagan) friendship circles. I ended up doing awfully at school (being praised for being smart probably made me lazy...) and I am now painfully shy. I think underlying personality tends to be a lot stronger than people's praise or discouragement. Sure you can completely break someone to the point they get depressed and their personality can't shine through, but there's loads of people who completely rejected whatever traits people projected on them as children because their underlying temperament was just different to that. My mum tried so hard to make me wear jeans and things as a child and I had massive tantrums about it because I wanted to wear dresses.

Nope I've seen it, a brother and sister did exactly the same thing. Sister got told off but apparently "boys will be boys."
Im pregnant with a boy and have 2 DDs and am being constantly told how he will behave differently. No he won't, I won't let him and it sounds to me you wouldn't either.

BlingLoving - The link you posted didn't work, can you try it again?

Still no meta studies, just a few popular documentaries saying we're all the same?

I tell you what, if it's so easy to do high quality meaningful studies on this stuff then why don't you find us the meta study that shows that toddler boys and girls are different independent of societal influence? Oh, you can't, because that's an impossible hypothesis to prove? What a shock.

And the brain stuff is completely circular - people think our brains are fixed from birth, but that's completely wrong; they reflect our lived experience so in a society that socialises men and women differently it's completely unsurprising that you'd see evidence of this in the brain. Plus there's a big difference between talking about men and women, where hormones do undoubtedly play a role (though many argue this has been exaggerated) and toddlers.

ChickenKatsu - I was worried it might not. It's behind a firewall and although you can access a certain number of articles free, the link is probably my firewall if that makes sense.

Go to ft.com and do a search for "pocket money" girls. It's about the third story - from 2016 and the headline is something about girls getting paid less pocket money than boys.

ChickenKatsu - or PM me your email address and I can send you an email link.

I agree that boys and girls are treated differently but no doubt the parents you describe wouldn’t intervene if their little girls were misbehaving either. Some parents just don’t do discipline.

Id totally agree with this

@thereareflowersinmygarden to be clear I know there are brain differences between adult males and females. I know there are small brain differences between males and females at birth (boy slightly larger) but beyond that I don’t think there is any evidence that there are physical reasons for differences between boys and girls in terms of things like physical strength and motor skills. Or rather it’s impossible to put it down to physical differences and not the way they are nurtured beginning from birth and even before. Things like the notion of boys ‘needing more exercise’ and being ‘less able to concentrate’ are based purely on gender stereotypes.

I guess this one:

Gender pay gap emerges in children’s pocket money - www.ft.com/content/e25f55a6-28c5-11e6-8b18-91555f2f4fde via @FT

Pretty good article, I guess some sort of training could help.

Ok, what evidence do we have?

1. Male and female adult brains are different

1. Some medical conditions affect male and female children differently- autism for example

1. Almost every culture has ideas about what are male and female traits- and they're generally pretty similar across time and space

Our genes dictate so much of what we are physically, I find it very hard to believe that the brain in an exception and it's all nurture. Why should it be? The rest of our bodies is very dictated by gender, why should the brain be the exception? Why? Hell, the NHS even had different growth charts for boys and girls. Why is that?

It firs our current (and laudable) paradigm to believe that children are a blank canvas and gender is all social conditioning. Doesn't mean that it holds much water