to think a lot of this “boy mum” stuff is a load of sexist nonsense?

[Cookiesandcream1989]

I’m always hearing people (on social media and in real life) talking about being “boy mums”, mostly saying how hard it is to raise boys as they are always being dangerous, loud, disruptive and disobedient, the tacit implication being that girls are quiet, do as they are told and that raising them is easy.

I have two girls, and I am not exaggerating when I say every single posts, video or anecdote of the supposedly “dangerous, madcap antics” “boy mums” have to deal with is something my girls do regularly. I’m thinking mostly of toddler/young children stuff. For example, I saw a video the other day of a child around 18 months trying to climb over a cardboard box and then tumbling off it (soft landing, no danger whatsoever), with a caption saying something like “see, this is what boy mums have to put up with!” and I’m just like… isn’t that just totally normal toddler behaviour for both sexes?? When my girls were that age I felt like they spent every minute of every day trying to climb up everything. My cousin posted one last week of her 3 year old splashing in some mud with a comment about being a “boy mum” and it was just such a massive eye-roll. As if little girl toddlers don’t love splashing around in mud every chance they get, too!

It's mostly just eye-rolling stuff, but it does actually sometimes annoy me, because I sometimes feel like people are assuming parents of girls have some sort of blessed easy life where we’re just sitting around getting our hair brushed, or relaxing while our perfect little angels play dollies, while “boy mums” are actually doing hard work, which is so far from the truth that it annoys me. My girls both come home from school/nursery covered in mud every day, they act like they are allergic to doing as they’re told, they climb, they jump, they playfight – and as far as I’ve seen of other girls, they are totally normal in this regard.

My in-laws especially are big on the whole “boys are loud and dangerous and misbehave and girls are quiet and obedient” thing (to the point where it comes up in conversation every time we see them🙄), and the weird thing is, our nephews on that side actually happen to be naturally very placid, introverted and timid, while it’s our girls who are climbing the walls, being rambunctious and rarely do as they’re told without a struggle. And yet still they go on about how boys are so “naughty” and hard work, and "girls don't misbehave" (verbatim quote from MIL!!!!) which I just find a bit insulting really, because if what they are saying is true, then it stands to reason that either we must have an easy life, or we must just be rubbish parents, because girls are supposed to be “naturally obedient” and yet we still have to put loads of work into getting ours to behave, so how hopeless must we be?

So, what’s the consensus? Is it true that boys are naturally naughtier and harder work, or is it sexist nonsense?

(For the sake of the poll, let’s stick to thinking about little children rather than older kids/teens.)

I was disappointed dc2 was a girl. I had hoped for 2 boys.

I've got 4 girls and 1 boy. All very different. 2 of my girls are definitely louder than the others. The other 2 girls are pretty quiet (one being incredibly so) but that doesn't mean that she is necessarily obedient! My son is really very calm and always has been, both inside and outside. Not necessarily quiet, just very calm and not boisterous!

I just find it so sad that people aren't happy with the sexes they have. You can be disappointed but accept that you have blessed with a healthy child. But it's definitely equal in my opinion. You find lots of people simply desperate for a girl and saying they were built to be a "girl mum" and couldn't cope with only boys. Similarly, people saying they only want boys and could handle a daughter.

I also remember going home with my twin daughters and I was with a mother of twin sons and she just kept and kept going on and on about how lucky I was to have 2 girls and not 2 boys. And how her 2 boys were really naughty and never behaved and were so boisterous. One of my girls avoided stepping in a puddle and she said, yep my son would have splashed in it!!! It just annoyed me a lot.

I do sort of feel like it's more acceptable for boys to be playfighting in like primary school for example. Girls doing that isn't seen as normal. Even if both sexes can be boisterous and naughty, they do it in different ways. I think that is just how society has chosen to view them.

I have two boys they are perfectly lovely decent human beings

lol, I did miss a not. That paper is not convincing, don’t think the authors have enough to conclude that in any meaningful way from their results, and the brief literature review cites a small number of contradictory results.

This is so beyond vile to write. I actually worry about what you’re like in real life. Some of us actually wanted boys and love being a mum of boys.

Agree. That poster is vile.

I lived next door to a woman who had two fabulous little girls. She was a lovely mom, but told me many times how she'd only wanted boys, and she really found it hard to see their dresses and little lace socks drying on the line.

She'd always imagined herself as a mother of boys, and struggled a bit.

I don’t think the poster is saying that it’s nice or acceptable, just that it’s true for some women. Unfortunately.

No. The poster is making a leap of judgement and saying that every mum that has boys are gutted they didn’t get a girl. It is true I’m sure some mums of boys want for a daughter just like some girl mums want a boy. You can’t tarnish all boy mums with the same brush and say that we are secretly gutted not to have a girl.

What a load of shit. I have one child who is a boy and I'm not at all interested in having a girl (or another boy for that matter).

No they aren't, they're making a sweeping and quite nasty generalisation, not sure why it's difficult to see that.

Of course people have different personalities. I have almost drowned, crashed a pushbike badly and crashed motorbikes twice as a teen. Dislocated my elbow a few times. I was an avid tree climber, last one was when I was 42. None of my four sisters were like this so I was branded a tomboy and I was. Statistically boys are more likely to die by drowning than girls and have accidents overall. Myself and one other girl were the only girls who used to jump off the sea wall in to the sea. One lad broke his back one year doing it.

I haven’t taken any notice of this term. I don’t think it’s so much about who is chatty or quiet it’s more about danger and risk taking.

But there has been a lot of research on risk taking and gender and the outcomes overall concludes males take more risks. Always outliers obviously. I had a boy and a girl very much raised as a do what you like in this house. Of course DS was the twat who jumped from as high off the stairs as he could injuring himself, just like I had done as a kid, I did however knock myself out.

@Animatic single sex education isn't all bad, however old fashioned you think it is. It can be beneficial to males and females. In the old days it meant girls could actually get an education - and still does where religions insist on no mixing. It also worked well where societal beliefs about girls + sport/science/leadership prevailed. It even continues now - one local state school in Winchester divided GCSE forms for English and sciences at 14 and found it helped (a) the girls, because there were no boys to impress or distract them (b) the boys because they could express their emotional reaction to text in the case of literature.

It is actually really very bad as we do live in society where men and women co-exist in the same spaces, hence they do not need to be artificially segregated at a false pretext.

I studied in coed setting throughout and I can assure you the girls were better than boys in math and physics, and held more class leadership type roles. They didn't need special space to build confidence, they were simply brought up as equals to boys in academic setting.

I have one of each. Eldest (ds) is an incredibly easy child to parent and get along with. Youngest (dd) is emotionally extremely high maintenance. Mind you, she's nd which plays a big part. There is a prevailing theory that boys will be rambunctious and difficult to rein in and that girls will be meek and mild and it's to do with social conditioning from birth. I'm actually pretty pleased my children go against the grain. However difficult dd is to parent, she'll need that fire bellied independent streak when she's a woman. And ds will find life much easier without all that toxic masculinity to live up to.

No, she's saying that all the over the top "boymums" that make it their identity like the women posting on social media "#boymum so sad my baby boy is getting married I'm not his number one girl anymore" 🤢 are gutted they didn't have a girl. I tend to agree because it's so performative.

@There are obviously mums that only have boys who are happy to have only boys, these are usually mums that just behave like normal mums though and don't do the whole performative #boymum!! There's a difference.

@casapenguin

There are plenty of other studies.

But I'm surprised you don't observe it in real life. This isn't about what the cause is. Regardless of cause, don't you notice girls on average behave differently from boys on average?

If not, then I presume you are relaxed with adults encouraging different interests/behaviours in boys vs in girls. After all, it's having no effect whatsoever.

I have 1 DS and 1 DD, now older teens / early 20s. DS was in general harder when under 8 as was so active and always on the go. DD was in general harder as a teen because of friend issues and getting so emotional about everything. They are both lovely kids and probably fairly typical, but to an extent i can sympathise with the whole mum boy thing (though i hate the phrase) as on average i think boys are harder to parent when very young. and yes, i do get it that many girls like to play like boys, but on average.....

Why is a PP who believes people want girls 'vile' and a mum who openly admitted to struggling to only have girls 'lovely'? Seems to suggest that disappointment in having girls is acceptable but a preference for them is not. Personally I think PP and your neighbour are wrong. But at least PP is talking on an anonymous forum and isnt being negative about the sex of her own children. She is merely projecting. She isn't openly telling her neighbours that she'd rather have had sons.

Exactly this. There is so much sneering about little girls from "boymums" it's disgusting.

It’s called a bell curve. I think all of this whatabouterry could be explained by a bell curve 90 % of the time.

Yes some girls can be physical. Yes the differences in sex are less prominant the younger they are. Toddles all want to put them selves in physical danger.

But generally boys are more physical and tiring to parent. So if a boy mum wants to let off some steam about the difficulties of being a boy mum leave her alone.

Boys struggle in the school system more often than girls and there is a lot more sen provision needed for boys. A lot more on the adhd spectrum. Yes bell curve again. There are girls with adhd too.

I have two boys and a girl by the way. Girls is extremely physical and sporty and always upside down btw but I don’t constant phone calls from school about her latest injury like I do my boys.

you made a few typos, I fixed it for you:
"But generally boys some children are more physical and tiring to parent. So if a boy mum wants to let off some steam about the difficulties of being a boy mum leave her alone."

The issues you listed are largely or even entirely social conditioning.

Young boys are dressed in clothes that are looser and allow more freedom of movement and tough grippy shoes. Girls are put in frilly dresses, short shorts, pastel colours that get ruined by mud and shoes with open tops that let mud and pebbles in. Boys are also encouraged more to be physically active, as someone mentioned in an earlier post, the documentary a few years ago where you saw babies being handed toys aimed at the gender they were dressed as. So the kids dressed like girls being encouraged to play with a doll and the ones dressed as boys construction type toys. This was experienced early years staff too who shouldn't have been swayed by the pink and blue areas in the toy shop.

I don't think there are fewer girls with ADHD, autism, other sen. They are more effective at masking and it presents differently in them so causes less issues for others and so is much less likely to be detected, especially in primary school. Whether their ability to mask better is nature or nurture I don't know, I suspect it's mostly that they've been "taught" how they are meant to behave. Boys are taught to be more physical so when they erupt it's a more physical reaction, girls are taught to play quietly so they keep the stress to themselves until they reach breaking point.
'oh no, don't get muddy, you'll spoil your pretty dress'
'oh you can tell I'm a boy mum, we are always at the park and have so many sticks'
grr

Me and my sister once put a seesaw on the roof of a garage and made it so one of us would each be over the edge at some point, it was fun and it was stupid.
My dad was into extreme sports and taught us them safely, he also taught them to my brother who came along many years later than us girls.

Children are how you raise them.
Girls are taught from birth how to be good and quiet and lovely, whereas boys are allowed more freedom and this is down to societal conditioning.
If you want your boys to be more quiet and sweet then teach them to be so where it is appropriate, and similarly with girls.

You receive what you give.
Children will all just be children if you allow it.

So i agree with you, this whole boy mum girl mum bullshit is absolute bullshit.

It’s sexist bullshit. I have a girl and a boy and if I had written down their interests, likes, personalities on a piece of paper without telling you which was which, many people would say the girl is into ‘boy’ things and the boy into ‘girl’ things.
It’a all rubbish for the most part.

DD never wanted to wear ‘restrictive’ clothes or shoes so even when she wore skirts on the rare occasion she wore shorts underneath so she could climb and jump and play football. She’s only ever worn shoes that she can run in. She prefers clothes with pockets.
DS never had that issue because all his clothes, as with all clothes aimed at boys, were loose, comfortable, devoid of frills, had pockets, hid his underwear and kept his feet warm and dry.

It’s social conditioning - stick a girl in a pretty dress, then shoes to go with it and then she needs a bag to put her bits in… and then she’s told to keep it clean or neat and tidy…