To think men and women are actually programmed differently?

[Isittjustme]

I have spent many years believing a lot of men just don’t get on with things in the same way women do (ie ‘seeing’ the jobs to do in the house etc) because they are socially conditioned not to. But… since having ds and watching my partner really do his best but basically be far less good at parenting than me, I have started to wonder if men and women are actually just programmed differently.

DP really does try (at least I believe so). But he doesn’t get a good system going with ds when doing a nappy, just one example, he will often be flailing around or forget to wash his hands etc. He will forget to blow on the food every once in a while.. there’s so many more examples and they are small things I guess, but in contrast I rarely do these things. And I’m not saying I’m a perfect parent, I’m not. But I recognise this with my friends and the men in their lives too, it’s the same sort of thing.

DP has a good job and does it well. He’s quite a sincere man and I think he really does try his best. This makes me think perhaps some of it is innate for women and not for men?

I have, and no the differences are not innate. What happens is caregivers treat baby girls differently compared to baby boys. Children learn before they can talk which sex they are and the social expectations of them or lack of expectations.

The brain is very plastic and malleable. The brain scans reflect years of social conditioning that then affect cognition and emotion.

The gift threads are full of people falling over to make excuses for men and having low standards for men because they ‘just aren’t good at it’. If society doesn’t expect it, of course that’s what will happen.

Exactly. It's learnt behaviour.

My 10 year old boy is already really thoughtful about presents and cards because he's seen his dad and other role models do the same.
The same goes for housework and childcare - because it's split equally in our house that's the norm for him.

I have, and no the differences are not innate. What happens is caregivers treat baby girls differently compared to baby boys. Children learn before they can talk which sex they are and the social expectations of them or lack of expectations.

It starts in the womb really. It's a boy and a kicker? Oh he's going to be a footballer, a bruiser, such a boy! It's a girl and a kicker? She's going to be a pain/a nightmare, sassy/bossy/feisty.

Baby gifts, clothes, toys , decorations in stereotypical patterns and colours. By age 1 their environment already exposed them to stereotypical boy/girl things and almost completely excluded the opposite.

But my boy always wanted trains ever since he could talk and we didn't encourage him either way.... in his little train blue onesie, with his train/car mobile, his train bath toys and tasteful wooden train decorations in the corner.

I don't know if there are innate differences in skills and tendencies between men and women- isn't the jury still out on this age old question?

But my anecdata, for what it's worth, is that my husband is more nurturing than I am. He was excellent at soothing the babies, especially at night, and never shirked any of the responsibilities that go with parenting. He played with them more than I did too and was more patient. But in terms of housework, he is a dreadful hoarder and doesn't mind living in a mess whereas I am very clenched and find it difficult to sit down and relax if there are crumbs on the surfaces or the floor needs hoovering.

DH is almost certainly neurotypical whilst I am likely ND- I think that has more of an impact on our tendencies and skills than our sex does (for us personally, not speaking generally here).

people that have had babies of both genders will tell you from real life experience how different males and females are. It is a strange agenda to alienate people from their lived experience to say otherwise.

I have had boys and girls.

Do you really think that everyone on this thread saying there’s no difference all have either boys only or girls only?

There's also confirmation bias.

Both sexes.

And they will differ because they have been treated differently from the second they're born. Which they will have been - especially if a parent believes they are different.

@Doliveira how many baby gifts did you buy for boys/girls that weren't stereotypical? How many did you receive?

I don't know, I think you've had a lot more practice

There are other factors at play I think

I have boys and girls and I feel like you are attempting to alienate me from my lived experience. Which is that socialisation begins even before the child is born.

Yes, but the real question is whether it's entirely social conditioning (/practice).

I think the starting point for virtually anything human should be to expect a mix of nature and nurture, because of natural selection in a species that is highly social. Then ponder what mix is most likely.

Unless we think baby-rearing has been a 50:50 shared task throughout our evolutionary past (switching to being heavily female just in time for recorded history to start, presumably), then a baby whose mother was bad at it would be much more likely to die than one whose father was. That would select pretty heavily for female aptitude in that thing, without much of a complicated story at all of how that might increase survival/reproductive ability of her children. If they die, they don’t reproduce.

If that story above is even vaguely accurate, it would be weird to expect higher female aptitude for baby-rearing to be 0% nature 100% nurture.

"Competence" is in the eye of the beholder isn't it, and it does seem to me like many mothers are micro-managers.

But we're the opposite way round in our house. I clean the bathroom in 10-15 minutes.

DH takes an hour when he does it.

Yes he does it better. But I do it well enough.

Far more mothers need to stop martyring themselves and master the 80-20 rule - ie 20% effort for 80% result. Much more efficient than going for 100% all the time.

I think in general men and women do have different brains. Our original basic biology accounts for it - men stronger, better at hunting and protecting, women better at nurturing. Doesn't mean we can't learn to be different or that all men / women are the same, but I think it's pointless not to concede that evolution has made differences.

I will never believe that having a penis means that you can hold down a complicated, senior job yet somehow can’t manage to turn on a washing machine or change a nappy.

@SouthLondonMum22

They want us to believe that somehow the possession of a penis makes men incapable of child rearing, using a vacuum and buying sensible gifts so that we accept mediocrity as biologically driven.

Agree. That doesn’t imply there’s no biological element though.

Two separate questions: whether there’s a biological component, and what the social implications of that are for us now.

I don’t think that reinforcing the idea that there’s a valid link from a to b is particularly helpful. (Which you do if you deny a on the grounds you disagree with b).

It sets up the question of whether men can and should be fully and equally competent in child-raising as a scientific question, for a start, on which the evidence may come in either way.

Far better, surely, to treat that as what it is: a social and political issue, not undermined at all by any possible answer to the nature vs nurture debate.

In a nutshell - reinforcing the biological aspect is a way to get women to settle for mediocre partners.

So is male aggression entirely a result of socialisation then? No correlation with testosterone?

I feel that’s pretty much the opposite of what I wrote.

Is there anything in what I wrote that you disagree with? If so, what?

Exactly.

@JHound Sorry, I realise I may have misread your reply as being your summary of what I said (if it was that, it’s totally wrong).

If you meant only that talking about biology can be a way to excuse men from child work then I agree it can. I think those are extremely weak arguments.

Where I think you and I may differ is that I think the thing to attack is the weak reasoning from a to b.

I don’t think it’s helpful (in fact I think it’s massively unhelpful) to implicitly agree that the logic works, and just instead deny that humans are a product of evolution, at least as far as some element of some differences between men and women goes.

Do you think that if there’s a biological element, it excuses men from pulling their weight? (I don’t).

No. I think those that believe there’s a biological element often think the biological element is larger than the social element and think it’s an acceptable excuse.

You see examples on here all of the time.