Differences in behaviour of boys and girls - nature or nurture?

[mummymagic]

Following on from another thread:

*Boys have a greater need to move
*Girls are more well behaved
*Houses with girls are quieter than boys.
*Girls language skills develop faster than boys due to boys testosterone

Is this down to social conditioning (subtle or overt)?
Or is it hormones and nature that make boys and girls different?
What about children who deviate from the norm (girls who act like boys and vice versa - and how do know when a girl is acting like a boy?)

Or is it all ridiculous and there is no differences at all?

Just a few questions to start a (hopefully) very interesting discussion...

I read recently an article which contained a sentence which went something like "Anatomical gender is binary" ie you are either male or female, but "psychological gender is on a spectrum" ie there are behaviours which are on average more commonly found in females and there are behaviours which are on average more commonly found in males. But you can have anatomical females with quite male behaviour traits and vice versa.

I'm not personally a great believer in social conditioning as an explanation for boys' greater physicality or girls' greater language skills, or preference for pink sparkly things. I think it's innate.

Surely a a mix of genes/hormones and social conditioning imo?

Only have a dd but was quite surprised by the behaviour of the boys who attended her 4th b. party this summer. Dh and I talked about it afterwards because it was so fascinating. As predicted, the boys conformed to the sterotype and tended to play by themselves with the trains and toys and although they joined in the organised games, they definitely needed more encouragement and gentle handling. However (and this was the surprising bit for me) they all seemed to be quite sensitive souls (in this "newish" social setting anyway) as compared with the girls who seemed far more confident and at ease with themselves. Not explaining this very well (rushed) but it was really touching in a way ...

Having said all that ... have you been watching the male twins in Child of Our Time on the Beeb? One of them is typically "boyish" - the other much more gentle and nurturing. V. interesting as of course as they are experiencing identical upbringing/social conditioning.

Was going to post but Anna said it better than I ever could have done!

I can give you my own experience, having one ds;

Yes, he has this compulsion to move and hare about and I would say it goes beyond that of any of the girls of the same age that we know.

Don't feel qualified to answer that one. DS has had the odd tantrum of course but in general his behaviour is fantastic.

We live next door to a house with girls only; they are SOOOOOOOO noisy. Way more noisy than ds!

DS was always extremely articulate, good vocabulary etc from very young; so we don't bear that one out.

There are differences in their development and their rate of development of course. I've found that from about 1 year old the girls in my post-natal 'group' were very different in what they wanted to play with and how they wanted to play. When they were just babies there was no difference but as the only one with a boy in this group, I definitely started to fee the differences very young, and we're pretty PC and 'right-on' and aware so I don't think that was down to social conditioning.

sorry - stereotype

also - pink/blue preferences largely encouraged by market forces in my view (so parents buy one of each)

Interesting. I have two girls - twins who are 6 years old. They were obviously born at the same time (more or less!), they have been treated exactly the same (I hope!).

However: DD 2 is very girly, has long hair, wears pink all the time, is very happy to sit and read and do puzzles, drawing for hours, loves her dolls and is a "typical" girl.

DD1 prefers her hair short, wears blue all the time, preferably trousers, is very into spiderman and scooby doo, can't bear dolls, won't sit still for long enough to do a puzzle or read a book, very physical, at her happiest climbing and jumping and racing around on her bike (blue, of course!), so in other words a "typical" boy.

The social expectation would have never even begun unless these traits were innate. Social expectation cannot account for 3 out of 4 children in Speech Therapy being male. I really pushed language with ds1, I expected him to talk early because I talk so much! I also pushed gentle movements, and sitting reading.

Well, he was about 18 months late to say his first words. he loves books, but stands next to me hopping from foot to foot and clutching his hands in an effort to stay in one place long enough to see the book. And he fiddles with things all the ^time.

my oldest son is a walking stereotype - I think my younger son may be less like this, he speaks more and moves less.

The testosterone language thing is true. here's a good easy link- read the bit about brain development.

Testosterone also has an effect on social development which is why it's wound up involved in theories about the development of autism (and the difference in rates between the genders- 4 times more common in boys).

The boys movement thing is mentioned in the article but if you look into kinaethetic learning you'll see its often described as a way in which many boys learn well. Not ds2 to be honest, he does better visually, but it does tap into the need for moevement that many boys have.

As for houses of 3 gilrs being quieter than houses of 3 boys- that's just my impression. I don't think that has ever been studied I'm talking pre-school/early primary. Not babies.

{http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=16448258\here's something on foetal testosterone and social development}

The link I gave in the other thread concerned testosterone levels and word retrieval. Higher testosterone levels decrease significantly the number of words that coud be retieved. (eg name animals begining with L- the more testosterone the fewer were named).

try again

more here on the effect of testosterone

I don't think anyone has suggested that a blue/pink preference is anything other than social conditioning.

Interesting article gess. The thing that I've seen with interest is the way toddlers approach insects - all my dd's girl friends are intrigued and want to look/stroke them, while the boys immediately try to stamp on them or squash them. Is that pure male/female instinct?

'girls are more well behaved'

I do think they are quieter than boys though, when I see friends with boys I am agog with the racket

well i mst have stereotypical children dd was slow to move but early to talk, ds is slow to talk but early to move!!

i would liek to say they have been brought up the same but dd got more 1-1 contact (eye contact in buggy, whereas ds faces away as in double buggy) and talking to, and ds follows his sister around and therefore wants to walk.....

makes me wonder about nurture you know!

I did read something the other day (I think on the BBC) about girls preferring reds and pinks as it was a help in identifying berries etc and not getting poisoned.

In my sample of one ds, I can tell you that he plays with things very differently to his female cousins. I can see that he is trying to figure out how things work and experiments with things endlessly. Hence his obsession with the salad spinner which is still going strong after 2 weeks!

ds is a typical boy-loud, active and excitable. He rarely whines or complains, but cannot sit still for very long-still have to exercise him twice a day!He was quick to talk-but apart from that he has really fallen into the boy mould.

DD is a typical girl-loves pink and dolls and pretty clothes! she too has been quick to talk-but the house is entirely different when she is there alone. She plays in a more compact way and a more constructive way! She does however whine and winge a lot and when she loses her rag she stamps her feet like a demented donkey!

here's that Simon Baron-Cohen again Mawbroon you'll like this one as regards the salad spinner

I've read Simon Baron-Cohen's book The Essential Difference - Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain and liked it very much. I recommend to anyone interested in this thread.

Mostly nature. But traits usually follow some sort of normal distribution, and I suspect there is a large overlap between the boy and the girl bell-curves. The 'norm' in either case is not extreme stereotypical behaviour.

DS - stereotypical boy, v active and sporty, loves cars, trains and typical "boys" toys. But he also has a sensitive side and is extremely loving towards me.

DD - a tomboy! Stands her ground with DS, enjoys chasing about with her big brother, also enjoys playing with cars etc. I dress her in "pretty" jeans and T shirts but never dresses, so impractical! Also v loving but mainly towards DH.

I guess some would argue DS is nature and DD nurture

So far my two live up to the expectation of boys and girls.

DD- quick to talk, loves books, painting etc and is quite sensible ie she holds muy hand when out and never runs away etc compared to friends boys who are just so noisy and boisterous.

DS on the other hand is already into everything, doesnt say much but is ahead of DD on his motor skills, loves cars, dirt and climbing.

I do wonder if its not just the gender that has had a say in these things but also birth order. I do let DS get away with far more because it keeps him quiet and am less worried about dirt etc plus he copied DD a fair bit and has picked up numerous bad habits.

My dds are girly and tomboyish! they both love pink, having long hair, skirts preferred to trousers, etc, but they are both very noisy, love being outdoors, LOVE being covered in muck and grime, littlest one adores her cars and road mat and plays endlessly with them every day, oldest one hero worships her 10 yr old male cousin and can keep up with him easily in his boyish exploits such as tree climbing, playing army, playing video games, all typically boy type stuff. So maybe I'm doing a good job not stereotyping them ? Or maybe they wud be a mixture however I treated them. My first ds is only 4 mo, so can't wait to see how he turns out!

I was a real social conditoning believer, and tried very hard, dressed ds in pink, didn't have any dolls in the house for dd etc etc, and guess what I have a boyish boy and a girly girl so now I'm more a nature person. But I do think it is important to give them space to change - tonight I was encoraging ds to think he could be a ballet dancer for example (he has inherited my high arches - but then again, also my clumsiness, so maybe not!). Also I thought that it wasn't so black and white with brains - haven't they done studies with gay, lesbian and trangenders that show some in between sorts of brains? I've alwasy hated that men are from Mars/women are from Venus stuff, but I suspect that's because it feels a bit lazy - I'm more than just a woman after all - I'm me! and the same for my little ones, even if they are, at the moment a bit stereotypical.

Has probably already been mentioned somewhere, but wasn't there an experiment conducted where babies were dressed in either pink or blue (randomly, regardless of anatomical sex) and then adults were observed as they played with the babies. The adults tended to be gentler and 'coo' a lot more with the babies dressed in pink (who they assumed were female) and more 'rough and tumble' and louder with the babies in blue. This demonstrates how social conditioning operates on a level we are not even consciously aware of. Mind you, having studied feminism and gender at uni I firmly believed that anatomical sex was the only difference between boys and girls, and that 'gender' was a cultural construction, entirely without meaning beyond what had been artificially and culturally created. But having a baby boy makes me doubt my convictions. He's a typical boy according to the stereotypes. But then again, I am aware when I'm with mums with girl babies how very, very (and yet subtly because it's so ingrained and normalised) differently we interact with our children. I do think that our social and cultural expectations and meanings which we assign to gender are so so deeply ingrained that it makes it supremely difficult to objectively decide what is 'true' difference and what is social conditioning.

There was an experiemnt like this on Child of Our Time, but they do things with tiny samples in a very unscientific way, so I wasn't convinced (by that anyway).