ARE boys different from girls behaviourally from the beginning ...

[prefernot]

Dp and I keep having this conversation about what makes boys and girls different from the very outset (apart from physiological things obviously ) and wondering whether certain often remarked on differences like girls talk earlier than boys / boys are better eaters etc. are just cliches or if true are due to nature or nurture. I tend to think now that biology plays an important part but dp is convinced that up-bringing is more important a factor. What do you guys think in relation to your own kids and others you've come across?

My SIL and I had babies at the same time,I had a boy and she had a girl. I found the differences between them quite amazing. I would say that she has better concentration for things like drawing and colouring while DS can't sit still for anything! DS spoke long before her and still has a far better vocabulary however the way in which both children have been brought up is very different. She has always been encouraged to sit and play quietly often in her playpen by herself while daddy worked. On the other hand I often felt I had to entertain my son and spoke to him far more and did far more hands on activities. As they get older, while he is still not interested in drawing and colouring, he is very good at reading and writing, she still prefers to draw and colour. She is great at getting herself dressed and organised, DS is not! He is fab at technical things and can operate the VHS/DVD/PC etc but she can't.I think a lot of this is down to the way we as parents have interacted with them although he is very much a boys boy and she is a very girly fairy princess!

prefernot- boys and girls process language differently. So boys process it in a very discrete part of the brain, whilst girls use the whole brain. It's the reason that boys are much more likely to have language disorders and autism etc (4 times as likely) - as brain damage to one area that's the only bit that processes language will have a greater effect than if you have lots of other areas that process it as well. I think ds1 demonstrates that perfectly- by far and away his biggest problem is an inability to learn language- it is like one bit has been taken away whilst everything else is intact. If he was a girl he'd probably have other areas that could compensate to a greater or lesser degree.

Boys and girls develop differently partly due to testosterone- it delays nerve cell maturation- so girls are born developmentally ahead of boys. Also means boys nerve cells are vulnerable to environmental insults for longer- and is another reason there are more developmental problems in boys.

Recognition of emotion from faces is also much harder for boys than girls. PET scanning shows that men have to use far more of their brain to do this task than women. The opposite is true for spacial tasks.

My DH & I recently took our DS to Pontins whoo, and there were lots of female kids with pink dolly buggies. After the first night, stopping DS from taking them, that was it. I went and bought him a pink buggy complete with dolly.

Well if you can imagine the DH going demented that a)I had bought our son a pushchair b)it was pink.

The moral of this story - the little girl whose pushchair Max was particularly trying to nick was navy blue/red.(DH banged on about Max, if he was going to have girls toys should at least, have a blue one) The mum explained that it wasn't new but she was fine with swapping. So we swapped. Errrr moral.................... don't listen to DB/DH/DP when they say that you are doing the wrong thing with girly toys. My little boy spends more time with this buggy/dolly than he does with me.

Point 1

Our brains change all the time. Unless and until someone does extensive MRI scans on healthy newborn baby boy and girls (which probably isn't going to happen), we won't know if its nature or nurture. What we do know is that nurture can cause permenant changes to the brain structure, so just being talked to more in the first few weeks would cause a baby's language centre to develop more.

Also (and I did study this at uni!) we just really don't have enough knowlege of what different areas of the brain actually do. A lot of these books claiming "language goes here..." etc are mainly hyothetical-they drove our lecturers mad.

Just because an area is bigger or used more doesn't mean that much. The brain is very complex and more area used does not correspond to greater ability. It can simply be inefficiency. I will try to remember some examples. I do remember that male brains are bigger than female brains-its just because they have more space and expand to fit it.

Theres an interesting study where men and women are asked to rotate an object in their head 180 degrees. Men are meant to be better at spatial rotation. In the first, the participants are told the study tests mathematical ability, in the second, that it tests creative ability. The activity itself remains identical.

Men do better than women when they think its about maths, women do better than men when they think its about creativity.

Point 2

I am struck time and time again by how ds (14 months) has "boy" behaviour reinforced while "girl" behaviour is ignored.

Two recent examples. A little girl (17 months) is chasing with ds round the playgroup. However, it is his behaviour that attracts attention-I get comments like "typical boy-can't sit still for a minute"...etc. Ds then sat quietly for around 10 minutes for the story while the other kids (mainly girls) were jumping up and down to get a better view-no comments.

Another one-at mother and toddler group, ds had brought a dolly-snuggly thing (IYKWIM?). Normally, if a child brings something from home the playleader will say "Oh,what a lovely...". No comments made at all-to the extent, ds playing with big train set, put dolly on train and playleader says, "Oh what a lovely train!".

He loves colouring, drawing etc, holding and stroking his teddy and dolly, putting said teddy and dolly in pushchair for a walk, pretending to cook (he makes frying pan and blender sounds!), hearing made up and fairy stories. He is wonderful with people once he's got to know them a bit. He loves anything glittery and sparkly and as far as he has a colour preference it is probably pink (to the extent that hes stolen several items of pink tat from Sainsburys .

He also loves cars (vroom vrom noises), including lining them up in his "garage" and putting the people in his truck, waving at cars going past,
running about noisily, and eating. His motor skills are {ahem} reasonably in advance, his speaking not so good BUT he can sign for virtually anything he wants.

So I think we look for differences and emphasise those, and we do reinforced positively sterotypical gender roles.

Wiltshire ... DS had a purply pink trolley with the ugliest pink doll I've ever seen

As for lining up toys .. DS did it for years with all his animals (he had an awful lot of animals .. probably around 50 or 60) .. I have yet to see a girl do that lining up thing

Interesting post, merglemergle.

I think a lot of the comments on this give evidence that girls are this way or boys are that way. But, not necessarily about why (ie nature or nuture).

It's an interesting debate. I guess the biggest reason I learn towards nuture is because I'm a girld and I have always hated most of the typical girly things. I am definitely more gifted on math and spacial relationships than I am in reading and language. But, perhaps I'm the exception?

These are really interesting replies, thanks. I think jimjams point is vital in that realising boys and girls brains are different. But then if you also go back to think about how and why they are different, what merglemergle says is kind of similar to where my dp's coming from. Are babies born with brains that process language differently or is the very early influences upon them what makes their brains process language differently?

My dd (2) is a 'typical' girl in that she's fussy, bossy, very chatty, not rough-and-tumble (all-in-all seems 'girlish') but she has no interest in dolls or babies or the colour pink and loves little trucks and cars and says her favourite colour's black - goth in the making I fear. But if I think about myself I am so not 'girlish' and much prefer little cars to dolls and I wear a lot of black, so I don't know if without meaning to I've passed that onto her. I've also talked to her like a loony since she was born.

well I have to say they are different because otherwise the logical extreme of the argument would suggest that more boys are autistic because mothers are more likely to make them autistic rather than girls. And the idea that autism is caused by poor parenting went out in the 60's (thank god!).

Simon Baron-Cohen may be worth googling here (autism=extreme male brain) as well (although personally I only really think his arguments apply to AS and very high functioning autism).

I always believed it to be nurture rather than nature. I was one of those irritating, disapproving mothers with a daughter who sat quietly and "behaved" ... then I gained a husband and a son and now I truly believe boys and girls are different. And although there is always the exception that proves the rule and children should not be stereotyped and made fun of for their choices I have actively decided to go with it and enjoy my son for his differences to me and my daughter. I have to say that now I am accepting this I am enjoying my son much more than I did when I constantly struggled with the idea that I was doing something wrong (because I found it quite difficult to relate to his maleness).

Quite so, Jimjams, those poor 'refrigerator mums' of the past! I'm not a big fan of Simon B-C myself but will check out that link. There are autistic girls though aren't there? I read a report recently that said the numbers of autistic girls were growing. If autism is definitely something a child is born with then do you think the claims against the MMR triple jab are unlikely to be true?

In a way when you bring in autism or congenital illnesses it kind of takes away the question of nature and nurture.

well imo there are lots of different routes to autism. Some children will be born autistic - I suspect that these are particularly relevant to simon b-c study. (We've had a discussion about this recently on SN- type 1 autistics). Others are damaged though. (we believe my son was vaccine damaged- not MMR though). I'm sure the claims agains the triple jab are true for a very small number of autistics. Wakefield, Shattock et al think about 7% of autism is caused by MMR. Personally I think thimerosil has been a bigger problem.

Overall 4 times as many boys are autistic as girls. MOst people seem to think this is because differences in brain structure in particular, but also development (due especially to testosterone) make boys more vulnerable. The recent paper on thimerosil and mice prone to autoimmunity becomeing autistic showed clear structural brain changes. If boys brains are different to girls it possibly/probably just makes them more susceptible to damage.

I think Aloha's (much earlier) message on this thread- is probably a clearer summary of all this.

re the 'we don't know what any of the brain does' comment.

Well we do know a bit. Not as much as we would like, but we do have the basic atlus. And I know this because I spent almost 9 years in post graduate research in the area . It obviously isn't hard and fast, due to issues like neuronal plasticity but we do know that, say, emotions are centred on the limbic system. We know that the hippocampus is involved in the processing of memory, even though there may still be some debate over what type (with spatial memory being the current fav, or at least it was when I was working in the area). We know the rough areas involved in the processing of vision. We don't know all the detail yet, but we do know a bit.

Not having had a girl, I can't make a contrast based on my own experience, so can't really take part in this interesting discussion. I do know I was a very different child to my boys - shy, fearful of authority, literally worried myself sick over schoolwork. They approach life differently in so many ways.

In one way my oldest son goes against the male sterotype - from the time he was a baby, he was a very eager communicator. He was an early talker and for his age, has a large vocabulary, learned to read early and is very articulate.

I remember seeing a program about male and female brains. Paraphrasing from memory here - apparently it is to do with the levels of testosterone when the fetus is developing. Generally boys are male-brained (ie single minded, spatially aware, less linguistic, more agressive), and girls are female-brained (multitasking, linguistic, less agressive, more caring).

But if there is a lot of testosterone with a female fetus then she will tend to be more male brained (ie more spatially aware, more single minded, less socially adept - may become an engineer for example), and if there is less testosterone with a male fetus he will be more female brained (better at multitasking, more caring, less agressive - may become a nurse for example).

Obviously nurture will interact with these underlying tendencies.

Also I have a vague memory of the autistic spectrum being "extreme male-brained-ness" (good word !) - maybe tied up with testosterone ?

Twiglett, my friends daughter likes to line her animals up - she is 3.

to your original question - nature - v - nurture - did you see the programme about the twin boy who lost his penis in a botched operation and was subsequently 'brought up as' a girl - it didn't work - he committed suicide this year

We are what we are - some females are girly, girly some are not - some males are he-men some are not. We all develop at our own rate - I think its generally conceded that girls develop more quickly than boys but there are always exceptions to the rule - my own boys walked and talked as early as dd but she was more self-sufficient - thats the one thing you can say about males - they never stop liking being waited on

twiglett you are invited chez Enid to visit dd1's room and view her immaculately lined up rows of My little Ponies - don't you dare move one though as she'll know and be heartbroken until its gone straight back into the right place

Surely, it has to be an interaction effect between nature and nurture (and so you are both right, prefernot ).

Brain neurochemistry and anatomy plays as role, as Jimjams and others have explained, but also upbringing can effect this.

I founnd it really interesting when someone entioned the reinforcement that children receive - ie boys get boyish behaviour reinforced and girly behaviour ignored. I am sure this is a key factor too.

My rather butch, strong boisterous, loud 2 year old also loves his dolly and buggy and likes to play nurturing games. He also loves to sit quietly and 'read'. He loves to wash up and help with dusting etc. We have made a conscious effort not to discourage this - after all, some woman (or man) in the future will thanks me for it .

I read a really interesting book on this in uni......think i was called 'Not in our genes?' - not sure who it is by and is probably a bit out of date now - but it summarised fairly succinctly the nature/nurture debate.

Another book which I found fantastic - again, I read it at uni (and again and again after that) is a book by a guy called Matt Ridley called 'The Red Queen' which gives an evolutionary perspective on gender differences and sex. Evolutionarpy psychology was fairly 'new' when I was at uni and is a really interesting perspective to look at gender issues with!

popsycal - my 3 boys all like to play with the only doll we have (mine from way back), lots of soft toys, washing up, cleaning, and DS1 (3) is busy with his "baby" (teddy) at the moment - breastfeeding, changing nappies, looking after when not well etc etc. They all also love books and like to sit and "read" them. However, they are also very keen on tractors and wrestling, and running about being very loud !

sounds very much like my ds!

:

his two current favourite games are getting all the cushions and launching himself on the floor onto dh and squahig him under the cushions. he runs from the kitchen into the living room at top speed yelling 'charge!!!'

then the next minute he is talking to his dolly, feeding her, kissing her and reading to her. or getting baby wipes and 'dusting'!

popyscal - I think we have the same children - only I have 3 of them !

So, the testosterone then explains why I became an engineer... and I thought it was because my brother, father, two grandfathers, and at least one great-grandfather before me had become engineers. Okay, I'm the first girl. But, I think nurture and my dad's desire to discuss engineering at every aspect of life probably influenced me.

Perhaps, I inherited an "engineering" brain (nature) or perhaps everyone around me influenced my choice (nurture). I suppose I'll never know.