Boys 'n' girls: is it nature or nurture?

[Allyinoz]

I have a DS 5 and a DD 1. They are different! I have been always put differences down to birth order and temperament. But i wonder how much we train our children to be girly or boysy.
Lots of people also seem to think that the differences are hardwired.

I have been trying to read Cordelia Fine's book Delusions of Gender. She believes that are brains are not hardwired to gender.

www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/10/gender-gap-myth-cordelia-fine

What do you think?

The amount of hardwiring is tiny and the rest is down to nurture. Try reading Pink Brain Blue Brain - it brings together all of the gender-related neuroscience that's been done on baby and small child brains (as opposed to simply extrapolating backwards from adult studies) and it's clear that a vast amount of it is down to expectations and social conditioning. It's also very good at what you can do to encourage your DCs brains to be more well-rounded.

I have lots of friends with two children - 1 girl and 1 boy who will l often comment on how different boys and girls are - I don't really buy that, I think that all children are very different but if you just have a boy and a girl you might see that difference as a gender thing. I have 3 children - two DDs and a DS. Characterwise my two DDs couldn't be more different in temperament and personality. DS however is a complete clone of DD1. So I have had a very different experience bringing up my two daughters but in many ways with DS I feel like I'm back on familiar ground as he is so similar to his older sister. As for the whole external girly stuff / gender differentiation - I think most of it i learnt. E.g. DS is now 3 and a half and up until very recently his favourite thing was to be dressed in a sparkly dress pretending to be a fairy - copying my DD2 who loves that stuff. Recently though he has become aware of gender 'appropriateness' (probably through occasional days at nursery and from DD1 telling him that fairy dresses are only for girls) and so has stopped that. I have been told though that little boys do experience testosterone surges at certain points through their development (i mean when they are still small, not puberty) which presumably does effect their behaviour differently from girls, but we'll see.

The testosterone surge thing is a myth, I'm afraid - there are no hormones for either sex between birth and puberty.