Inane comments about how girl and boy toddlers are so 'different'

[porpoisefull]

Recently said to me:
"Ooh look at him pushing that tricycle round - that's just like a boy, he likes anything with wheels."
Re DS trying to step off a low wall while small female friend walked along it "Oh, that's the difference between boys and girls."
DS shoving whole sandwich in his mouth at once. "Oh, just like a boy." (on that occasion another friend walked in just afterwards and mentioned that her DD has the same greedy habit).

Why are some people determined to fit every insignificant little thing into a grand pattern of gender difference? Anyone else have any good examples?

There is plenty of evidence at a population that there are differences in the proportion of males vs females that exhibit certain traits - e.g. aggression, spatial awareness, dexterity, memory, verbal ability, competitiveness and there are good reasons (e.g. cross cultural studies) to think that these differences have a genetic component.

I.e. There is evidence for nature as well as nurture.

But as many have pointed out averages are not individuals and our children are not statistically significant samples in a scientific study but people who we grow to know and hopefully to encourage and support in whatever floats their boat.

There is of course no reason to tell our children they can't do x or y because of their gender. But neither should we assume that because children don't socialise in completely gender blind groups or choose hobbies and subjects in a way that results in a strictly 50/50 split between girls and boys, that this is all down to socialisation and internLising of stereotypes.

when the whole of a population has been culturally conditioned in a certain way you can't jump from there being observable differences to those differences being genetic.

Out today at park with my Dad and DD (3). We watched some little boys running past shouting about something and he laughed and said 'ah, typical boys'. DD runs up shouting (she is currently mostly being a firefighter) 'FIRE! FIRE! STAND BACK CALL FIREFIGHTER MOLLY!' and he says 'A little quieter darling people might get annoyed'.

Sybil - no indeed, and I am sure there is some cultural conditioning and some linked generic heritablility (as with most things it's a mix of nature and nurture - and nature intensified by nurture - like if you are a bit better at something you enjoy it more, practice more and become a lot better etc..)

But when traits are found with similar levels of apparent association accross different cultures that points to nature as well as nurture. Also the experience of hermafrodite children who grow up feeling they were asigned to the wrong gender, points to gender identity not being completely socially malleable.

My gut feeling (sample size insignificant etc..) from having children is that it challenged my assumptions about the power of social conditioning in general. I mean as parents we control our children's environment to a huge degree, but the extent to which we are able to influence their temperment, preferences and relative skills is (sometimes frustratingly) low. They are individuals with strong wills and personalities from the outset, and we just have to get to know them and do our best by them as individuals.

Isn't that a slightly different point, though, Himalaya? The influence of individual parents on individual children v. the influence of society as a whole on all of them?

And yes, children do have their own personalities, that's exactly why all this drive to fit individuals into predetermined boxes is so irritating.

Himalaya, different cultures may exhibit similar gender "tendencies" among girls and boys, but aren't those cultures also patriarchal? With similar inclinations to value characteristics like toughness etc. for boys and gentleness etc. for girls?

Granted, looking at other cultures would probably give lie to the supposedly innate preference for pink by girls for example, but I would imagine patriarchal cultures will have a fair amount in common about what is expected of girls and boys and people are likely to behave accordingly.

Edam - it is slightly different, but not two completely different things - society cannot influence children as a group, 'all of them' without influencing each of them one by one individually. And my parenting experience tells me that children are quite hard to influence at the level of personality, preferences and relative aptitude, not infinitely malleable by external influences as the all nurture/no nature theory would suggest.

Where I think society (parents and broader influences) does have a big influence is on attitudes and beliefs. And most of the full-of-thumb beliefs about what girls and boys can and can't do etc.. are constricting and damaging. But there is no need to assume away any population level biological differences in order to advocate for treating children as individuals.

DS loves cleaning as well as making a huge mess. Unfortunately the two don't often follow in the 'correct' order. I'm not quite sure how he has developed this love as I don't really do cleaning except the absolute necessary and we are infrequently home when the cleaner comes for her 2 hour stint each week.

MIL has commented on how inappropriate his toy Hoover is, but often goes on to complain at how useless her DH is around the house. I rarely say anything just look like this

And my mum is petrified that I will dress him in 'inappropriately' girly clothes (whatever that may be)

I don't think that it is a huge issue at the moment as he is only 16 months old but can see that this sort of attitude will affect him more and more as he gets older

At my dad's house DD (6) fell over, started crying and came to me for a cuddle. No comment.

DS (19 months) got frightened and came to me for a cuddle and my dad commented 'what a wimp' .

DD has always been into cars, trainsets and drawing/making things. She is an intensely physical child who runs around everywhere at top speed. She thoroughly rejected pink and whilst she will happily wear a dress occasionally now - when she was younger bribery had to be involved (she once went through a whole pack of chocolate buttons when I wanted to take a photo of her in pink frilly fairy dress to send to the relative who had given it to her). She liked books when she was younger but really only at bedtime and as long as they had a car or wheeled thing in. Lego is her big thing, she loves Doctor Who andd her favourite things are her sonic screwdriver, dolly and her ghostbusters tshirt.

DS is much quieter than his sister, much more contemplative. He is much more attached to dolls and cuddly things than she ever was, he has gradually moved all of her abandoned toys into his bed and gives them all big kisses before he goes to sleep. DD only started sleeping with one toy when she was 4. He loves helping me with the household chores, especially hanging out the washing and unloading the dishwasher and has a thing for DD's discarded hairclips and hairbands. He is also into cars and trainsets and making things. Both children are very physically affectionate but DS is much much more so as a toddler, DD was very independent. DS likes to choose his outfits in the morning whereas DD doesn't care what outfit she wears, generally preferring nudity.

I got lots of comments when DS was born about 'DH being pleased' etc when DH was actually desperate for another girl. DH's dad gave me an enormous hug and thanked me profusely for passing on the family name, conveniently forgetting his three grandsons from his daughter. DD has been told that she couldn't have her lunchbox by children at school because it is a boy's one (yellow with a dinosaur on ffs).

It all makes me so angry, especially the lunchbox one as DD loved it and was so excited about showing it to her friends and those children took a lot of the joy out of it for her.

Oh your poor DD that's what's wrong with all this stereotyping. A little girl being she can't like something cause it's for boys. How awful

I'm not convinced there is hard evidence for any population level biological differences beyond obvious physical functions. It's so hard to untangle what is conditioning and society and what is innate because obviously everyone is influenced by everyone around them and wider social beliefs. There's a belief that men in general are better at visual spatial skills and women at fine motor skills, men at gross motor skills, but how much of that is social conditioning from the minute girls and boys are born? If you have been praised for gross motor skills you will absorb that and develop accordingly. And as you say, you can't predict much about any individual from knowing their gender.

I do agree that girls and boys do live up to the stereotypes in ways I wouldn't expect. For example, I know 3 little girls who came from militantly gender neutral households yet they were really into pink and dresses before they had a chance to be conditioned by external factors.

However, one of the girls has a huge car collection - so she conforms to the girl stereotype on the one hand but the boy on the other

It's like national stereotypes - my in laws are German and they do conform to the stereotype quite a lot (very efficient, direct in their manner of speaking and writing, frugal (or mean!), wearing those horrible sandal things etc) but I don't really compare them to other national stereotypes iyswim. And that's what people do with children - they can see how they conform to their gender stereotype but aren't really looking beyond that

digging, there is no way at all the liking pink can in any way be innate. Therefore it must have been cultural influences.

Exactly, just as being German for instance doesn't make you obsessive about tidiness because of your genes but rather because that may be valued more as a quality than it is in other countries. A friend of mine is the best person ever to help with packing/tidying, he is very fussy about creases in things and cleaning around all the edges, just like his German foster parents in fact.

When nurture is the obvious cause (and IIRC to scientists "nurture" starts with influences in the womb - nutrition etc) why assume nature is the cause?

Dh is german, I often joke that he has a 'packing' diploma. He can fit double the stuff into a suitcase than I.
Sorry to digress.
Dd and ds are bitn very different, but so far it is more of a difference in character than gender, both have dolls and cars available and both like to play with them.
Thankfully my family all have a can-do attitude to each gender.

I didn't explain myself well - I don't think it is innate. But these girls do love pink and it's not because of marketing etc, just some girls will. They have between them 4 older sisters - none of them like pink (maybe it is a younger sibling thing?).

For all 3 girls liking pink is the only thing that they fulfil stereotype wise (i think they like dresses because they are more likely to be pink!) but people will often look at them and say 'oh isn't she girlie'. They just ignore the fact that she might be carrying a car etc.

It is interesting - having a DS first I am very interested to see how DD turns out. She wears a lot of DS' old clothes and because I hate pink no one buys her pink clothes as presents. I have a few hand me downs that are pink but proportion wise they are no greater than blue, browns, purples etc. She also has no girlie toys as she has all her brothers old baby toys which are of the gender neutral variety. She is exposed to a lot more boys toys as DS is into cars and pirates at the moment and she just wants whatever he has. Given how much I hate pink I kind of think it's inevitable that she is going to love it!!!

(Is tidiness a German stereotype? If so, my IL's definitely don't conform to that!)

Elephants - I wouldn't assume either way (and in the case of parenting your own children it doesn't really matter, just treat them as individuals) but in thinking about it less personally, more scientifically I wouldn't write off nature or nurture as some do here. Its scientifically non-controversial that most aspects of human development are a combination of both.

In evolutionary terms there have been males and females for a lot longer than there have been Germans and non-germans (in fact for a lot longer than there have been human beings) so it isn't as neat an analogy as it seems.

Timewasting - why is there no way that liking pink can be innate? I think it is a trait that is probably innate in general for both sexes e.g. to be more interested in pink than taupe or grey (although we can learn to like these sophisticated colours like we learn to like olives). Pink and red are the colour of ripening fruit and a good way to find sweet stuff to eat. I think most children tend to like pink and red, until boys are told they are not meant to.

No way that liking it is innate to being a girl I meant, obv.

Himalaya - because pink hasn't always been for girls. It used to be blue for girls, pink for boys as blue was seen as a calm colour and pink as a pale red so active and agressive. This held true for hundreds of years right up to Edwardian times. So a liking for pink signifying female cannot be innate.

Btw, when I was a small child in the 70s, there wasn't so much insistence on pink - party dresses came in lots of colours as did toys, even those aimed at girls. The pink phenomenon is recent and led by manufacturers. Just as the princess thing is far bigger these days since Disney did a major marketing push, taking Cinderella and Snow White et al out of the films and selling them as a group on their own, with loads of products. Before then, yes, girls did play princesses but there wasn't so much advertising and merchandising or toys available to emphasise it.

Agreed, edam, I don't recall much pink around when I was growing up at that time, either. AND I remember going to at least one party where I was the only girl wearing trousers (the others were all wearing party dresses) and NOT getting any grief about it. I've seen some really sad tales on this board about DC going to parties dressed in something other than the stereotypical garb and being given a hard time about it by the other children.

Interestingly, a poster on another thread commented that pink wasn't the colour for boys in days of yore, it was red (seen as lucky) but because dyes weren't particularly colour-fixed in those times, the reds would fade quickly to pinks. But it certainly wasn't the "girly" colour it is perceived to be today.

And yes, edam, as I observed above, reinforcing gender stereotypes with clothes and children's products makes a lot of money for those who sell them....
You're bang on, there IMO.

Firkytoodle: 'DD has been told that she couldn't have her lunchbox by children at school because it is a boy's one (yellow with a dinosaur on ffs).'

Nooooooooo! I got told at playgroup that my lunchbox was a 'boy's' lunchbox because it was yellow and had Spiderman on it. This would have been over twenty-five years ago. You'd have thought some things would have changed, wouldn't you?

VictorGollancz Same thing happened to me (orange lunchbox with a moose on it and later with TopTrumps). I was so cross. DD skipped into school so happily and was so excited. When she came out she said 'XX and XX said my lunchbox is for boys not girls, I said they were stupid because its my lunchbox and I'm a girl. I'm right, aren't I mummy?'. I told her she shouldn't call people stupid and took her for an icecream, but she didnt want to take her lunchbox to bed with her that nightas she had the night before .She is only 5 FFS she shouldn't have to be defending her choices at that age.

I noticed gendering at 6 months old by mums. We would go out in a group of mums with the babies in their prams, sitting up and looking around. The boy looks across the road and the comment is "that's a car Luke, look at the car" the girls looks across the road and the comment is "oh are you looking at the little doggie/baby/lady". And people use two years olds preferences to suggest there are innate differences in genders, yet two year olds have been indoctrinated for 18 months at least.

I worry about my DD falling under the stereotype influence. She is 2.5 and I have banned pink girly stuff, dress her in a mixture of boys and girls tops and trousers and encourage a broad range of toys. At the moment she wants robot slippers, rocket welly boots and to play football with the "football men" on the field next to our house. Her favourite toys are little people (playmobile etc) at the moment and duplo. She has short hair, it just hasn't grown much and gets mistaken for a boy charging around - the assumption is energetic, physical therefore male, then people hear her name and apologise for the mistake as if they have said something utterly offensive.

She is showing signs of picking up on pink for girls though. I am expecting DD2 in August and every time we look at baby clothes she has grabbed something pink and frilly and said "ooh look at this pretty dress!" she has no "pretty" dresses herself. What is that about? Bloody TV advertising, bloody MIL.

Mamalamoo - I don't doubt all kinds of gendering goes on, but I also think that we generally overestimate our influence on our kids interests and personalities (as opposed to their beliefs).

I have two DSs one of them went through a stage of being obsessed with diggers, dumptrucks, trains and cranes. I probably did more of the 'oh look there is a crane' with DS2 because I had been so throughly socialised by DS1's interest in them that I noticed them more. But he showed no interest so that quickly died out.

I'm not sure about your example - usually you notice what it is your baby/toddler is captivated by and go 'oh look there is a xxxx' it's usually straightforward to tell if they are looking at a dog or a car (unless it's a dog in a car but then it's usually 'oh look a dog in a car'h