Gender divide in schools

[Juno77]

This has come off the back of a thread, not a TAAT though.

It seems a lot of people on MN have children who have birthday parties and only invite children from school of the same gender.

My DS has always had mixed parties; when he complies his guest lists he seems to have a fairly even number of boys and girls, and he gets invited to leads of girls parties(he is 9).

There doesn't seem to be this gender divide that I keep seeing on MN.

So I wonder. Is this a parental influence? A school influence? Or just the luck of the class group you are in?

Our Birthday parties were little (up to 10 children), and I did say that if the girls invited 1 boy they had to invite a second at least, similar for my DS (except when he asked Maddy who I knew wouldn't feel the odd one out on her own, she was the best footballer at school).

So often they were just one gender.

Starball Of course I have RTFT, I started it

Anyway. One boy hurt your DD's friend, and you are allowing her to ban all boys based on this. That is awful. Change boy for something else. Blonde haired children. Fat children. Brown skinned children. See what I mean?

The fact she thinks it is okay to exclude one group based on something such as gender, is awful. You have perpetuated this by not telling her from the start that this attitude is wrong.

All the boys hurt her friend at a previous party? The way you wrote it originally sounded as though some boys hurt her friend at a previous party and so she was now refusing to invite any boys to her own party.

BTW my DCs school enforces no gender divide and actually goes the other way. Tables are almost always mixed (unless there is a special reason why not for certain individuals - my youngest DD last year). They may say certain sports on certain days, but everyone has a go at all sports. So they have inter-house tournaments in Football and Netball, with all boys and girls playing.

The only thing they separate boys and girls for is 1 day of year 6 sex education, and they cover the same topics but just differently based on interest of the relevant sexes.

I know I'm about to stereotype here but DS has ASD and socially is way behind his peer-group. This is far, far more noticeable with the girls, who sad to say have mostly given up on him in his year group. He also had terrible problems when he was in a composite class with the very socially confident girls who were a year older than him and just wouldn't give him the time and space he needed to communicate effectively. I know it sounds like I'm generalising, but it's a small school, they all play out in the park after school and I have a pretty good idea of what goes on.

DS much prefers playing with boys who are younger than him - they play in a way he understands without too many demands on him socially.

That said, I still wouldn't let him have a single gender party, and even when he only had 4 friends for bowling and pizza last year, one of them was a girl...

Wilson to be honest, you sound like you are doing the exact right thing.

He seems to currently have a better affinity with boys, younger boys, due to ASD. That's fine.

You are actively discouraging this as acceptable by not allowing him to only have a single gender party. That, in my opinion, is brilliant.

What worries me is the people teaching their children that segregation is acceptable.

Yes Juno but when two of them turned up in sparkly dresses to a bouncy castle party and moaned about the lack of disco dancing I definitely wanted to segregate them!

Axford

Juno I think you need to re-read what I actually wrote before putting words in my mouth.

You wrote this:

At the moment I don't think I will be seen as having standing since none of it impacts my children directly.

So what did I read wrong?

Emmeline also said in her first post "My kids are only reception and haven't been subject to any of this yet" -- i.e. (as she said in her later post) "none of it impacts my children directly".

Yes, in terms of the overall culture and attitude of the school it will probably be indirectly affecting them, which is presumably why she put "directly" in that sentence.

I see, maybe I have misconstrued that a bit then, apologies Emmeline.

I still stand by the statement that it will be impacting on your children to see boys and girls being divided.

My dcs aren't school age yet but among friends who have children in reception/year 1 there is already a lot of talk about which boy likes which girl. The children talk about getting married etc and they're only 4 and 5! I think over time that sort of talk (which seems to be encouraged by parents as they laugh and comment) sends the message that boys and girls can't really be friends.
When I taught primary the really strong gender divisions seemed to appear in yr5 and 6, usually led by the girls who tended to be more sexually mature than the boys due to earlier puberty. In some classes the division between girls and boys was very marked - the boys were still boys while a large proportion of the girls were young women.

DD1 is in year 1 and does talk about getting married -- but says that she can't decide whether to marry Harriet or Felix (names changed for anonymity, but genders preserved).

Cailin I believe that behaviour is taught, learned from parents. Children only know what they are taught.

Homes like adventures are obviously a little more relaxed and less stigmatising regarding relationships, as her DD is commenting on marrying someone of either gender. Which is so lovely to hear.

Asking boys and girls if they like members of the opposite sex at a young age (actually, at any age) is awful, IMO. It reinforces heterosexuality in a way that makes me uncomfortable. I have always thrown in 'or boys' when people have asked 'are there any girls you like?' - though I find the line of questioning distasteful and repressive.

Totally agree Juno I hate it too. What really gets my goat though is parents at toddler group teasing and trying to embarrass my 2 year old ds for wearing a dress and high heels. He's a baby ffs! But even if he was 12 or 15 or any age I'd never try to make him feel uncomfortable for wearing "girly" things. I short circuited the mocking and thankfully ds doesn't seem to have picked it up. In fact despite having great language and being very sociable he seems to take no notice of gender. He doesn't differentiate between boys and girls and uses "he" and "she

rather randomly.

I do say (words to the effect of) "Well, you don't really need to worry about that at the moment; when you grow up you can decide whether you want to marry anyone and who that will be if so."

At about the same age DS told me that he was never going to get married because he had three different jobs he wanted to do, so he wouldn't have time. So I imagine that there were conversations about it going on at school then too.

Interesting thread. Dd (10) is in year 6.

At infant school she had mixed parties, pond dipping/sporty party/everyone in the park with a picnic. That seemed to be the norm across the year group and it was easy.

But when she got to junior school everything changed. She still played with boys at play time but gradually it became taboo to have friends who were boys. The girls looked down on the boys TBH and the boyfriend/girlfriend thing started, which I believe was encouraged by certain parents. Dd hasn't been to a single mixed party since she turned 7 and when I suggested she invite boys to her science/swimming/arty party she said she would be teased.

She still plays with the boy down the road but he goes to a different school and is a 'secret' friend. I think it's such a shame but I've gone along with it because dd has some social issues and doesn't need to be made to have a harder time at school...

OP i don't know how old your DCs are, but trying to get girls to invite boys or boys to invite girls just because you feel it's 'fair' is not going to happen unless the DCs in that peer group have mixed gender friendships.

DD2's class never have had. Because of the way the girls friendship groups were split in Y1 and recombined in Y2, they became incredibly tight knit, loyal to each other and protective of the quieter shy girls in the class. They had zero tolerance of certain of the boys (and very little patience with most of the others).

In any case, I think it's the general order of things that between7 and 11 boys are yuck. I wish it was still the case far to much lesson time in Y8 seems to be being used to gossip about boys.

DD2 has got through 2 BFs already this year (I've only had 2 in my entire life). Loads of male friends, I generally prefer men to talk to and had male lab partners, quite often.

Starball by DS is 9. He invites boys and girls to his parties (and gets invited to boys and girls parties) because there is obviously something within his school that has prevented such gender divide that others are experiencing. I would say it was from home, but the rest of his class seem to behave the same, so I conclude it must be down to the school, in part.

I don't try to get him to do anything. It is natural.

I am very thankful that the school don't segregate the children, or mark their drawers/pegs in red and blue (still can't believe people think this is at all okay..) and it is obviously helping them to form gender neutral friendships.

I have no doubt that I will face this soon. DD is in reception and is lucky enough to be in a class small enough (22) that all children will be invited, but I imagine at some point that she will be asking for a smaller group of friends to play with. The difficulty, from what I've read here about older children, is that I can see her wanting the boys as part of that smaller group (she tends to play with boys more than girls), but that they may not want to.

She seems to get on better with boys. She's particularly small for her age and boys don't 'baby' her like the girls do (some say it's their maternal instinct wanting to protect her), so she prefers the boys. Her very best friends are two 9 year old twin boys (DD is 4), I wonder how their peers perceive their friendship with DD a girl AND a very young girl at that...

Not sure. DS is 5 and a girl in his class was having a 6th birthday party, we ran into her mum and she said "Oh, DS, you must come round to play some time. But not today. is having a princess girly make up party!" and made a face which was supposed to indicate that he would think that was "yuk".

I don't think it was a whole class/gender thing but a smaller group which happened to be one gender but DS was quite disappointed to hear there was a party he hadn't been invited to, even though he has zero interest in make up!

Junno77, that's lovely, but I think it's pretty unusual.
My suspicion is it's luck and possibly having several boy/girl sibling sets (which we have very few of) rather than school.

The only influence DDs school could have had was coming down like a ton of bricks on the rougher boys rather than letting the girls themselves protect the quietest members of the class.

But even then there is nothing school can do about the fact that the girls all got on so well and the boys were either a pain or so damn quiet I can't remember most of them.