Gendered brains

[MissScarletInTheBallroom]

I've read a few interesting posts recently - including just now by @haXXor on the Lib Dems thread - about the concept of "brain sex", making the point that it is impossible to tell whether any observable differences between male and female brains are down to nature or nurture.

In other words, if I am a girly girl, is it because of my DNA, or it is because my mum dressed me in pink frilly dresses and gave me dolls to play with from birth and everyone else treated me accordingly?

I am the mother of two toddlers, a boy and a girl, and I can already see how gender stereotypes are affecting them. And yes, if I'm honest, my daughter does have a lot of pink, flowery clothes. The clothes she wears to nursery are generally the same kind of practical leggings and T-shirts her brother wore, only hers tend to be pink. When she was tiny I often dressed her in her brother's hand me downs and felt irrationally annoyed when people thought she was a boy. Sometimes for special occasions I do like to put a dress on her, because she looks adorable.

Clothes aside, my son is obsessed with trucks and cars, but sometimes at nursery he will pick up and play with a doll. We never had dolls in the house until my daughter was born, and now of course we do because her grandparents were desperate to buy them for her. But she prefers to play with her brother's toys, as well as things which are not toys such as mobile phones, card readers, cables, everything you don't really want your baby to play with. She also has a much more extroverted personality compared to her brother, who is quite shy and sensitive.

Without wanting to be too extreme about it because I do want to put her in cute dresses sometimes, what is the best way to avoid gendered stereotypes in raising my children to encourage their brains to develop in the best way for each of them to reach their full potential, whatever that is, rather than what society thinks they should be doing based on their sex?

I do sometimes worry that the feminine is easily coded as lesser and all gender-neutral everything all the time can be absorbed by small brains as girly-is-bad?

There has to a sweet spot somewhere!

We didn't really make a conscious decision to not have prams and dolls for our son. In all honesty we haven't bought him a lot of toys because he gets so many as presents. His older cousin was already obsessed with trucks and cars and I think that rubbed off on him.

We have now bought a boy doll and a girl doll - anatomically correct! - which are for both kids. My son has played with them more than my daughter has, but my daughter is kind of still in the "destroying things" phase.

My son has a few teddies which he loves, whereas my daughter couldn't be less interested in soft toys, but he wasn't interested in them until quite recently either.

They both play with the toy kitchen which my son got for his 2nd birthday.

The home dynamic is an interesting one. My husband wouldn't go out of his way to buy our son a doll, but certainly wouldn't object to him playing with one, and he would probably not want me to dress our son in pink flowery clothes. But he wields the vacuum a lot more than I do. He does a lot more cooking and cleaning than I do, he does most of the nursery drop offs and pick ups, he took shared parental leave, and I am the main breadwinner, although our kids obviously don't understand yet. So I'm not too worried about what we are modelling through our behaviour as a couple.

I do think that we (as a society) tend to focus on girls a lot, regarding maximising their potential to become engineers, scientists and mathematicians but forget that fostering and allowing space for caring, nurturing and gentle play in boys is important too.

I could not agree with this more. It angers me that stereotypically male traits are prized above stereotypically female traits. I think the world would be a better place if everyone were pushed more towards being stereotypically female than stereotypically male.

I'll just leave this here

Differences in gender role behaviours are
apparent in pre-school, when children start to
show gender stereotyped behaviour in their
play. Around this time, they seek to play with
same-sex peers.

Toy choice has been extensively studied.
Researchers classify toys into those that are
typically preferred by boys (for example, cars
and trucks) and those that are typically preferred
by girls (for example, dolls). A systematic review
(Davis & Hines, 2020) demonstrated that these
differences in toy choice are very large.

Like biological characteristics such as
height, there is a large overlap in gender role
behaviours. This variability in gender role
expression exists from an early age (some
girls exhibit behaviours that are traditionally
perceived as more masculine, and some boys
exhibit behaviours that are perceived as more
feminine).

A common assumption is that toy choice
and other gender role behaviours are solely
a result of social influences; for example, that
boys will only be given trucks and girls will
only be given dolls to play with. Although this
is partially true, there is evidence for prenatal
and postnatal hormonal influence on these
behaviours.

Sex differences in the brain emerge in
the second half of pregnancy. There is strong
evidence from animal studies that these
changes are driven by the presence or absence
of testosterone and have a long-term effect on
sex-typed development (Bakker, 2014).

All three of the human characteristics
that show particularly large sex differences
(childhood sex-typed play, sexual orientation
and gender identity) have been found to relate
to early testosterone exposure.

Sex-typed play has been studied more
extensively than any other human behaviour
in this context, and at least 10 independent
research groups have reported a link to prenatal
testosterone exposure (Hines, 2015)

Give her a range of options and let her make her own choices.

Let her know through life that all choices of hobbies, work, interests are open to her.

Then let her decide what she wants to do.

So you have a lot of variety in place in terms of what they see between you and your DH. You can just build on that. You haven’t consciously avoided girl stuff- you didn’t need to, society does it for you!

I agree with some of what thingybob says, despite all my care and attention to providing dolls and so on, my boys banged their bricks together and shouted brrm brrm while their female friends talked to the bricks and held tea parties for them.

We do need to model the stuff they don’t learn naturally though - so set up a tea party for the teddies, and encourage the girl throw the ball out of the window to see how high it bounces.

It’s about providing balance and addressing skill deficits rather than limiting choices.

Eg. Boys develop fine motor skills later, so need more fine motor skills than they’d freely choose- play dough, colouring, bead threading. Girls tend to do more of it because they find it easier and the gap gets bigger so girls end up being better at writing.

I am just so wary of saying things are gendered in that way because everyone has a mix of interests and behaviours so it doesn't really matter and isn't relevant to your sex, we can be into all sorts and have all sort of aptitude's and talents but it doesn't mean out brains are different to our bodies.

I love action movies and science fiction, I love astronomy and even built my own telescope all of which are considered more masculine interests but I also love skincare, make up, clothes and rarely wear trousers.

My Dh is the most manly of men and engineer into sports and beer but he also loves the ballet and I've seen him shed tears at the beauty of wonderful performance, he must be fem brained, or not because that's all reductive, sexist bollocks in my opinion.

I was born in the sixties and wore whatever my mum could makeover from jumble bargains. Various colours, some dresses, some skirts but I wasn’t a pink and frilly girl and as soon as I could decide for myself I lived in trousers, jeans or jods (once I finally saved up for them) because all my free time was spent working at the local stables to be with the horses.
None of my friends were ever “girly” according to the stereotype so presumably we should all have been transed.

My Dd has had part of her brain removed. All the tests she had prior, they could not have known her sex as I asked the neurologists and surgeons. You can’t tell on a scan. They can make a guess but it’s mainly based on size (edit: this is for adults, with male head size being on average bigger). The part she has had removed is supposedly very ‘girly’ according to lots of pseudoscience. She has not changed sex. Her interests and personality have stayed the same. So be careful about all this brain science stuff. It sounds intriguing but I know (from traumatic experience) a lot of it is nonsense.

I remember something about if your ring finger is longer than your pointer finger, then you have more testosterone and will more likely like "boyish" things.

So I kinda think you're over thinking it. Biology will decide for itself.

If they can't tell what sex a brain is from scans, it means they're not using the right test to find out the sex of the person. It's bollocks.

There're much easier and more reliable ways of telling someone's sex.... 🤔

@1plus1equalswindow I have that longer ring finger and it is supposed to be due to exposure to testosterone in the womb so women who have that are more likely to have better special awareness and are potentially less likely to develop dementia. There is some truth to that but I've seen some people online say that women who have it are actually men, which is bollocks.

Gawdy lord, really? I have it too, and I'm fine people calling me a tomboy (or not-girly girl, whatever), but bloody hell, no I'm not a dude. Some people don't understand how insulting that is.

We used to call that the 'lesbian test'- if your ring finger is longer than your index finger (as a woman, obviously), it meant you were a lesbian. It's not foolproof, but it's surprising how often it is correct!

My ring finger is significantly longer than my index finger; my wife's ring and index fingers are exactly the same length.

It's bollocks.

Indeed, this is one of the most reliable ways of telling someone's sex! 😂

😂😂😂

There's been some recent research about brainscans showing some differences between men's and women's brains [sorry, haven't got the exact references, too lazy to look them up. Lazy, but honest]. The researchers themselves said that there was no way of telling if these differences were always there, or if the different socialisation experiences of the subjects had altered their brains along the way. Neuroplasticity would suggest that the changes happened gradually throughout the subjects' lives.. but anyway, the researchers were keen for it not to be a slam-dunk biological determinism thing.

There is. It's called dressing kids while they're little in a variety of clothes and not sticking to only one style until they decide what they like for themselves.

With my kids it was easy because they were all very vocal that they didn't want anything too faffy and frilly as it just got in the way.

If it’s the one I am thinking about, that’s the one where my Dd should have changed sex/gender after her op. 😂

I taught Dt for 25 years. I think we had about 10 boys do Textiles in that time. Despite trying our best with uptake. We tried everything.

I looked at the entry figures over the years. Never enough boys entered to even make it onto the graphs.

Electronics and RM attracted some girls. But not as many as boys. Graphics and Food attracted a mix of both.

I think gendered brains are something to do with it.

@MarieDeGournay is it the one that used AI to analyse the images, and used the kind of AI that can give a summary of how it identified the differences (explainable AI, xAI) ? That study claimed a >90% accuracy at identifying the sex of brains.

https://www.insideprecisionmedicine.com/topics/translational-research/ai-analysis-unveils-gender-disparities-in-brain-organization-and-function/

I definitely don't see it that way.

I remember when I was pregnant with my son I deliberately bought a lot of gender neutral baby clothes thinking, "I can re-use these for a second child even if I have a girl next time." But after he was born we were given a lot of clothes which were very obviously boy coded.

When I was out with him in his pram I don't remember anyone thinking he was a girl, although I did get a few people asking me if he was a girl or a boy, which I didn't mind at all. I'm sure that if I'd put him in pink or flowery clothes people would have assumed he was a girl.

When my daughter was born, I was planning to just re-use the gender neutral clothes, but I remember a few days before she was born succumbing to the temptation to get her a couple of pink and flowery onesies. I think it was partly because I wanted my brand new daughter to have something brand new that wasn't a hand-me-down, and partly because I never bought my son anything pink or flowery because I didn't want people to think he was a girl - I'll come back to this point - so these were cute, pretty things which I felt I hadn't had the opportunity to buy for my son. And then of course after she was born we were inundated with cute little girl outfits people bought as presents.

When I took my daughter out in the pram, even wearing some of the gender neutral outfits I got more people assuming she was a boy than asking whether she was a boy or a girl, and when she was dressed in blue everyone assumed she was a boy automatically. Ironically, the blue and green onesies she wore as a newborn were brand new and bought for her by my mum, who was convinced we were having another boy, so they weren't even her brother's hand-me-downs. I even remember showing my daughter's passport photo to my bumpers group in a Facebook chat and people saying, "he looks so funny!" when I'd said something like, "Look at Sophie's passport photo!" All because a few inches of blue pyjama were visible... right next to the girl's name and the "female" marker on the passport!

Despite my good "gender neutral intentions", I realised that I really didn't want people to think my son was a girl, which nobody ever did because I never dressed him in pink stuff, but I also really didn't like it when people thought my daughter was a boy.

So for me, it was never a case of thinking one was better than the other. Each time I was delighted with the baby I had and just wanted people to see them as they were. I'm not sure why I cared so much, but I did. But due to gender stereotypes, that meant at the very least avoiding clothes which seemed too obviously for the opposite sex.

what is the best way to avoid gendered stereotypes in raising my children to encourage their brains to develop in the best way for each of them to reach their full potential, whatever that is, rather than what society thinks they should be doing based on their sex?

as if raising children wasnt hard enough without having to navigate this too! But I would say don’t make it a big deal but approach it like all the other values you’d like to demonstrate to your children. “In this house, there are no such things as girl/boy toys, jobs, clothes, interests, attitudes etc.” And clamp down hard on anyone trying to say anything different under your roof. As they get older you can have the conversations about how not everyone sees things the same way but it’s sounds like you’re already not doing mummy’s jobs and daddy jobs along stereotypes so as longs as your deeds match your words you’ll be doing fine.

Thank you for this, I've just watched the video.

My kids both spend all day at nursery in a mixed sex environment. Obviously I'm not there watching what they do all day, but their days are divided into chunks of time where they either do activities, which are obviously the same for boys and girls, or they are left to play with what they want.

When I pick my son up at the end of the day, I am usually told that he has been playing with the cars and trucks again with his best friends, who are mostly boys. One day they did tell me that he and another boy were seen playing with a doll together and talking between themselves about needing to change the baby's nappy, which they thought was very sweet.

Obviously I can't guarantee that the nursery teachers aren't directing boys and girls towards different toys but as far as I'm aware they just leave the kids to do what they want during free play time. And in any case, they know perfectly well what sex both my children are, so whether they are directing them towards different toys or not, that wouldn't be affected by the clothes I send them to nursery in.

At home, I'm fairly sure we are not directing our children towards any particular type of toys. The toys are just there and we are both just happy as long as they are playing with actual toys rather than cables and plug sockets!

When we go to my in laws' house I definitely see them directing my son towards cars and my daughter towards dolls, and I have gently brought this to their attention.

Interesting discussion. I’m sure I’ve read or heard somewhere that the reason small children are so quick to pick up gender stereotypes from their peers as soon as they start to interact socially, and all the carefully gender-neutral socialisation done by their parents goes out of the window, is that they don’t understand that sex is fixed- they think it’s something that they have to reinforce constantly in their behaviour or it will change.

If that’s true there are some interesting parallels between gender ideology and the thinking of three year olds.