The gender gap: Messages that can affect the way boys and girls grow up

[seabeyond]

A new study from Netmums reveals that 88 per cent of mums admitted that they treated their sons and daughters differently despite thinking that this was wrong. Most worrying of all, mothers are twice as likely to admit to being more critical of their daughters than their sons. The 2,500-strong survey by the parenting website discovered that mums "type" their children according to gender, with boys seen as "funny", "cheeky", "playful" and "loving" – the perfect child – while girls are viewed as "stroppy", "argumentative", "eager to please" and "serious". These perceptions hold true even for mums who only have daughters, according to the study, while one in five of those who do have sons admit to letting them get away with more – in short, turning a blind eye to behaviour in boys for which they would reprimand girls. There are long-lasting and serious repercussions, cautions Crissy Duff, psychotherapeutic counsellor and Netmums parent supporter. "Women in particular seem to carry the feelings of parental disapproval and negative 'typing' into adulthood. This could be why many women are far more self-critical than men, who often have a more relaxed attitude when it comes to making mistakes and moving past them." Boys are affected, too. "They often grow up thinking, for example, that they somehow deserve more freedom than women, who need 'looking after'," says Duff. It's a wake-up call to parents, she says, to help break these gender cycles and even out the differences in how the sexes behave and think about themselves.

*

But parents should not beat themselves up, insists Cordelia Fine, author of Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences, who believes it's practically impossible not to get caught up in the "gender trap". She says: "Although we have the strong sense that our perception of others is objective, it's very difficult not to perceive others through the 'lens of gender'. In one recent study, mothers of 11-month-old infants were shown an adjustable sloping walkway and asked to estimate what steepness of slope their baby could manage and would attempt. Girls and boys were identical in both crawling ability and risk-taking, but mothers underestimated girls and overestimated boys, both in crawling ability and crawling attempts. This is the boys as 'bad-but-bold', and girls as 'wonderful-but-weak' stereotype at work."

*

Largely to blame, she believes, is a marketing onslaught on children, the like of which has never before been seen, and which continually and successfully segments the child market by gender. "And second, many popular books written for parents claim that science has now shown what we all suspected all along – namely that boys and girls are 'hardwired' to prefer different kinds of toys and activities." Upon having her own children, Fine looked up the studies named as evidence in some of these books and was shocked to discover that the neuroscientific data was, she claims, being misrepresented. The reality, she says, is that, in one recent study of children's play behaviour, girls spent twice as long playing with "boy toys" as they did with "girl toys". Moreover, despite parents consistently describing their boys' behaviour as "testosterone-fuelled", Fine points out that in humans there is no clear causal relationship between testosterone and aggressive behaviour.

*

Angela McRobbie, cultural theorist and author of The Aftermath of Feminism, believes the root of the problem is that so many of today's mums think of feminism as uncool – "that it's no longer relevant and that it's associated with the boring tediousness of political correctness". She adds: "Because they don't want to be associated with it, they have become fearful of speaking out about the return of gender inequalities. What consumer culture has done is come along and exploit that, so that today's non-feminine little girls are penalised." Add to this our culture's obsession with the body beautiful and perfectionism, and you start to get an insight into why so many girls are growing up with eating disorders, and why boys are in danger of starting to see females in outdated stereotypical ways. "It's very disappointing to feminists of my generation that we feel we have to say the same messages all over again, albeit in a different context," she says.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/the-gender-gap-messages-that-can-affect-the-way-boys-and-girls-grow-up-2111887.html

[Gman]

1. Boys will always be boys

At least they're training the women to keep them in line later. Somebody has to do it.

[seabeyond]

2. you mean like... leave boys alone and control the girls?

kinda like exactly what the article said? thank you, man, for confirming the OP.

[iverglas]

3. "Latest" strikes again

[seabeyond]

4. since he basically proves the points and demonstrates a mans "fears"....

not to mention his obvious misogyny that so many insist we dont have on this board. and down right stupid comment.....

i almost dont want to alert.

[iverglas]

5. I just prefer not to see it

in the HISTORY OF FEMINISM forum. I'd seen it and decided to ignore it ... rather than see discussion in this place derailed.

Your opening post is, of course, full of complexities, the complexities that have been reflected on and studied countless times now, and the problems for which solutions are so elusive.

Top-down leadership of some kind seems so needed. It is what is happening now, after all -- corporations that market to children, alone, are exercising enormous top-down pressure on the way children are reared.

Something is needed to counter that pressure. Not necessarily laws, and not necessarily any kind of coercive measure. But what?

Parents alone are fighting an uphill battle -- not just against those outside forces, but against their own internalized prejudices and stereotypes, no matter how hard they have tried to banish them.

[seabeyond]

6. true all that you say. it will take societal pressure and refusal and EDUCATION. but,

with posters like gman we see how hard certain parts of our society refuse to be educated. they prefer to stay stupid, regardless of damage done because it gains them dominance and privilege at teh expense of their moms, sisters and daughters.

[MadrasT]

13. Could that have been sarcasm?

Rather than "obvious misogyny"?

[seabeyond]

14. could be. then of course, there is history. but i am totally open

to gman saying.... wait, sarcasm. cause so obviously oh, reinforcing the article and obvious stupid misogyny.

at that point... i will willingly and humbly delete all posts.....



anything is possible. like you have said, doesnt always play out in type.

[redqueen]

15. I wondered that too.

Not that it was sarcasm specifically, but possibly some kind of unserious comment.

[seabeyond]

16. i wondered too, because it was just so......, lol. but, iverglas

certainly has a point. this whole Op is about gman.

[redqueen]

17. No one is preventing anyone else from commenting...

and any comment can be ignored or a poster banned if they were to continue to engage in pointless derailment to the point that no helpful information was being shared in whatever subthread.

This person posted one comment. Not sure if all these responses are even warranted, especially given the nearly nonsensical content of the post which precipitated them.

[seabeyond]

18. true that....

there can be a lot of "right" at one time.

[redqueen]

7. I don't know how you managed to make any sense of that comment at all. nt

[seabeyond]

8. it was laughably..... weak. nt

[Gman]

29. WTF? Huh?

[seabeyond]

30. WTF? Huh?.. kinda what we were wondering. nt

[Scout]

9. ... and a lot of them will be assholes too, apparently. n/t

[seabeyond]

10. because their mamas never said.... no, to them

lol. it all goes back to the mama

[Scout]

11. ... and daddy was totally powerless! n/t

[seabeyond]

12. or not around, or not involved, or believed the same and reinforced.

i dont know what makes that. i was going off the article, and other articles i have read.

[iverglas]

19. in my older age ...

When I was in my early forties, the little girl across the streeet befriended me. "Daisy" was about six then, Chinese-Canadian, with two younger sisters and parents who worked their asses off and spoke little English. Daisy approached me as I was shoveling a load of topsoil into my garden in the rain one day and offered to help. She and the girl next door, "Rose", also Chinese-Canadian but with more middle-class parents, started hanging out at my house.

Over the next three years or so, I spent quite a bit of time with them. I showed them videos of classic kids' movies (and books and other elements of the mainstream culture) they would not have been introduced to at home -- from Mary Poppins to The Parent Trap (they were fascinated by the prospective stepmother's "electric hips" and parodied her wickedly). They had a spare room as their craft room. They made peanut brittle and knitted scarves for Christmas presents, their mums had them deliver little Chinese delicacies to me when they cooked on special occasions, I pressured them to attend their Saturday morning Chinese language classes, and we went on little outings occasionally. One funny episode was at a craft fair when I had said they could each spend $10 and they opted for sealing wax and seals with their names on, and I was insisting they include their Chinese names, over their objections. The older Chinese man running the booth was amused, and said to me, "Are they yours?" Not only am I not Chinese, but they were about the most un-alike looking Chinese kids you can imagine. Then I figured out that he guessed, given the bickering, that they were adopted-mine.

Anyhow, they got older, and their families moved away. I like to think they got a leg up on integration into the majority culture, and some confidence in themselves as girls from having a different role model and exposure to possibilities, that they might not have had otherwise.

But you know what? Rose had an older brother, "Arthur". Arthur tormented Rose mercilessly when she was little, and the parents tolerated both his behaviour and her screaming response. Living up to the cultural stereotype, Arthur was the little prince. Later on, the mum consulted me about behavioural problems they were having with Arthur; he was gravitating toward gangs and getting out of control. He himself approached me for money when he got caught in an extortion scheme at school when he was about 12. The parents moved to the suburbs, mainly to get him out of the inner city, but I doubt that it helped.

So what I'm thinking ... my point, and I do have one ... what if I had focused on Arthur some? Or if a male role-model figure had done that, a big brother, the way I was playing big sister, in the classic Big Sister organization way, to the girls?

I'm a woman so I gravitated to the girls (who had gravitated to me), and that was some girly stuff we did. I'm just not into soccer. But they knew I had a career, and what I did, and we did talk about career stuff too.

But the boy got left to his own devices. There were all the negative cultural influences (both mainstream and minority, both at home and at school) working on him as a boy, and nothing to counteract them. I wish I'd thought more about that at the time. I did do little things to try to draw him in when the kids were together, but nothing as focused as with the girls.

I doubt that I could have got him into making peanut brittle and cheese buns with the girls, or got through to him in the way I did with the girls just generally. But somebody bloody needed to.

And when all the Arthurs of the world grow up under all the male/female stereotypes, and with all the permissions to behave badly, that so many of them do ... what a world we get.

Those parents would have been starting from zero or worse if it came to persuading them to practise equality or gender neutrality in their child-rearing. They wouldn't know what it was all about, and they would really need serious interventions to even persuade them of the need for different approaches, let alone equip them to implement them.

Surely the schools can play more of a role in that. Our local school is big into multiculturalism, given the overwhelmingly "minority" make-up of the student population. I used to help the girls with their homework and go to events at the school with them occasionally, and I never saw any indication of the school addressing gender roles or stereotyping. Maybe things have changed in the last decade ...

I guess I have kind of two points. One is the enormity of the task of changing human behaviour. And the other is that the place of boys in our endeavours in that direction in this particular instance, trying to eliminate negative/stereotyped gender attitudes and behaviour, maybe isn't given enough attention.

[seabeyond]

20. this is such an interesting and good post.

in my life, i always had the boys, little and otherwise. i spent a lot of time at the schools and mother day out programs. and most of my family had boys. few girls. there were boys that you knew had need. they always gravitated to me. for whatever reason, and it was very interesting for years. they were the boys my boys seemed to adopt and bring into our world. i would walk into a class and they would be there first, in my face. and it was touch, eye to eye, a connection they were desperately looking for. so much, i could feel the need. i had one boy, whose mom was not in his life, and he would often spend the night. i could not get him to go home after sleep overs. he would want to stay another night. he would also come leaning on my body for petting.

older, middle school, they are at the point of disconnecting, yet stupid and silly of parents to think that is the answer. i had sons friends here and they would follow me around talking to the point i am saying, enough.... go play. we learn from society that boys are not suppose to need, but that is not a reality and a person half way perceptive can see the need to connect and learn. i was always thrilled to have the opportunity to explore outside their box. that is so confining here in the macho man panhandle of texas. and the kids LOVED it. politically, socially. and it was a must in conversation that even in differing view it was all about respect and exploring different perspectives.

now son is in highschool, and the kids are older walking toward adulthood. and still, there are a couple kids the still need and want that connection with a certain lack or question as they look toward their journey into adulthood.

always in this house i have shared different perspectives from the one they grow up in. and maybe thru out life there will be times when something will trip off a memory to something that was said in this house.

i think the worse we do with our boys is give them the label that they are laid back, boys being boys in that they naturally come to all the answers and need no guidance, have no emotion and unable to self reflect. i have found NO signs that is true anymore than with girls. there are kids that have not been given the opportunity or events in their life shut them down. both genders. and then there are boys that walk into the environment where it is a norm and explode with the ability of insight and exploration.

i had one child, clint who spent lots of time here 11-14'ish. he didnt get good grades. and he was a nice kid. he would spend hours talking about politics, thoughts, belief, church and a lot of time about being a man because his father wasnt around for the first decade. when the father did come into his life there were lots of issues on manhood. we would sit at table and talk about obama/mccain, social issue, womens issues. he was a sponge. i told his mother at one time, and the principal at the school once, how bright he was exploring different thought. always curious about various subjects.

both were so surprised. i was surprised they were so surprised. mom says, but he is quiet, he never talks. principal says smart? smart? ya....

when i was growing up, there were gender issues but i dont think they were forefront in our thoughts. today, it seems since the battle with the feminazi, so many are working so hard to pound in everyones head there is a DIFFERENCE in gender. really, a huge gulf like divide between the two genders. i saw the umpteenth commercial last night talking about a product for "men". i was reading and finally sunk in how much i was hearing this product for men. finally looked at tv and commercial over and asked hubby, another product about the manly men. what was it this time...... the mens movement, jumping up and down demanding the difference in genders. pro porn people insisting all about the differences. the evo behavioral cult like science that reduces everything to spread seed.

science knows, psychologist knows, and too many people get..... human comes first. the gulf is not a gulf but slight differences that are not consistent in all people.

for me it is the outright battle on maintaining patriarchy with such fear. pry it from my cold dead hands.

when i had babies, people would say i coddle. i would say they are babies. as they grew, they defined their wants and needs and i addressed it. they walked it and figured it out on their own, in their time. healthy, balanced, grounded.

[MadrasT]

21. "the gulf is not a gulf but slight differences that are not consistent in all people"

This is the message I keep trying to spread.

It is *amazing* to me how many people seem to see "men" and "women" as two entirely different species and never the twain shall meet.

[seabeyond]

22. i am just flat out

asking people, men, my sons, just tell me what this big ole huge difference is with the sexes. besides penis and vagina, i am not getting much of anything.

[redqueen]

23. The difference is the way we're socialized.

There is no huge gulf when we're very young, but over time that gulf does form. And most people ensure it is well maintained.

[seabeyond]

24. what?

men dont do emotion? hm. i have a father, husband, two brothers, two sons, two nephews that come to me regularly to deal with their "emotions" they dont have.

women need emotion to have sex, romance? one night stands not hard for me, and hubby is the romantic.

men pragmatic? me all over. brother doesnt get it. he is anything but....

visual? a study that actually hooked up brain says otherwise, instead of a questionairre in 80's and not hard getting off on a naked guy or recognizing an attractive male i would assume no different from a man.

women more self reflective, communicative, verbal. two sons tell you otherwise.

men more science and math oriented. have two sons tell you otherwise.

shopping? i hate it. brother loves it.

worried about looks. two teenage sons and grew up with teenage brothers

what?

what is this difference.

[redqueen]

25. Propensity to resort to violence?

Willingness to abuse another person for sexual gratification?

Propensity to rationalize the entitlement to such gratification as a "need"?

I'm sure we could come up with a nice list.

[seabeyond]

26. but none of these are difference in our person. the more we have gone away from

the good girl and our society has become more fucked up, the more we see the escalation of young women becoming violent. that was always in us, just directed at self. the male extends that out, females does it within. now we are seeing those difference merge in gender.

"Willingness to abuse another person for sexual gratification? " this is interesting and i havent put a lot of thought into it. but again, there is the physical strength but the selfish in sexual gratification, i think might be interesting in exploring how women have adapted this trait. if they have. i am thinking about a particular woman i know that has used sex for her self gratification in the most callous and hurtful ways. because of physical differences we dont see rape, but do women do this on some other level? just a thought to explore....

"Propensity to rationalize the entitlement to such gratification as a "need"? " i see this with females, too. this is nothing new. and maybe it is not a societal privilege and entitlement like with men, we all know women like this.

these are more exploration of thought, with what you have provided. i am not holding to any of it.

[redqueen]

27. There are also more examples in the article in the OP.

I'm not saying you have to agree just pointing out that there are more examples at the link.

[MadrasT]

28. "Flat out asking". Me too.

I am not getting much of anything either.

[iverglas]

31. well, your OP made me feel guilty

Thanks a lot!

I looked back and I really do feel I failed Arthur. Unfortunately, by the time I got to know the kids, he was obnoxious. I don't know, that probably isn't fair, he was really too young to be truly obnoxious yet. I guess I just saw the girls as being in need of some ... oh, however I say it, it's just going to sound like excuses. Arthur could undoubtedly have used help with his homework just as much as them, and could have come along to the craft fair or the historical site and had his horizons broadened and opened to new interests, and so on. I was stereotyping. Except for the fact that the girls came looking for me, they wanted to spend their spare time with each other doing stuff at my place, and Arthur showed no interest. I saw them as needing girl time, but Arthur needed time too. Including time with girls, and them vice versa, in a context where they were equal, which home and school obviously weren't giving them.

I'm going to have to think of some way of doing penance.