(or the difference between girls and boys)
I only had daughters, so I'm no expert on this topic. Of course, I have a lot of friends and relatives who have raised sons, and I've read some stuff, and I know one thing for sure:
We all want to raise our sons and daughters so that they don't feel pressured to fulfill sexist expectations...
so that they don't feel shame if a particular ability, interest, or personality trait does not seem to mesh with others of their sex...
so that they feel no limits on who or what they can be.
Still, I've heard that there are some differences between the sexes that, while only valid as generalities and not necessarily true of particular children, do ring true to our experiences.
Here are some indications of what would seem to be differences between boys and girls:
As I read my fourth journal entry, I was struck by the dinosaur play between Mindy, Camille, and Lindsey. Their dinosaurs were pretty darned civilized! Nobody ate anybody else. Nobody even fought! There was precious little roaring. Mostly the dinosaurs talked to each other. A lot of the play was about relationships.
I have been around a lot of little boys with plastic dinosaurs, and my memories of these play sessions go something like this:Bloodshed! Mayhem! Fighting!It wasn't all about relationships, unless you count the predator-prey relationship.
Crunching and munching!
Roaring, killing and eating!The boys themselves did not fight as they played—but those plastic dinosaur mouths grappled each other, those sturdy plastic tails thwacked each other, and lots of real-true roaring filled the air. There wasn't actual violence, but there was play-violence in abundance, resulting in armies of plastic dinosaurs laying prostrate in the sand.
And the dinosaurs didn't talk a whole heck of a lot.
At right is a Lego creation by Mindy, Lindsey and Camille. Their dinosaur is in a museum exhibit, complete with flowers. It's all very "nice."
I had friends who had hoped to have a no-toy-gun rule in their home. They carefully informed family and friends that no toy guns were to be given as gifts, but then their sons made almost everything in the playroom into a gun. Legos, blocks, even dolls were pointed and given appropriate powing, banging, and kwow-kwow-ow-ow-ow-ow sound effects.
I didn't form a plan or philosophy about toy guns (I did scheme about what to do about the Barbie “problem,” but that's another story), but my husband and I, and my super-generous parents, found ourselves every once in a while adding some sort of toy weapon to our home—a sword for a pirate costume, a dagger for some sort of ninja dress up set, and so forth. The girls had prairie bonnets and long dresses and aprons, and they loved to play Little House on the Prairie; at some point we got them a beautiful wooden (toy) rifle. All of a sudden, I realized that my girls had what so many of their male friends didn't—a toy gun!
When Mindy, Lindsey and Camille played with that toy rifle, its role was very much defense. It served as protection from invisible bears and non-existent mountain lions. There wasn't a whole lot of shooting at the pretend creatures, but as the girls left the safe confines of their make-believe log house, they would arm themselves with that rifle, just in case.
Some of our boy visitors loved to race to the play room to find that rifle, and not only would they shoot it, they would point it at people as they pulled the trigger! On two different occasions I had to take away the rifle because one little boy conked another over the head with the rifle—and this sucker was pretty heavy!—remember, it's made of wood!—and the next time this child came over I did a preemptive strike and put the rifle away before he even arrived.
Camille and my two girls loved to play with blocks. They would make low-walled enclosures for dolls and figures and stuffed animals, furnished inside with clunky block tables and cylinder chairs and ramp-like beds.
And of course, playing with these cool set-ups involved a lot of talking among the the plastic figures and fabric creatures who carefully moved among the blocks.
Several boy visitors routinely gravitated to the block set, for a few years, and instead of building low and large, they would always build up. Tottering towers of multicolored blocks would rise up, get kicked or knocked over with a whoop and a grin, and then be rebuilt again.
Of course I “get” that lots of girls play shoot-em-up games with guns and build and demolish towers of blocks. Lots of boys, I'm sure, have stuffed animals that talk to each other and plastic dinosaurs that outdo each other with spinning-turning-flipping dives into the sand, rather than attack each other. My sample size is WAY too low to say anything valid about the differences between boys and girls.
Not to mention the fact that I quite possibly socialized my daughters to follow the norms set out for their sex—although I fully intended to buck any such stereotyping.
Still, I can't help thinking that these observations, and others like them, hint that there is some difference that is often found between girls and boys.
What do you think?
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The illustrations at the top of this post are from Valentines published around 1930. Notice that the girl is at home and is shown in, not only a relatively still pose, but a coy / flirtatious pose. The boy is outdoors and active.
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