Girls

Don't you know Rod, that even at that age, from the moment of birth even, the parents are suggesting every one of these actions to their baby daughters:) lol.

Just wait till she starts to "match" outfits on her own. That's a real hoot.

God forbid dreher and his wife ever have a tomboy, or a boy who likes to play dress-up.

Karen, my 2nd daughter was a big, sturdy, rambunctious baby and toddler, and she had almost no hair until age 2 so people always assumed she was a boy...I used to hear "What a little linebacker you have there!" and "He's all boy!" from people. She hated clothes and always wore as little as possible, preferably old, worn things that people gave us, so perhaps that accounted for some of the confusion.

Anyway, my "tomboy" did indeed love mud, sticks, climbing and wrestling, and she to this day she can take on any boy her age and win, but from the time she could walk she LOVED shoes (in fact, she used to rip off all of her clothes, but insisted on wearing shoes - the fancier the better!) and she never went anywhere without putting on her beads, tiara and handbag.

She's 5 now and gets VERY insulted if anyone calls her a tomboy, in spite of her pronounced tomboy tendencies.

(My mother tells me I was much the same way, and insisted on wearing party dresses and patent-leather Mary Janes when I went in the woods to play Mud War with the boys. I'm still a girly tomboy, myself!).

My oldest girl is SUCH a girly-girl it's ridiculous (despite my efforts to form her into a tomboy) and my littlest one's first word, I kid you not, was "shoe."

I think there are elements of both what I would call "born-in" gender traits and cues. My church teaches the following and I believe it is very true:

All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.

Both our boys, from very, very early, played with "guns." We didn't expose them to cowboys and Indians TV, or military TV, but I swear, they could make a gun out of anything. And would. It was amusingly stereotypical. It kind of freaks Julie out to hear them talking about guns and explosions and stuff, but I tell her that's just boys. It's bred in the bone.

Good thing you're not president of Harvard.

It is amazing how people can not see what is right in front of them. If you really watch your kids and other people's kids its clear that boys and girls are different, even when parents try to force them down the opposite path. I think that the bulk of science through the recent past supports that there are differences in the way the female and male brains tend to function. These are not absolutes and do not imply absolute superiority in one area over another. I too, spent years trying to get my daughter to not worry about how she looked and not use makeup. I gave up and now we are both happier.

Steve

I think that a person is born with a unique personality and temperament, and as long as our child meets our socially constructed expectations, we're all happy.

I'm glad that my boy is a boy's boy. His first words were "ball and truck." I gave him a doll to play with once. He looked at it and tossed it over his shoulder.

My girls LOVE clothes, shoes, jewelry, & animals. They've never liked baby dolls. They prefer stuffed animals to be the babies. They can't throw or catch a ball like my son despite quite a bit of practice, nor do they really care.

Why does this make me so happy? Because I want my children to have things easy in life. I don't want kids teasing my son and saying that he's gay. I want the other little girls to be nice and like my little girls. I want them to have friends.

I was a tomboy when I was little. I could catch and hit a ball with the best of those little boys. I loved playing sports with my brothers. I never really, truly, understood why I didn't have many friends in elementary school until I became a parent of the girly girls. I had a couple of pretty painful years in elementary school. I don't let my mind go back there too often.

Yes, I'm glad that my kids are smart. I'm glad that they fit our stereotypical expectations. Those things I can't control, and if I try to control that, I'll damage their being. I focus my energy in areas where I think that I can make a difference by directing my conversation in a way that makes them more aware of others, and hopefully, kinder and more caring people. It doesn't always work. My boy's boy doesn't like the boy who he thinks might be gay. My girly girls prefer to be around the girls who can do the cartwheels. I'm sure that they'll have painful times in their life, but they'll always be accepted by society.

Then there's my brother-in-law who's been out of the closet for 30 some years. He's in group therapy. He's starting to work through his pain.

I'm with Daniel, empirical evidence notwithstanding. If you're not oppressing your daughter with your outdated concepts of femininity and giving secret cues to your sons to break and destroy, it can only mean that Harvey Mansfield is sneaking into your home at night to whisper subliminal messages to your children: "Hats are pretty . . . don't wear white after Labor Day." I mean, what else could it be? There's really no other explanation. Is there?

Whatever gender-specific cues we give our babies (pink or blue clothes, dolls or truck toys) we give because our history and experience have taught us the ways in which girls and boys tend to differ.

This is not a social construction of femininity or masculinity, but a respectful and considerate acknowledgment of them.

we give because our history and experience have taught us the ways in which girls and boys tend to differ.

It's a chicken or egg argument. Arguably, transgender people support the notion that gender isn't socially constructed but that at it innate. OTOH, are girls/women more nurturing because it is innate and biological, or because they are constantly thrust into that role? Are men natural hunters/gatherers or is it because they are usually thrust into that rule.

I'm fascinated by the number of self-professed "tomboys" who tried to discourage traditional femininity in their daughters and who view "girly" as negative. That's arguably as fascinating as why little girls are drawn to frilly clothes that they want to show off to dad.

Or it could be that parents tend to introduce children to things they like, and not introduce things they do not like. After all, we have to buy the toys and often have to play with them, so why deliberately make sure you're playing with stuff you aren't interested in? The children will insist when they really like it anyway.

Myself, good thing I had a boy. Out of four girls, my mother, who was not trying to be gender neutral in the slightest, ended up with only one girly girl. The other choice isn't always a tomboy.

My oldest sister just wasn't into dolls. She liked to read and LOTS of talking, and music. The second, she was the 'tomboy'. I was the bookworm, and only the last girl was the type who wanted to play dressup, and dolls and such. Just the way it worked out.

I remember that my mom tried to give each of us Barbie dolls. And how each reacted. My oldest sister? She played a little, but mostly ignored it. The tomboy? She was insulted, and had wanted something to do with sports. (Oddly, she only liked to play, she never was big on watching them. My mom, on the other hand, was a HUGE football fan, far more than my dad was.) My youngest sister? She was the only one who played with it properly.

As for me? I apparently actually asked my mom 'What do you DO with them?' She tried to explain (which, if you have to do that, makes it sound monumentally uninteresting. 'Uh.. you dress them up in different outfits and.. umm.. pretend they're doing things.)

I took Barbie and Ken and yes, I played them. I popped off and switched their heads, then I dissected their joints to see how they worked. That was the last set of dolls my mother gave me. *grin*

The next year, she asked, and I got the chemistry set I wanted.

Math is hard.

are girls/women more nurturing because it is innate and biological, or because they are constantly thrust into that role? Are men natural hunters/gatherers or is it because they are usually thrust into that rule.

My SWAG: a bit of both. As to the relative balance between nature & nurture - I doubt that'll be definitively resolved until we know a _lot_ more about the human genome.

Another thought: even if gender differences _are_ socially constructed, they may remain intractable on anything less than multi-generational timescales - at least in a free society unwilling to micromanage pregnancy & parenting.

Sweet story.

Just wait until she hits her "pink" phase, round about age 3 to 5. It's a trip. She'll want pink tights, pink dresses, pink barrettes, pink magic markers, pink stickers, you name it.

Then there's...

All three of our children went through a phase where "mommy" and "daddy" as vocalized labels were interchangeable as a reference to that large person from whom they received care. After a time, they made the cognitive distinction between "mommy" being the short large person with the higher, lighter voice and "daddy" being the tall large person with the deep voice (and glasses that were their proprietary plaything when picked up by "daddy"; my optometrist made a tidy profit without ever seeing my kids as patients).

I love talking about kids. My thanks to all who has shared their thoughts and opinions here. :-)

I think positive feminine traits should be cherished in children, they are very easily lost. Possibly femininity can be constructed to some extent by attempts of both parents, but it wouldn't be as charming as born femininity, there is something finical about indoctrinated femininity,
And from my perspective positive feminine traits in men are very attractive. Tenderness, sensitivity, care about anything alive, graceful movements, isn't it wonderful in man?

Someone posted about their daughter kissing her truck and tucking it in...I had to laugh, I remember my oldest girl LOVED dinosaurs when she was about 3 (she still likes them a lot, but now in a scientific way), and I bought her a big set. Now, for some reason, all her little playmates were boys -- so we'd get the kids together to play dinosaurs and the boys would all go "RAAAWR!" and make the dinosaurs eat each other...and Naomi would be in the midst of all this testosterone-fueled dinosaur violence going "Here's the mommy dinosaur, and the daddy dinosaur, and the baby one...and they're all going SHOPPING!"

My secondborn (the girly tomboy) drew a picture recently of herself dressed as a princess, complete with crown, standing in a river of "red-hot lava," while wearing "special boots" to protect her feet, and brandishing a pistol in one hand and a sword in another. There were strange zigzags emanating from her, which I was told were her "special powers." That's my girl, my lava-boot-wearing, pistol-packin' princess with special powers.

My third daughter loves Matchbox cars, but she also plays with them in a very girly way. They always seem to be car families, and the baby car cries for its mommy, etc.. She does, however, do the "vroom! vroom!" which my other girls never did.

I guess I tried to push tomboy-ism on my girls because I was (and still am) a tomboy myself. It's just more fun being a tomboy! But, I do like clothes and shoes and accessories a lot -- they just have to be cute, practical, and sporty clothes, shoes and accessories! I have a closet filled with running shoes and sport sandals in cute colors (including pink!), quite an extensive array of cute hiking ensembles, and I'm a total sucker for stylish and overpriced bike clothing. I was never one of those tomboys who dressed like boys, at least not voluntarily!

I must have had a freakish childhood in the 1940's. When our mother took us, myself and my one year older brother, shopping for necessary clothing, we always modeled it for Papa. Mama wanted his approval for her worthwhile use of his slim earnings and we children, boy and girl, used the opportunity, as she taught us, to thank Papa for what he had provided. He approved how we looked in the new clothes according to our genders and Mama was gratified that he had approved her choices and budget management. A different world.

Aw...I remember when Rod did the birth announcement here on the blog, and now she's already talking and walking! When did that happen?

God bless!