I often read about parenting boys versus girls with great interest and talk to my friends about their experiences with girls and compare it to my experience raising my son.
There's two questions that interest me. Are boys generally born rowdier, louder and more boisterous than their quiet, calmer fellow female babies? Or do we, as parents, teach them this by how we interact and communicate with them from day one? Basically are babies born with gender identities or do we mould them with our behaviour towards them, i.e. blue for a boy, pink for a girl.
10 clichés only mothers of boys will know:
1. Boys love SHOUTING!!!
However, I also love shouting...
Ergo humans love shouting?
2. Boys are more cuddly
I have to say MY particular boy is not a very cuddly baby (more's the pity).
3. Boys play rough
My son loves a lot of roughhousin' and argy-bargy, but is this because we've played rough with him since the beginning? My friend's daughter tried to grab his face the other day; that seems fairly rough also.
4. Boys are not as verbal as girls
Anyone else's son scream "MUUUUUUM" 52,000 times a day? He's not yet pontificating on the merits of pull-ups versus regular nappies but it certainly seems like he's as verbal as the next child, be they male or female.
5. Boys love farts
My son does think farting is hilarious, but then so do I. I suspect people, in general, find farting funny.
6. People will constantly tell you "He's such a boy!"
Yep, he totally is and he's got the penis to prove it. And I've got the wee stain on my shoulder to prove it – boys do have an impressive range. But other than that I don't really know what they're getting at. He's eating muck, sure and he's got his hand down his pants but are girls any different?
7. Boys love cars and guns
This is totally the case and one thing that does make me waver in my conviction that babies are born genderless and that we kind of impose their gender identity on them. He is compulsively drawn to cars, trucks, anything with wheels and virtually anything from a stick to a shoe is a gun. I have no idea where he picked up the gun thing and I've tried to discourage it but he just continues to stand there 'shooting' me. I try not to take it personally.
8. Boys are maniacs
So, yeah, my toddler son is the most adorable, wild, laughing like a maniac, little puppy you'll ever meet. But I've noticed when there's a baby around boys can be every bit as gentle and as nurturing as girls. Toddler boys in my experience seem to like playing with dolls as much as girls do. Is it just that we, parents, are taking the dolls away and offering them trucks instead?
9. Boys love mess
Yes, they totally do, though oddly my son also likes to impose anal retentive levels of order on his collection of toy cars. Once again stereotype 0; The Child 1
10. Boy loves their mums
This sentiment is bandied about quite a lot I notice and the implication seems to be that boys are in some way more loving and simple and less calculating and complex than girls. The received wisdom is that girls will play more mind games and generally be a bit more conniving than boys. Which sounds a bit mad to me, especially as my son is very crafty and manipulative – he hides his clothes when he doesn't want to get dressed in the morning and is perfectly capable of withholding affection when I won't let him play with the computer wires...
What do you think? Have you raised boys AND girls? Let us know in the comments...
