Gender Differences

What does it mean to you to be someone of your gender? That is, what trails and qualities do you have as a male or female?
What messages did you get from your parents about appropriate traits?
How do you think you will continue to develop?

We all can recognize at least one difference between boys and girls, but the question of today’s world is does it go deeper than just body differences? Researchers say yes, although they get in a lot of trouble for doing so. Why? Because some people don't want to admit that there are true differences between boys and girls, they don't want to believe that they are different, when in fact, we are. Boys and girls act in different ways and this is noticed when each are born.

Besides the biological differences that distinguish boys from girls, researchers have noted that there are specific gender roles that come into play at infancy. Gender roles refer to the behavior associated with being either male or female. Many believe that it has to do with how your parents raise you, that they raise you to be feminine or masculine. Although that may be true to a degree, researchers have found that even when you raise your kids the same or try to get boys to play with "girl" toys and girls to play with "boy" toys, they choose their own gender specific toys. They found that when given the choice of toys in front of them, boys would usually turn things into guns and be more aggressive in their play whereas the girls would play on teams, be more willing to share, and choose to dress up and role play.

In a 1997 study done by Raty and Snellman, it was documented that boys have better spatial and quantitative ability compared to girls. Also, in the 2010 Eliot study, girls were reported to be 1/5 as aggressive as boys when between the ages or 17 and 29 months old. It can be concluded that females tend to be more of nurturers and boys tend to be more providers and protectors… that there are differences... naturally.

Personal thoughts and stories: In my Family Relations class we had a discussion on this particular topic.  After discussing it, I began thinking more about my own family and how I was raised. I came from a very conservative, traditional family. My dad ran his own business and my mom was able to stay home and raise us kids. I think having parents who participated in the traditional roles for men and women taught me what was expected for a traditional family, but at the same time, I had all brothers so I grew up as more of a tom boy, dressing up in camo and playing swords with my brothers. Looking back at this was interesting because my parents never saw a problem with this and never tried to suppress it, which leads me to believe that when parents tell a child no, they might take it as a challenge and want to do it more than they would have before. Instead, my parents just taught me about my divine role as a daughter of God, but still let me join in on my brothers play-fighting and games.  So I think that when I have a family, I want to parent like my parents did and not suppress a child’s likes and dislikes, but instead encourage what their divine role is as a son or daughter of God.