I’m so very curious about gender dynamics among kids. Really and truly curious. Not curious in the annoyed sort of way. Honestly.
So here’s what I’m curious about: Why is it that, especially as they get older, girls tend to gravitate towards girls (for play, hanging out, partners in school things, etc) and boys to boys? How much of this is nature and how much of it is nurture? If we didn’t have such strictly gendered norms that we inculcate our children into, would the gravitational pull be this strong?
And what about the social stigma? Because there’s a point at which it’s often uncool for a boy to play with a girl/be friends with a girl. What is that about? Especially when boys are EXPECTED to ultimately marry girls/women. Now there’s a double standard for you.
There are just so very many things at play here, and I can’t always untangle them in my mind. Of course I want to push back against these dynamics, but where’s the best place to push? Is it just noticing them and pointing them out because most of us traipse around life unaware? Or is it something else?
Please, please share your thoughts with me on this one.
I know these penguins are cool hangin' with members of the opposite sex...
(hey, it wouldn’t be a post without a picture, right?)
Hello–I’ve been reading your blog for a few months now, and am really enjoying it. I’m really interested in gender and gender-non-conformity, and love that Q is choosing his own path through life…
The question you posed in this recent blog entry is one that I have thought of a lot. In my psychology of women class last year one of the most interesting things that we learned was the fact that children universally same-sex segregate. (Meaning it is documented across the world). And what is particularly striking is that children more strongly same-sex segregate when left to their own devices. Some of the theories about why this happen is linked to differences in development between girls and boys, types of play preferred etc. (Which of course may come from parental socialization etc.)
Eleanor Maccoby wrote a book called “The Two Sexes: Growing Up Apart” which explores this phenomenon. Interestingly, one of the things Maccoby notes (as cited in my psych. textbook “Half the Human Experience: The Psychology of Women”) is that when children play alone, gender differences are minimal, but when in their same-gender group the differences are much larger and obvious. Which means the groups create more of a gender gap between kids.
And yet–how do you prevent them from doing this? What happens when you have a kid like Q who plays more with girls than boys? Why is it okay for girls to be more tomboyish and be with the boys, but its not as socially acceptable the other way round…I think this must be linked to the different valuing of male/masculine and female/feminine in our society…
Anyways, I think I’ve probably provided more questions than answers–but I thought you might be interested in Eleanor Maccoby’s work, so thought I’d pass the information along.
Thanks for all the stories about Q! Best wishes, J.
As an 18-year-old who is removed, but not too far, from these experiences, I can say that when you’re really little (like toddler-age), sex doesn’t matter at all; you’re barely even aware of it. As you get older and become a little aware of it, it’s a bit of an issue (there’s a vague feeling of ‘shouldness’ but not a huge amount of pressure), and then maybe age 10 or so (pretty well-correlated with when you get the ‘sex talk’) there’s a sharp dropoff in relations between the sexes for a couple years as people recover from the shock of ‘THAT’S what happens?!?!’ Towards the end of middle school/beginning of high school it becomes somewhat legit to have friends of the opposite sex again without people making assumptions. I’m a freshman in college now and it’s pretty much a nonissue, although there’s obviously always speculation behind-the-scenes of who’s attracted to whom or whatever, but that seems to me more like gossip than people making gender stereotypes or whatever.
As a 5th and 6th grade teacher, I have spent a lot of time observing children and the groupings they choose. In my experience, the context plays a huge role in whether or not children self-segregate by sex.
When dividing into distinct groups (sitting at lunch tables, choosing groups for a project, etc.) my students universally seek groups of the same sex. Students only cross this boundary in extreme social need: when they have no one who will sit with them at lunch, for example, or when there are an odd number of boys and one is without a group.
However, in the more amorphous work time we often have in my Montessori-esque classroom, some boys and girls will happily choose to work together. They will also play together at recess, at least in larger groups and while playing the more informal games. (The girls and boys play different sports in the fall, so children practicing at recess are also necessarily separated by sex.) Finally, most kids are fine working with children of the other sex as long as it is clear that I chose the groups and they had no say in the matter.
In short, as this pertains the pressures limiting children’s choices, many boys and girls seem able to maintain integrated friendships with individuals both in and outside of school. While some choose to have only friends of the same sex, this is not a social requirement. When selecting a group, however, it takes a brave kid to volunteer to be the only boy or only girl at the table. Most prefer to be safe in adolescence, but who knows? Q shows a lot of integrity and conviction in his choice of friends so far. 2nd-6th grade are the roughest years, and then mixed groups become the prevailing norm again.
Hey longtime Facebook friend. I’m raising two boys now and I spend a lot of time thinking about this too! Since having kids I have been forced to rethink my assumptions about nature and nurture — which is to say I have had to acknowledge the extraordinary influence of nature. My boys seem to have come out into the world nearly fully formed, with interests (okay, an obsession with trains and trucks) and attitutes all their own. For my 3-year-old, this means that he shares interests with a lot of the boys at preschool and at playgroups, so he does tend to sex-segregate in that way. However, I have a niece (6 years old) whose interests, clothes, etc. are all more stereotypically boyish, and she has also been that way since she was a toddler, and all of her closest friends are boys. So from my experience, many interests and personality traits are in-born, and maybe the majority of boys and girls share those in common with their sex, but certainly some do not. I work at the co-op preschool and see “the rule” and “the exceptions” very often. To me it seems like one more case of letting each of them be who they uniquely are. I haven’t been reading up on your blog so I’m not sure what your boy is into right now, but I hope all is well with him! And I love the penguins.
I don’t know why. I always (from 5 to 23) enjoyed hanging out with boys (I’m a girl) and spending my time with traditional girls has almost always so complicated and frustrating. Since I fancy both sexes… what’s the meaning of all that? Am I a “manly”-brained girl? Is it easier to impress boys than girls? How the hell do we bisexuals get to find friends we are not going to fancy so everything is cool and easy?
Questions I keep asking myself now that I’m 29.
I was a weird kid. no two ways about it. I think that that really played into my friendships in school. I didn’t go to the same school two consecutive years until middle school, though I was with some of the same people. In middle school, when most of my peers were in boy groups or girl groups my group of friends really seemed to be the only mixed bag. It was three guys and four girls (then I was presenting as female). Two of the three guys later came out as gay, one of the girls is bi, one is a lesbian, and I’m trans. The one straight girl came to the US from Iran and kind of was adopted into our group randomly, and the one straight guy was the cousin of one of the girls.
We weren’t popular by any means, we were teased a little, but there was also absolutely no drama in our group whatsoever. I think we realized that we were basically the friends we had, and because of that we didn’t have the same spats and such. Those of us who were some form of LGBT came out in various ways over the seven years we were friends. We remained a pretty solid group (some left, others came, etc) until high school graduation. After graduating I think we all realized we didn’t actually have very much in common aside from school. I’ve only seen one of them since graduation, which was over four years ago.
Friendships are odd.
Also, if you want to scream and rant at somebody, I suggest Queen Bees and Wannabes. That book pissed me off SO bad. The gender crap in it is RIDICULOUS. I know a lot of people like it, but it just made me want to hit things.
I so appreciate all of the insightful comments on here. It’s great to hear folks’ personal experiences, what you’ve observed, as well as the further questions that you all are raising. I think the world definitely needs more dialogue on this topic.
Keep those comments comin’!
I don’t know if it’s nature or nurture –probably both– but segregating by gender, at a young age, might serve a purpose: in single-gender groups, kids can clearly learn the rules of masculinity and femininity, and ultimately police one another. At that age, no one’s expected to be in a romantic relationship, so it doesn’t matter if the genders don’t mix. (Ugh, this makes childhood sound like a terrible time; but it’s true that there are lots of expectations placed on kiddie shoulders.)
I now identify as a guy, but I was raised as a girl, and during my childhood most of my friends were girls. If it’s true that most kids gravitate towards their same gender, then maybe I was heavily influenced by my upbringing as a girl. Or maybe I made friends with girls because I’m a queer guy (just kidding).
There must be some nature involved, because despite the cultural tendency to segregate kids by gender, some children defy that rule. And I think there’s a lot of nurture involved, too. Now that I think about it, I did have boy friends in my childhood, but my parents didn’t encourage those friendships as much (for instance, we couldn’t have mixed sleepovers). Would that have influenced my friendships later in life? Because I still gravitate towards girl and women friends.
That’s interesting, actually. I’m a girl (and have always identified as such) and grew up having a close male friend from preschool. My parents (and his) were totally fine with us having sleepovers…but after awhile we just stopped. I think it was kind of a mutual unsaid thing – we were both straight and it just seemed like it’d be awkward. We’re not as close friends now, but it’s more of a distance thing than a sex thing – we ended up going to different middle and high schools and are now at different colleges, so our relationship is basically limited to facebook.
I think it’s hugely about funneling behaviour from the adults around them. Not entirely; they’re certainly working on issues of ‘who am I’ and ‘where do I belong’ in the early grades, and often seem very willing to accept rigid/arbitrary boundaries at that age. My daughter not only came home last year with the repeated mantra of “girls can’t”, “boys can’t”, “girls and boys can’t”. It was almost always coming from other kids.
There were a few weeks when we repeatedly heard “boys are better at math” and “boys are faster and stronger”. We were lucky to be able to counter immediately with “but I’ve seen you and that boy run and climb, and you’re both faster and stronger than him. And you are just as good at math as he is. So he’s wrong when he says that.” Her bemusement was “I know he’s wrong, but he really thinks he’s right, and he just keeps saying it as though it’s true.” So the messages are coming from other kids largely, but where are THEY getting the messages from?
There were tons of other examples, all about the usual normalized gender roles. She got the message from both genders. But she was closest friends last year to one girl and one boy. And that boy, who is big and husky for his age, and has behaviour issues that many consider consistent with being a boy, also prefers to play house and dressup and Littlest Pet Shop with my daughter to playing with the boys. Another of her girl friends is totally butch and is supported by her parents in wearing whatever she feels comfortable in. So her immediate life shows her exceptions to those rules that get stated so arbitrarily.
However, the parent council at her school threw a fundraiser in which parents were asked to donate items to a variety of ‘luau’ baskets; Aloha Boy, Aloha Girl, Aloha Mom and Aloha Dad, and a family basket. I was incensed that there even was a boy and girl basket, and didn’t they just fulfill every stereotype. The boy’s basket had all manner of interesting interactive games and activities; the girl’s basket was full of play makeup, bubble bath, everything pink and nothing actually fun or active. It drove us up the wall.
Also? Her cousins are being gender funneled for all their parents are worth. The girl is constantly described as a total ‘girly girl, princess’ etc. Funnily enough, she hates having her hair put up, a thing her mum insists on every day, and given the chance, she prefers to play with her stepbrother’s cars and trucks, and playing in the dirt, to playing with ‘girly’ things. They see her as girly, and keep telling her she’s girly, but I don’t see much evidence of it. And god forbid her stepbrother want to try on one of the princess dressup dresses, as he did one time.
On another note, for awhile last year, her best friend was telling her that anybody who didn’t believe in God and Jesus wasn’t invited to her birthday party. So the messaging is certainly not limited to gender roles.
So my feeling is that they just keep sucking up the attitudes adults have around gender, as funneled through the kids that are all around them. Over the past year, we calmly questioned the ‘facts’ she brought home, and asked the same questions repeatedly, without heat but just with curiosity, asking her opinion on what she thought was true or not, pointing out inconsistencies, and reminding her that she didn’t have to have the same opinions we do. Validating the fact that she kept noticing, which was that a whole lot of people hold certain opinions, and it can be hard to disagree when you’re trying to make friends. But that it’s still okay to disagree, and have your own beliefs.
But DAMN. It’s hard. The hardest bit is to keep catching myself in gender funneling behaviour, and trying to divert it before it gets to her. Sigh.
Hmmm. I have always had more male friendships than female. I’m more comfortable with guys than girls. I’m a hetero female. Last year I lived in a suite in a dorm with 5 other girls. That was fine. But when they decided to host a “girls night”? Ugh. I was dreading it. I could only hang for like an hour before I had to escape.
From the time I was little i always had more close guy friends than female friends. Girls seem too threatening, too quick to judge other girls for my taste. Guys on the other hand are more direct, less passive aggressive. I’ve found in college that you can basically be friends with whomever you want. If I had all guy friends that’d be fine, but I have found a few girls that I relate to, and we’re now friends. But I’ve never had issues with teasing or anything relating to my choice of friends.
My little sister is similar to me, i think. She has more close guy friends than female friends. I have some female friends who have echoed the sentiment that “large groups of girls scare the crap out of me”. It’s odd though, because this has clearly been a thing since I was little, yet I was a cheerleader, with a mainly female team. I loved my teammates but many of them just had different interests.
Part of it is a tendency to show up the boys. I’ve always been a “Anything you can do I can do better” girl. Guys will say something dirty expecting to shock me, and I’ll throw it right back, and take it a step further. I’ve always had a thing about bucking gender norms. I find it quite satisfying to watch their mouths gape open.