Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a boy who is older, and who plays with a lot of girls, and yes - there are (generalized) differences! Things like risk taking, style of play, physicality, noise, when certain types of maturity occur, etc... It's real. It's not all kids, but it's a generalization that bears weight in lots of cases. So I guess I am a #boymom.

Would I ever write that hashtag on Facebook or something? No way. That seems icky. Like showing a photo of my new concealer and saying #onlyforladiez - I mean sure, mostly for ladies, but that's not the entire truth!

When I've noted differences aloud to closer friends or neighbors, I usually say "I hate to generalize" or "This probably is just my experience" and 9 out of 10 times the other person say "Oh. No. I see it. It's real." They just don't hashtag it!

Nope. It's socialization.

No it is not. My son almost exclusively plays with cars and trucks and trains. He has 4 girl cousins and when we go to their houses he will dig through the toy bins, past the dolls and Frozen gear, until he finds a car.

We have baby dolls and he never plays with it. But when his cousins come over they do play it.

Why is that anecdote evidence of anything? Couldn't that be socialized behavior?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:




It's like a signal flare letting me know not to interact with you.

Lolll

Well to be fair I don't interact with people who wear shirts like that, even if it isn't about being a "boy mom".

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a boy who is older, and who plays with a lot of girls, and yes - there are (generalized) differences! Things like risk taking, style of play, physicality, noise, when certain types of maturity occur, etc... It's real. It's not all kids, but it's a generalization that bears weight in lots of cases. So I guess I am a #boymom.

Would I ever write that hashtag on Facebook or something? No way. That seems icky. Like showing a photo of my new concealer and saying #onlyforladiez - I mean sure, mostly for ladies, but that's not the entire truth!

When I've noted differences aloud to closer friends or neighbors, I usually say "I hate to generalize" or "This probably is just my experience" and 9 out of 10 times the other person say "Oh. No. I see it. It's real." They just don't hashtag it!

Nope. It's socialization.

No it is not. My son almost exclusively plays with cars and trucks and trains. He has 4 girl cousins and when we go to their houses he will dig through the toy bins, past the dolls and Frozen gear, until he finds a car.

We have baby dolls and he never plays with it. But when his cousins come over they do play it.

Anonymous wrote:I think it has to do with like...a lot of people act like disappointed towards moms with all boys. I don't know if that is the right word. But my SIL has three boys and people constantly react like with sympathy, and ask if they'll go for another to try for a girl. She regularly gets like...compassion offered for this tribulation of not having a girl. So IME it is moms in a position like that trying to turn it into a positive, like, hey I only have boys but I love that!

As the youngest in a family of all girls, that happened to my family too.

I think all of you debating nature/nurture on boys and girls always miss the larger idea that socialization is ALSO kind of nature.

Not that we can't fight it to an extent, but humans are social creatures who group and label and find meaning and companionship in these groups. LGBT community keeps on adding letters, why? Because its a group that kind of welcomes differences and smaller subsets keep wanting to get included into a larger and welcoming movement. This is a good thing because those people are gaining a lot from joining but its human nature to want to belong.

The reality is that nature and nurture have created gender divisions for a lot of reasons over the centuries. Hunter/gatherer, centuries of division of labor having the man work and the woman caretake. Exacerbated by the physical and biological trend towards those roles via increased strength/testosterone and the ability to bear children and nourish them through early childhood. Those have created a bajillion subtle things that reinforce those roles in our society. But to simply write that off as 'socialization' is to write off like...human nature as simply socialization. Which hey! It kind of is! But also virtually impossible to totally fight against.

I've never understood how someone can truly embrace and support the transgender movement AND believe that gender is a completely social construct. It is a social construct, but one that is woven into our biology and built on the centuries of human evolution, both cultural and bodily evolution. Humans want to belong, so men embrace a common set of traits that define them as a part of that group and so do women. You can disagree or agree with the 'goodness' of that quality of humanity but to deny it is, IMO, to deny human nature.

I think it has to do with like...a lot of people act like disappointed towards moms with all boys. I don't know if that is the right word. But my SIL has three boys and people constantly react like with sympathy, and ask if they'll go for another to try for a girl. She regularly gets like...compassion offered for this tribulation of not having a girl. So IME it is moms in a position like that trying to turn it into a positive, like, hey I only have boys but I love that!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think it's strange to notice differences in genders; I think it's strange to call it out on social media with hashtags.

Listen boymoms, my little girl is a mess who eats cat litter and runs away from me too.

+1

The one mom I know who does this ended up with all boys and desperately wanted all girls. I think she does it to try and make herself feel better about not having a girl.

Same! She was rather openly devastated when she found out her third (and last) was a boy, so I guess it's a sort of overcompensation move? It's odd, largely bc she way overuses it

+1 This is how I read it often. I am the mom of all boys and I'd never use this hashtag bc I'm just not into that type of thing...but I know lots of friends/neighbors who do. They all have only boys and I think its a way to identify with others who only have boys and to compensate for now girls.

Anonymous wrote:I don't use twitter except to read what the President has said, so I have never heard of #boymom (mentioned in the weird parents thread). I have a baby boy and am wondering what things are #boymom and not #girlmom. Besides vertical pee situations, what differences in the motherhood experience are notable enough to hashtag?

Oh dear. All #boymom means is that the woman has only boys. She is raising boys and not girls. Don't waste so much time on this, it's really just a "thing."

I am a boy mom. I don't hashtag it or post it but I am.

I thought I would not really matter but very few friends who have girls only can tolerate a play date with boys. When my kids were is middle school I literally had no more friends with girl only families.

Before ... I thought can't we all just get along? Cookouts involved girls constantly complaining .., they threw a ball at me, he push me for, he hit me with a water balloon and now I am wet, he splashed me, he ran away from me, I don't want to climb trees, on and on and on.

I consistently instituted the if your not bleeding figure it out yourself and eventually the girls just preferred girl play dates.

I am it alone on this. All my friends have 2-6 boys and most girls don't enjoy creaking, climbing trees and rough housing.

I don't care but I don't pretend it is very different to parent a young boy vs a young girl.

Is there a #momofboth?

Anonymous wrote:




It's like a signal flare letting me know not to interact with you.

Lolll

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think it's strange to notice differences in genders; I think it's strange to call it out on social media with hashtags.

Listen boymoms, my little girl is a mess who eats cat litter and runs away from me too.

+1

The one mom I know who does this ended up with all boys and desperately wanted all girls. I think she does it to try and make herself feel better about not having a girl.

Same! She was rather openly devastated when she found out her third (and last) was a boy, so I guess it's a sort of overcompensation move? It's odd, largely bc she way overuses it

It's like a signal flare letting me know not to interact with you.

It's a #lifestyle

I think everyone here is making waay too much of a hastag. I haven't used it (I don't have Twitter), but I think it sometimes - for example, when my sons capture and beg to keep two gardener snakes. It's not that I think girls don't or wouldn't, just that it's a stereotypical boy thing to do. (And I didn't let them keep the snakes. It's because I am terrified of them, but I said it was because it would make them sad to miss their family, so we had to put them back where we found them so they could see their mommy.)