|
|
Dads Only - My Husband Treats Our Son and Daughter
Differently
My husband loves to wrestle with
our twins but he treats them so differently. He's
very gentle with our daughter and much more physical
with our son.
I guess I'm wondering about two
things: is there any reason to be more gentle
with girls than boys, and is there any chance
that a lot of wrestling make our son violent?
With all the talk about youth violence
these days, parents are constantly on the lookout
for anything that might be responsible for the
problem. One common theory is the one you raise,
that physical play and roughhousing--which is
something dads spend a lot of time doing--teaches
kids to be violent. The evidence, however, supports
the exact opposite conclusion:
- There's a limit to the number
of times a father (or anyone, for that matter)
is going to allow his child to poke him in the
eye or elbow him in the mouth while you're wrestling.
The bottom line is that kids who roughhouse
with their fathers learn pretty quickly that
poking and elbowing and biting and kicking and
other forms of physical violence just aren't
okay.
- Kids whose dads play with them
tend to be more helpful, take on leadership
roles, and develop clearer communication skills.
Kids who don't get any physical play are more
likely to be apprehensive and have trouble getting
along with others.
Playing with dad impacts
boys differently than girls. The more socially
and emotionally nurturing a dad is to his young
son, the better he'll do in school (and later,
in college), and the higher he'll score on IQ
and other similar tests. Overall, more involved
fathers tend to have more empathetic and better-behaved
sons.
While it seems pretty intuitive that dads would
have an influence on their sons' development (after
all, they both share that pesky Y chromosome)
girls, too, benefit. Girls whose dads play with
them physically a lot tend to be more popular
with their peers, more assertive (making it less
likely that they will passively accept their environment
later in life), more interested in higher levels
of education, and more active in sports. And girls
who stay active in sports are much less likely
to get pregnant as teens.
Some of these difference may exist because fathers
(somewhat more than mothers) treat--and thus impact--their
boys and girls differently. To start with, men
tend to play and interact more physically with
their boy infants than with their girls. (Somewhere
along the line, people got the idea that girls
are delicate and that they shouldn't be played
with as roughly as boys. But there's some evidence
that girls are actually hardier than boys; although
more boys are conceived, more girls are born.
They survive childhood illness better than boys
and in tests of general fitness, girls outperform
boys every time.) And later on, they give their
boys more encouragement to be independent and
to explore. Boys are allowed to cross the street
alone earlier, to stay away from home more, and
to explore a wider area of their neighborhood
than are girls.
The different ways adults play with their sons
and daughters is partly responsible for developing
children's sex-typed behavior, especially for
boys. So if you're interested in reducing the
chances that your kids--the boy and the girl--will
end up trapped in a set of gender-based behaviors,
have your husband keep playing with them (and
jump in too!). The moral of the story? You should
both treat your daughter the same way you treat
your son. She won't break. In fact, she'll benefit
enormously.
*******************************
Reprinted with permission from Armin
Brott, www.mrdad.com.
Armin Brott is the author of Father For Life:
A Journey of Joy, Challenge, and Change.
|
|
