MANLINESS, PART 9

Having briefly surveyed the biblical evidence for differences in roles between the sexes we can turn to some of the scientific and cultural evidence for sex difference.

Childhood development
Any parent knows that boys and girls play differently. Sociologists used to try and argue that this is all down to social conditioning – the fact that we treat boys according to stereotypical views of what boys should be like, and likewise with girls. But this is increasingly understood to be baloney.

I have four girls, and although I have encouraged them to be bold, climb trees and play in the mud, and although we don’t have a TV so they have escaped much of the “princess” advertising aimed at young girls, they still play like girls. When boys come round they play differently – it tends to be much more energetic, more violent, more destructive. It involves more competition than the creative imaginative games my girls play. And as well as destroying things, boys tend to be much more interested in detailed construction games than girls. It tends to be little boys who spend hours constructing space Lego models, and ferociously defending them against other children who might mess them up. (As they should, because the Lego set is their domain, and men have a God given mandate to defend their domains.)

Girls are more interested in the emotional aspects of play, while boys are more preoccupied with the activity itself and its competitive aspects. Boys’ friendships are also typically less intimate. Girls are forever hugging one another. With boys physical touch tends to be limited to play fighting!

As Cambridge Professor Simon Baron-Cohen puts it,

Boys’ main priority seems to be to join a group based on a shared activity. Once inside a group, there is a further priority to establish their individual rank in the dominance hierarchy that will emerge.

Boys want to be in a gang, with a clear objective, and a clear leader – just like men do.

Parenting
Parents do treat their children differently, according to their sex. Baron-Cohen explains,

Fathers are less likely than mothers to hold their infant in a face-to-face position. One consequence of this is that there is less exchange of emotional information via the face between fathers and infants. Mothers are more likely to follow through the child’s choice of topic in play, whilst fathers are more likely to impose their own topic.

It seems that this behaviour is not simply a result of social conditioning, but something fundamental in the sex differences between men and women.

I know from personal experience that when it comes to play I like to impose the game on my kids much more than does Grace. Grace is happy to got to the play park and spend hours watching the kids do what they want to do and chatting to the other mums. I have always detested the play park. The only time I enjoy going to the play park is when I can impose a degree of competition into the proceedings – a race around the climbing frame. or swinging my kids higher than the next parent is swinging theirs. That is because I am a man!