Nature vs. Nurture, Boys vs. Girls

How are men and women different? (Besides the obvious please) Since giving birth to a boy and a girl 7 months ago, I've come to realize that people are born with distinct personalities. I had always imagined they were formed almost solely by experiences.

Are boys born more aggressive than girls? If so, can anything be done to curb this natural aggression? How much of this can be applied to future occupations? (For example boys in the military and sports)

My twins are only 7 months old. They share a room and all of their toys. There are no boy toys or girl toys. The only difference is that our girl wears girl clothes and the boy might wear blue or sporty clothes.

Our son is SO aggressive. He loves to steal toys from his sister. He will not hesitate to crawl right over her or the dog. He pulls and pushes, hates to be held, and loves to be mischevious. Everyday he crawls right for the one electrical cord we cannot hide.

Our daughter is sensitive, will play quietly, loves to sit and look at board books. When the dog comes near her, she pets him gently unlike her brother, who will pull a chunk of hair out.


Anyone with children, brothers, sisters, or childcare experience have any opinions? I'm really interested to see other opinions.

I really have no experience of child care (and that'll stay that way for a long while at least) but I remember the discussion on gender identity within my old pyschology classes. It's a mixture of both, nature and nurture, but opinions are divided as to how much behaviour is determined by each. You'll only split a room just as quickly by asking if people love/hate marmite.

Men are sex-crazed lunatics.

Women are sex-crazed lunatics who pretend they aren't.

On a more serious note, I believe personality is mostly determined through how they're raised in the first four or five years of their lives?

I know I've changed since I was a young devil child...uh....on second thought....

Nature most of the times overshadows nurture. I think this is a genetic behavior. That might explain why there are some men who are stronger in feminine attributes, while there are some women who are the other way around. Of course the norm for male behavior is being aggressive, while the norm for female behavior is being sensitive. And by norm, I mean the mathematical norm, which is the attribute that most people of that sex have.

Nurture might change what nature and genetic qualities dictate a person, but sooner or later when the compulsory forces are gone, individuals tend to behave according to their nature.

BTW, I remember the first photos of the twins you posted here. Your son had his arms up and was ready for a fight while he was sleeping. It was not hard to tell which one of them was the boy...

Hi Krlea,

Having two daughters, and now two grand-daughters, I can only go by what I've observed & heard, since I don't have any sons.

I find, generally speaking, if you have two children be it two of the same sex or opposite, that one of the two will be the more agressive one. My firstborn was more layback, and my second more agressive. I think it's pretty normal actually. Taking toys from the other one, hitting/pushing for no reason, etc.

Although, that being said, I must admit whenever I have a young male child at my house (my son-in-law has a son by a previous marriage who is 10), I do find he is more "active", shall we say, having to run around, roughouse (not that girls can't roughouse); where as the girls usually color, play with toys, and generally don't need as much space I guess you'd say.

I remember hearing when my girls were babies, that a child's basic personality is formed by two years old. Looking back now and remembering different things, I can relate. My oldest (the layback one) is still that way, having much more patience than I, and seldom gets flustered or lets things bother her.

In my youngest, I adore her "spunk". From the time she was little, she'd more or less would speak up and never take crap from anyone. Now as an adult, she's the same, but expresses herself in a determined, yet sweet tone. I'm really pleased that the two are not only sisters, but really best friends (they're two years apart) and do a lot of things together. I'm proud of both of them.

TIS

Our sex is written in concrete from birth, but we are given our gender.

Why is a baby boy thrown into the air and lovingly played with in a rougher way than a baby girl?

Boys have a penis, girls have a vagina.

Thank you.

pic

[ Image way too large; made a link. --JG ]

Trying to say that boys are rough because they are boys is ridiculous.

Using that logic, then people who are outside the stereotypes of mean aggressive jerk are not "normal."

When society creates what is acceptable and what is not, havoc ensues. How? Well, there was this man named Hitler and to him, Jews weren't "normal" and he created a society that killed people who weren't "normal" by Nazi standards.

The same thing is true today. What about a transsexual? Is he or she outside societal norms and deserves punishment just because he or she does not meet the standard boy or girl stereotypes?

The whole idea of defining what should be male and what should be female is antiquated and dangerous.

We are in complete agreement.

This is not about what is acceptable and what not; yes, a transsexual is outside the norms of "our society" right now in a mathematical sense. If you like math, you can do a search and read the concepts of "standard deviation" and the "normal distribution" of data to understand this matter better.

Or you can read the contents of this link:

http://www.robertniles.com/stats/stdev.shtml

I never say that those who are outside the norm should be killed, separated, or should be deprived of their rights to live their life the way they please. But they are special and not normal. The norm of the society is that genes of a male dictate him to be rougher, while a female is more sensitive due to the nature of her genes.

Why is it ridiculous? Could testoterone or a lack of estrogen cause men to behave differently than girls? Could it be explained medically? I'm sure my case is not the only one in which the boy is more aggressive than the girl. Even doctors will tell you that boys typically advance physically (walking, crawling) faster than girls, while girls advance faster verbally. Of course every case is unique, just following a general trend here.

Why? Not normal? Stop trying to qualify people in a mathmatical sense. That's just insane because you'd have to include all the people alive today and all the dead ones which is impossible.

Hormones effect development. However, most of those changes are physical. Most of the things a girl learns, such as style, make-up, hair etc., etc., etc., is taught to her. A girl is taught what is acceptable female behavior; she is not born knowing what is acceptable.

Why? Not normal? Stop trying to qualify people in a mathmatical sense. That's just insane because you'd have to include all the people alive today and all the dead ones which is impossible.

Hormones effect development. However, most of those changes are physical. Most of the things a girl learns, such as style, make-up, hair etc., etc., etc., is taught to her. A girl is taught what is acceptable female behavior; she is not born knowing what is acceptable. [/b][/quote]And what are you going to do about it if I don't stop?! Why do we have to bring dead people into the account? After all we are talking about the society at the moment.

I understand this might not be your favorite area, but labeling people Nazi the moment you don't like what they say is what is insane.

Women naturally like to improve their appearance. Most conservative families try to stop girls from using make up, but girls do all things possible to use it. It is in their nature to wish to look their best and a normal behavior. If a girl doesn't want to use make up, or hate it, or think it is a stupid idea; she is out of norm of female behavior. She has more confident in herself than what a normal woman usually has.

1) You missed my point. You can't mathematically qualify anything in the entire human race unless you include every single human being and that's impossible.

2) Women do not naturally try and improve their appearance. Society has taught them to do so. Don't believe me? Then why do Tom Boys exist? Why do punk rock chicks exist? What is beauty then? How do you define that? If you have to define beauty, then you'll have to define art as well.

3) People engage in a dangerous practice by trying to define what is acceptable and what is not. By saying certain people are not acceptable in society, people are practicing the same methodology of the Nazis and are too moronic to realize it.

Where did I talk about what is acceptable and what isn't? And I feel that the character set for my previous posts must have been with the same color as the background, so why even bother any further discussing this with you...

Ok, way to actually pay attention

Waaah! I'm taking my ball and going home!

I'd actually like to see you finish the argument, Afs. You did the same thing to me in our abortion discussion awhile back, where you were just like "this is my last post, keep talking to yourself, I won't check this thread anymore!"

Finish the argument.

Sure, everyone can debate politics, but when it comes to gender everyone runs and hides...

Well I have my mind mad up. Boys are more aggressive. Yesterday I left the playroom to brush my teeth. 30 seconds later I here a horrible scream. I run in and my son has both hands on top of his sisters head, rubbing her face into the carpet! He is way too young to know what he is doing, and both of them were fine, but it really scared me.

As far as I'm concerned, the argument is finished when MJ fails to show me where I talked about what is "acceptable" and what is not. A "normal behavior" and an "acceptable behavior" are two different subjects.

Yes, I tend not to continue playing my ball with those who constantly miss and won't make a single catch. But you two can now co-found a club as poor victims of my discrimination against pointless arguments. Actually I think you already have. Well, now you have my blessings. :p

What is normal is acceptable? Is it not? If normal is not acceptable, then is non-normal action acceptable? If non-normal action is acceptable, then why does discrimination exist?

Normal is acceptable. Acceptable is normal. If I'm wrong, then normal is unacceptable. If I'm wrong, then what is acceptable is not normal.

"Normal" is a statistical attribute of any given set whether this set is a group of people or bunch of marbles in a bag. What is "acceptable" is defined by laws. What is "normal" is not necessarily "acceptable" and vice versa.

For example if 75% of inmates in a certain prison use drugs, this makes using drugs in that prison a "normal behavior", but it is not definitely an "acceptable behavior".

In personal matters, laws don't and shouldn't dictate what is the normal behavior of a society upon every individual. Although an individual might have a certain personal habit that is not within the norms of the society, laws especially should protect that individual instead of forcing him/her to behave according to the norms.

Discriminations begin when people mix up "acceptable" with "normal" due to their ignorance and self-satisfaction. I hope that helps.

So by your logic, killing 6 million Jews is "normal" because a majority of Nazi leadership wanted them dead.

Again, you can't say that just because a specific majority of a specific group of people does something, it makes it "normal".

You can't apply mathematics to the human race.

So you have to define normal. And what is normal in society is not always the right thing anyways. However, by your logic, "normal" is ok.

I don't know how can one free your mind from this bug of thinking that a normal behavior is always the good and the acceptable behavior. You missed the ball again and I can't explain it any better than I already did.

There have been a lot of experiments on identical twins in the last century, to address the same question, nature or nurture. They were isolated and brought up in different families, countries etc. The conclusion was that BOTH nature and nurture play a role in a person's behavior, including gender roles and "pecking order" or social hierarchy. You may want to read a popular book on this and other related topics by Richard Dawkins, an english biologist of repute, called "The selfish gene". It is reasonably interesting and very educative.

What if the majority became everybody, and thus there happened to be no minority? Does opinion then become fact? Does the whole human race live by abnormality, in unacceptable ways? If so, by whose definition? No minority to protest, everybody thinks the same. Robots.

On the other side of the coin, however, I agree mathematics shouldn't be applied to the human race; everything is far more grey than the black-and-white world many disillusion themselves to be in. I don't think neither MJ or Af fit into that "many", but have rather got their wires crossed over something which has become an unnecessarily wider social question than the one Krlea originally posted.

First of all, I didn't want to overwhelm some with what seems to be really hard to fathom for their conditioned minds. I was challenged, misquoted and misunderstood, as I still am.

Mathematics is being applied to human race everyday on every single matter whether you like or not. People are being polled for choice of their cloths, whom they'll be voting for as the president, their sexual preferences or their opinion of gay marriage.

Of course, the beauty of these mathematical analyses is that it never deals with what is "wrong" or "right", where things are not just black or white; it merely reflects what majority of people think, choose or behave. Now whether their choice is right or wrong, that's different according to each individual's point of view, integrity and morals.

In any case, and by rule of thumb, there is no mystery that normal men (read majority of men) are more aggressive than normal women (read majority of women).

This is already happening. Majorities run things as if they were right and completely factual. I was merely pointing out that a small majority isn't right just because like minds agree (hence the Nazi reference).

The will of the majority must never be taken as fact or truth because the majority can be wrong.

Let me get back to what I originally wanted to discuss and that's the difference in genders. Just because a boy acts aggressive, it does not mean that every boy acts aggressive or that aggressive action is normal. A girl can act just as aggressive as a boy or a boy just as passive as a girl. But the previous sentence is only true if one uses stereotypes. Since stereotypes are bull, the whole idea of defining every aspect of men and women is impossible even mathematically.

There is too much variation to define what normal boy/girl behavior is and trying to define it is psychotic.

MJ, that certainly is your opinion and you are entitled to it, but I tend to distinguish between a stereotype and statistical data. It is one thing to be politically correct, but when it comes to spending money, expecting more safety and many other practical aspects, people rely on statistics to find out what is more likely to happen or typically (normally) happens in each case.

For example an insurance company has studied the statistical data concerning the drivers involved in accidents and notices this huge group of drivers that have had the most accidents:

16-year-old girls were involved in 175.19 motor vehicles crashes per 1,000 licensed drivers in 2000. 16-year-old boys were involved in 210.3 motor vehicles crashes per 1,000 licensed drivers in 2000. That's total of 385.49, which means that 16-year-olds have been involved in 39% of accidents happened in the year 2000.

So they charge a 16-year-old male driving a red car a higher premium than any other driver, simply because it has been a normal and typical behavior for people of this age, sex and choice of car to be involved in an accident. A certain 16-year-old male driver might never be involved in an accident for as long as he drives and that could be many years; yet if you are the one who is supposed to insure him, you would not take this risk to insure him with a lower premium.

Another example: When a Middle Eastern goes through check points in an small American airport that has the policy of random searching the luggage of suspicious passengers, his/her bags is the one that will be searched over that of an American, simply because the statistics are not in favor of the Middle Easterns.

Again, a normal attribute, is the attribute of majority of members in each "set". A normal attribute is not necessarily the good, or the bad attribute. It only reflects what is more likely to be expected when you encounter one of the members of that set. Of course there is always this chance that what you've expected would not happen. You could encounter an exceptional member of the mentioned set, yet it is always better to be safe than sorry.

The same goes for aggressiveness in boys and girls. Simply because the majority of boys are aggressive, the chance of a certain male being aggressive is higher. This doesn't mean that there are not boys who aren't aggressive. For Kris's son, what has been expected has happened. For someone else's kids there is a small chance that this does not happen.

OK, so the majority of boys are mathematically predetermined to aggressive?

Cool, so then free will doesn't exist anymore and we're all just fooling ourselves?

So it was determined that, as a male, I would debate you on this?

:rolleyes:

:)

Please note the :rolleyes: in my previous post

Free will is there to control and moderate what nature dictates us. I was talking about the effects of nature, not nurture. For small kids free will doesn't make much sense anyway.

Cool! So now you've created an exception to free will! That makes no sense at all.

Common sense crew member: for this one you only need to look this phrase up in a dictionary. That's if you believe that a six months old has the mental ability to distinguish between good and evil.

Are doing this on purpose?!

Oh, so now you limit it from "small children" to "six months old."

You change the parameters and some how I'm wrong? :rolleyes:

No, you are always right, my bad. Small children like the two year olds, or the three year olds know good from evil. Next time some of my hair is left in their small hands I'll teach them a lesson they'll never forget.

Again, you change parameters in your theory. :p

Weren't you unhappy when I limited "small children" to "six month olds"?

How about an eight year old who shoots his classmate with the daddy's gun? Does he really know what he is doing? Why don't they let these kids carry guns anyway, they all can take responsibility for what they do. :rolleyes:

In case you didn't notice, I changed the parameters in my theory again. Now if by small children you mean 18 year olds... :p

So now its 1-8 years old. Why not 9 or 10? Sure, raise it to 18, then 21 and then 40. Pretty soon you'll realize you can't make generalities like that and state them as truth. I also notice you're using white Americans for your examples (at least it seems that way to me). Because in many other cultures throughout time (wait, your theory doesn't include dead people) males by age 8 have/had many "adult" responsibilities.

What about a squire? Or a drummer boy? Did they not face battle at a young age along with full grown adults? Didn't women get married at an early age? Didn't boys become kings of great power?

By limiting yourself to modern white America, your theory is flawed.

I don't have to raise the age for my examples any longer because what I said and believe is that "free will" doesn't make much sense for small children. They act according to their nature and they don't fully understand the consequences of their actions, so they can't be held responsible for what they do according to "free will".

You've stopped making sense, dragging the discussion to things that is not even remotely related to the topic as if an eight year old white American boy acts any different than other children of his age if they have their hands on a real gun.

Free will exists.

I only responded to comments you made (example: 8 year olds and guns was something you brought up that I expounded on)

What a shocker. Duh! :p Still it doesn't make sense for small children or animals or those who cannot distinguish between good and evil.
That's what it makes no sense. So what if they abused underaged girls into marriage and pregnancy and as Jon Stewart puts it kids who came out of the right vagina were appointed to be kings for lack of a more mature royal blood? Do these make small kids anymore responsible for their actions? :p

OK, I think this has gone far enough because we're both expanding this debate way too far

Next time someone take their ball and go home, don't assume they ran and hide or couldn't continue a pointless argument. They might just want to save their own time. *Yawn*

Because, after all, being on a message board is really productive and not a time wasting effort? :rolleyes:

No, some arguments are constructive and informant. It also gives you an opportunity to discuss matters with people around there world and get to know some situations first hand. It can help you make friends with people you might never have the chance if not for a message board. And sometimes, it just gives you pleasure to see people you've hung out with on this virtual bar, have made new accomplishments and share it with us.

There are a lot of reasons I'm addicted to spend some of my time here. Statistics of my experiences shows arguing with you is not one of them. :p

Well, its not surprising. Your butt is probably sore from all the kicking. :p

Not really. You answered my argument with a smily of "Blah blah blah".

So that's why you'll be getting "blah blah blah" from now on as your answer, only I save my time by not posting it. :p

I said from this post on so I can say it here I guess:

Blah blah blah...

THANK YOU!

Sincerely,
Double-J

I only wanted to stop this because you keep changing and wiggling around; making clear debate impossible.

Pointless? This debate became pointless as you dragged more and more outside examples in to "prove" your argument.

I simply can discuss anything with you without you flying off on weird tangents. And when you fly off, I have to respond to each example to debunk the whole thing. And you respond to that by flying off even more to keep yourself from being wrong each time I point out a hole in your theory.

Knock it off.

svsg- Thanks for the info on the study. I'm going to see if I can find that book you mentioned. I'd be interested to find out more.

Mad Johnny- you gave me alot to think about. I didn't agree with alot you had to say, but I also think we were discussing different things. I wasn't trying to establish what was normal/abnormal, just what naturally occurs without human intervention.

Tis- I really liked your point about one of two siblings being more aggressive. I guess that's true in every situation, not just in a family setting. I could see that then going into a leadership vs. follower debate too. I'm so glad your daughters are so close. Family is so important. I get along great with my siblings and I really hope the twins are close. Nothing would make me happier.

Asf- Hey hon, I haven't chatted with you in a long time. As usual I agree with the majority of what you've said although you lost me on the mathmatical part. I haven't thought that way since college and it was sending me into painful flashbacks.

DJ- Thanks for contributing absolutely nothing. Job well done.

So glad that I've earned your approval. :rolleyes:

Cheers,
Double-J

Afsaneh - As usual, I agreed with you, in general.

Mad Johnny - I sometimes agree with you, I respect your common sense ability, but you totally didn't convince me on this.

DJ - I almost never agree with you, but I appreciate your willingness to spend lots of time and effort on these debates and I respect the fact that you always argumentate your POV. In this however, you only tried to find a pointless argument with Afsaneh, that you knew would end up with lots of 'blah blah :rolleyes: '. Not really on level...

Hey Kris! I'm really sorry about giving you painful mathematical flashbacks and about my other pointless arguments. I should've just ignored some remarks. Anyway, it is always great to see you around Mr. Blonde! Please give kisses to your lovely children for me.


Thanks Enzo!

Krlea, I forgot to mention about another book called Genome by Matt Ridley. I found it far more interesting than "The selfish gene", though the latter covers far more complex topics.