Who says raising boys is easier?

[Alcibiades]

5. It's all based on averages

I have two, a boy and a girl, aged 7 and 3. Though the concerns here address parents of teens, the other parents I know are always commenting on how boys and girls are different even at young ages.

Boys are supposed to be hyper and rambunctious, girls are supposed to develop more quickly and be more compliant. This is, however, based on the average: there is a lot of variation, and, given the small sample size most parents have, your own experience may be very different. Most of the mothers I know who have had girls first think their boys are "bad," because they are more active. This is puzzling to me, because the boys in question are not disobedient, they just require a little more supervision.

At the same time, though, my own boy and girl are completely different. I might add that I was raised by a feminist, my wife is a working professional, and I am a stay at home dad who has tried to treat my kids equally--though it's impossible to treat them the same, of course, because they are different people. Variations between individuals based on who they are are at least as great as those based on gender.

Girls are supposed to hit most developmental milestones a little faster, but that hasn't been my experience. My son was talking early, walking and running at 12-18 months, and has generally been above the 95% on everything--size, reading, math, etc. I give him books that are at a 9th grade level, and he can read them, has maxed out the elementary school reading exam, etc. Meanwhile my girl did everything later. She's 3, and still does not speak clearly, so much so that we took her to a speech pathologist, who said (which we knew) that she's bright cognitively, but that she's at the 20% for speech. She'll be going for speech therapy once a week from now on. At the same time, she does pretty much have the same energy level as my son, but gets tired a little more easily.

Some things I have been successful at, with regard to eliminating silly gender distinctions. Both my kids will play with toys that are usually "for" the opposite gender. Some things I have noticed I think are down to gender differences: while my mom friends have noted their boys' greater energy, few seem to have noted how moody girls are, perhaps because they are women themselves. If I want to get my boy to do something he does not want to do, I give him one simple explanation, and that almost always suffices. This has been a good technique, allowing me to explain that there is a reason for things, but without having to have to argue through everything. With my girl, this has not been nearly so successful. She's quite stubborn, which she gets from her mother. The same parenting techniques that quickly ended the boy's tantrum phase have not nearly been so successful. She cares about things the boy never cared about, such as what clothes she is going to wear.

Though I would welcome a role reversal at some point, and it's still early going, all in all my boy has been much, much easier. I do love having a "set" of one of each, though, because each one is a delight in their own way, and my greatest source of joy. And I do think this article perpetuates something you see quite commonly in the media, which is that children are seen only as a problem, a vexing source of anxiety. On balance, when I take the problematic bits of parenting and weigh them with the joys and successes we have had together as a family, the balance sheet is very skewed in favor of my judgment that having children has been the best thing we have ever done.