Girls vs. Boys

I don’t know when I’ll stop being surprised that not everyone in the world thinks the way I do.
I can’t reconcile, for example, the way some parents encourage segregation of little boys and girls during group activities in a sort of early Mars vs. Venus brainwashing.
I am not naïve enough to disregard the fact that some gender identification is innate. Most boys will want to do boy things, and most girls will show girly tendencies regardless of parental influence.
I just don’t think adults should go out of our way to polarize grade-school kids any more than they already polarize themselves.
One year when my husband and I taught children’s Sunday school, we had a class with 11 boys and two girls on the roll, only one of whom attended regularly.
If these girls minded being outnumbered, they didn’t show it. But one day at the start of the term, a mom of another girl who was supposed to be in the class stopped in the doorway and said disdainfully, “Oh, no. Look at all the boys!” She then continued down the hall to find a more suitable class for her daughter.
Another time we let them divide into their own project groups of three or four. A mom approached a girl who was happily coloring with two boys and said, “Don’t you want to come over here with the girls?” The child looked confused but went anyway, since the adult leader’s question implied that her choice was wrong.
I’m not one to give dolls to a boy in a misguided attempt to make him equal parts masculine and feminine. I just think people who work with children shouldn’t default to “boys vs. girls” just because it’s easy to do.
When my sons attended a local activity camp last summer, the daily competitions were always grouped by gender. Even the most popular TV shows, like The Apprentice and Survivor, do it. You don’t need a master’s degree to find other grouping techniques, such as having kids pick colored or numbered pieces of paper out of a cup, or even the old “count off by threes” method.
If you’re pitting girls against boys at every opportunity, though, no one wins. If the boys beat the girls, it raises the cootie quotient. If boys get beaten by girls, they see it as a tragedy, and their co-existence becomes even more tenuous.
If they learn to work together early on, though, there’s a chance they’ll feel like they’re at least from the same planet when they get to middle school.
Copyright 1/05