We are certain that you all will agree that parents shape us into the people we are, or at least play a defining role in the same.
Siblings, grandparents, friends, teachers, mentors, they all come later. Your bond with your child comes first and then everything else will contribute in one way or the other.
Parents are also the first people kids come in contact with when it comes to understanding the world. How you speak to others, your actions, your behaviour, children observe everything and then imbibe the same.
So when the observation remains the same, why do parents have different rules for boys and girls?
Be it subconsciously or voluntarily, parents do end up treating a girl differently from a boy. That’s not us saying, it’s actually a 2020 study published in the Journal Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review.
A parent’s influence on a child can be everlasting and that’s why it shapes the way you are as a person. Here are three ways parents treat girls differently from boys, as per science.
1. Rough Play With Boys vs Peaceful Activities With Girls
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Parents tend to naturally roughhouse boys than they do with girls, which is one of the most obvious and socially accepted disparities in how we treat children from either gender.
Research published in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience found that parents are more likely to engage in roughhousing or rough and tumble play with their sons more than their daughters.
Researchers concluded that one of the reasons parents tend to do that is because they want to build the boy’s emotional intelligence. Roughhousing normally involves tickling, poking, tumbling, and more.
The study further suggests that this type of play normally comes from fathers than mothers, and helps boys develop emotional flexibility and skills to regulate emotions.
In comparison, parents will engage in more peaceful activities and sports. So a tea party would be on those lines. However, the girl may be under-developed when it comes to emotional intelligence at a young age.
2. Parents Share Spatial Language With Boys Than Girls
Another study points out that parents tend to discuss spatial language more with boys than girls. The 2017 study published in Psychological Science by Dr Shannon Pruden and Dr Susan Levine concluded that parents use more dimensional adjectives, shape terms, and words with boys.
So, a parent is more likely to describe a ball using words like “a little circle with curved edges” to their son, as opposed to their girl.
Spatial talk with children matters when it comes to their development. This is particularly important when kids are between 14 to 26 months old.
The study concludes that kids who talked more about the spatial world had better skills when it came to achieving skills in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines.
3. Parents Talk To Boys About Science Rather Than Girls
Another glaring yet ignored difference between how we treat boys and girls differently. Parents are more prone to talk to boys about science. In comparison, parents will automatically talk to girls about social issues.
That’s a parents’ influence on child that they don’t even realise they are making. It sets a precedent in the girl’s mind that they need to learn about social issues.
Even when it comes to displaying emotions, parents consider boys to be angry while girls are sad. Like we said before, parents don’t do it consciously but it’s the conditioning the forces us to behave in a certain way with children from either gender.
Parents Influence On Child: How To Empower Daughters
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Daughters are as strong and capable as boys. That’s the first thing parents need to understand and acknowledge.
While most parents do realise this, it’s the conditioning from generations that have made the subconscious bias acceptable.
Here’s how you can empower your daughters:
- Encourage them to believe in themselves
- Develop their voice
- Teach them to trust their gut
- Be firm with the yes and no
- Be respectful, be persistent
- Let them chase their dreams
- Develop their emotional intelligence
At the end of the day, in a rapidly changing society that is giving more and more acknowledgement to women, we need to raise our daughters to be strong and intelligent. And for that, we must learn and unlearn the existing parenting traits.
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