{"id":18301,"date":"2014-06-12T00:01:02","date_gmt":"2014-06-12T07:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=18301"},"modified":"2014-06-12T00:01:02","modified_gmt":"2014-06-12T07:01:02","slug":"little-girls-are-superior-to-little-boys-heres-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/little-girls-are-superior-to-little-boys-heres-why\/","title":{"rendered":"Little Girls Are Superior to Little Boys — Here’s Why"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
Boys and girls find out at an early age that boys have something that girls don’t have. And it’s not what Freud claimed it was. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall, The Oakland Tribune, June 1, 1987<\/em><\/p>\n

Little girls are superior to little boys.<\/p>\n

This fact is not written down in black and white anywhere. The popular baby books talk warily around the topic of sex differences. And researchers will make only minor, technical concessions to the superiority of girls.<\/p>\n

Girls, they report, cry less as babies than boys. They talk better, their bones grow faster, their baby teeth fall out sooner, their brains specialize earlier and their fingers work better.<\/p>\n

Girls are less likely than boys to die in utero, and they are more likely to survive the rigors of childhood. Consult any parent, however, and you will find out that girls also are more civilized than boys.<\/p>\n

The experts may decline to comment on this touchy topic, but we know. We know that, as an infant, a girl already possesses a measure of respect for other people\u2019s belongings.<\/p>\n

\"little-girls-are-superior-to-little-boys\"<\/a>
If she squeezes the baby too hard in child care or squashes the flowers from her mother’s garden, it’s out of a surfeit of affection. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Unlike her brother at this stage, she does not pull the tablecloth off Aunt Nancy\u2019s dining room table \u2013 not until the hand-built porcelainware has been cleared away, at least.<\/p>\n

She might chew on the toaster cord, but she does it daintily. She does not electrocute herself.<\/p>\n

At 2 1\/2, unlike her friend Timmy, she does not drop her toys, one by one, off the deck and into the oblivion of poison oak below.<\/p>\n

She gets in the way in the kitchen, but that is only because she wants to help slice the tofu.<\/p>\n

Nor does she bite the smallest baby in day care. If she abuses him, it is with a surfeit of wettish kisses.<\/p>\n

She enters kindergarten knowing how to raise her hand, write the alphabet and put eyebrows on her portrait of Mommy.<\/p>\n

Her male classmates, meanwhile, are busy being active boys. They fall out of their chairs to get attention. They greet one another with karate kicks.<\/p>\n

They are still uncertain of the location of the lavatory and use it only in an emergency. In the average school day, a kindergarten boy has two to four emergencies.<\/p>\n

Little Boys May Have . . .\u00a0<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I had better stop at this point to mention that there are some areas in which little boys are clearly superior to little girls.<\/p>\n

Any nursery school teacher will tell you that boys love to play with blocks \u2013 a precursor of superior math abilities.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, if you spend some time with young boys, you will find they are honest. If a 4-year-old boy says, \u201cI don\u2019t like you,\u201d it\u2019s because he genuinely doesn\u2019t like you.<\/p>\n

He does not lie and, therefore, does not suspect that other people \u2013 including little girls \u2013 lie.<\/p>\n

When little Virginia, half a year younger, asserts that the adults have put her in charge of dishing out the tortilla chips, he believes her.<\/p>\n

\"little<\/a>
Mitt and muscles ready, he goes for the catch. Photo by BF Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When his share proves to be half the size of hers, he knows something is wrong, but can\u2019t put it into words. He opts for a blow to the side of her dainty head.<\/p>\n

And finally, anatomically, little boys have something that little girls might well covet.<\/p>\n

Freud would smile and assume that I am about to talk p—–s. [Note to readers: I’m deleting the P-word to avoid attracting the search engines.]<\/em><\/p>\n

But Freud was a man, a man who ultimately had to confess that he didn\u2019t rightly know what women want. The feeling is mutual. Freud doesn\u2019t understand me, and I don\u2019t understand him \u2013 and his bizzare notion of p—– envy.<\/p>\n

But Little Girls Are Superior<\/strong><\/h5>\n

After all, what little girl who knows the first thing about her own body would want to trade in her uterus for a p—-? Without a uterus, she would not be able to have babies and having babies is power.<\/p>\n

No, what most every little boy has in enviable abundance is \u2013 muscle mass.<\/p>\n

At 2 1\/2, he can lift his baby sister off the floor and carry her across the room. He can grab her toys and hold them over her head until she shrieks.<\/p>\n

He can shove her off the tire swing. He can insinuate his muscle mass between her and the cookie plate.<\/p>\n

Eventually, he learns not to use physical force on his sister. Mom, Dad and the babysitter don\u2019t like it. Besides, he adores his little sister.<\/p>\n

But he knows, and she knows \u2013 and they both remember long after the tire swing has been taken down \u2013 that he can throw her off it any time he wants.<\/p>\n

Understandably, little boys love their muscles. They like the way they feel when they move. They like the power that their muscles bestow upon them.<\/p>\n

After hearing the waiter recite the evening\u2019s specials the other night, our 6-year-old was decisive. He ordered the mussels.<\/p>\n

A boy can\u2019t have too many muscles, saut\u00e9ed or otherwise.<\/p>\n

Our son will enter the first grade in the fall and I am wondering what happens next.<\/p>\n

Just when it is, exactly, that the male half of the species stops dropping its toys in the poison oak \u2013 and starts taking over the world?<\/p>\n

\u00a9 1987 The Oakland Tribune<\/a>. Reprinted by permission.<\/em><\/p>\n

If you enjoyed this post, you might like “Confessions of a Nintendo Mom: The Day I Unplugged My Eight-Year-Old,”<\/a>\u00a0 “Scrubbing the Floor With My Daughter Cinderella”<\/a> or\u00a0 “When Your Kids Don’t Fight — Enough.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
At age 6, he ordered muscles at the restaurant. At age 33, after years of working out at the gym, they arrived. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Little girls are superior to little boys. This fact is not written down in black and white anywhere. The popular baby books talk warily around the topic of sex differences. And researchers will make only minor, technical concessions to the superiority of girls. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[146,1238,393,1239,422,1240,1241,56,1242,1243],"class_list":["post-18301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-changing-family","tag-christina","tag-girls-are-superior-to-boys","tag-kids","tag-kindergarten","tag-little-girls","tag-muscles","tag-nursery-school","tag-peter","tag-siblings","tag-weights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}