Gender Differences

Sometimes being different can be hard, but have you really taken the time to notice how amazing differences can be? Imagine if every flower smelled and looked the same, if every bird sang the same song, or every kitchen utensil only did one thing. Wouldn’t that be a little annoying or frustrating? Now I’m not just talking about the different ways we look, or what our personalities are like. I’m talking about the differences between genders.

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There is a lot of turmoil right now between gender differences. There are some things that I agree with, and others I don’t. But I don’t want to stir up contention in this post; I just want to point out how amazing it is to be male or female!

There was a study done with children of different genders and what toys they naturally picked. The study focused on children from the ages 9-17 months, 18-23 months, and 24 to 32 months. The study found that these children, independently playing without the presence of a parent, preferred stereotypical toys even when they were too young to understand gender.

Dr. Brenda Todd, a psychology professor at City University in Seattle, said, “Biological differences give boys an aptitude for mental rotation and more interest and ability in spatial processing, while girls are more interested in looking at faces and better at fine motor skills and manipulating objects. When we studied toy preference in a familiar nursery setting with parents absent, the differences we saw were consistent with these aptitudes. Although there was variability between individual children, we found that, in general, boys played with male-typed toys more than female-typed toys and girls played with female-typed toys more than male-typed toys.

“Our results show that there are significant sex differences across all three age groups, with the finding that children in the youngest group, who were aged between 9-17 months when infants are able to crawl or walk and therefore make independent selections, being particularly interesting; the ball was a favorite choice for the youngest boys and the youngest girls favored the cooking pot.”

When I read this short article on this study, I was fascinated! There are some things that are hard wired into our brains that just come naturally to us. I think about the differences between me and my husband. He finds mechanical things and math as interesting, while I have little interest in those things. I love doing crafts, or anything to do with the arts, and my husband (although he loves it all) doesn’t enjoy those things nearly as much.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints came out with “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” which states, “By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.” This is a beautiful statement made by the church leaders when they came up with this proclamation. “Divine design” is something that stands out to me. These differences that we have are divine. They help us achieve the greatest happiness in life. Without the differences between males and females, I don’t think we’d have as much joy as we do.

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But there are just a few more things that I want to say before I end this blog post. It is not right for men to mistreat women or women to mistreat men. We may be different, but we deserve respect from each other. Learn to work with your differences. Help make each other’s weaknesses stronger through each other’s strengths. We can create a better world if we learned to work together, respect each other, and help each other.