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Recently, a fellow cheer mom, who is the mother of one girl and one boy, said to me, “You mean you’ve raised two girls?!! How do you still look so young? Girls are awful!!” I had to laugh, because I don’t think I look young for my age, and even though I have no experience raising boys, I have to say that just about anything would have to be easier than raising girls, from what I’ve experienced so far.
Little girls are wonderful and sweet, but can also use that sweetness, charm and beauty to become master manipulators of the universe, or at least of their own little universe, which naturally revolves around them. I’m not convinced that this is entirely a gender thing, though, because the personalities of my own two daughters are so very different.
I have heard several others say similar things, too, about how easy their sons were to raise and how difficult the daughters. In large part, though, I think this has to do with the double standard of conduct that still exists between the sexes. You know, for many, when sons become sexually active or party animals, they are just “boys being boys,” but girls who do the same are deemed loose and promiscuous, at least in the eyes of many, and even in the eyes of some of their parents. Is it really more difficult to raise girls or is it just that the standards are different?
I do see, though, that with boys, when they are in conflict, they seem to “take it to the yard, duke it out, and be done with it.” Girls, on the other hand, tend to have a mental black book that records in blood every single offense against them, and there’s always such a social hierarchy with them. I think this, too, is difficult to deal with, and although not all girls are that way, I’d say the majority are to some degree.
At any rate, God gave me daughters, and I am thankful for them. There are days that I think I’ve got much more than I can handle, but who hasn’t felt that way from time to time? We’re all in this together, and boys or girls, it “takes a village!”
