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Anecdotal, but I have three sons and four daughters. In my experience boys are harder when they are younger (wild, causing mayhem and physical destruction in their wake, solving problems using fighting, etc.) but in their teenage years prefer to hang out quietly in their rooms. Girls on the other hand tend to be calmer in their younger years, but then in their teenage years become argumentative, moody, causing lots of emotional and psychological strife. It takes until they are in their early 20s for things to calm down. Though by then the damage has already been done. In an ideal world I'd like to raise girls when they are young and boys when they are older.

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Most boys learn to mask their emotional state once the teenage years roll around owing to various vectors of messaging. I fear too many people are relieved by the ease of interface this brings about, but it can and usually is very deceptive. The consequent lack of communication just makes a void that gets filled with all sorts of terrible information about being "CHAD OR NOT" amongst other garbage that has to be unlearned.

Suicide statistics would seem to correlate:

(edit: changed link, didn't realize how spammy statista.com is)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States

The gender gap in the USA/Western Europe appears to be a lot bigger than it is in the rest of the world.

A ratio of 3.4 in the US (77% male) as opposed to 1.7 globally (63% male).

Men in the US commit suicide by gun. More effective.

I'm sure that's a factor, but I imagine it's more complicated than that.

You find similar suicide gender ratios in societies where guns are heavily regulated and comprise a small minority of suicides (e.g. UK, Japan).

IIRC there's another stat that shows men are more likely to be successful when they try.

Basically, across most developed countries, women attempt to commit suicide 3x more than men, but men complete suicide 3x more than women. So men are approximately 10x as likely to succeed when they do try.

This is a combination of male suicide attempts being underreported and gendered differences in suicide as a cry for help vs a desire to end it all. There's also a minor statistical effect where a single suicidal women will attempt suicide multiple times vs a single suicidal male attempting it once (so you get different numbers comparing suicide attempts by gender vs people who have attempted suicide by gender).

Japanese men seem to make do just fine.

I see this claim a lot whenever suicide gender imbalance comes up. I think it's really an political idea trying to compensate for the idea that girls who attempt suicide are doing it to seek attention rather than to actually die. Some things to consider:

People who attempt suicide to seek attention are still suffering serious problems and it's not something to judge as "not a real problem".

Men and boys engage in risky activities which aren't classified as suicide attempts but may be exacerbated by wanting to die, such as violence, drug abuse, dangerous driving, even extreme sports.

Men sometimes commit suicide in very deliberate and carefully planned ways that ensure success. That's bound to be more successful than spontaneously running into the bathroom and swallowing every tablet in the medicine cupboard. Sometimes this is because they believe they've failed their social obligations and will never be respected. Eg. cheating on their wife, beating their wife, being unemployed, etc.

It’s funny how a little line on a graph can flood you with emotion. I looked at the little line for 10-14 years and seeing that it’s not zero..

Yep, it starts really early in grade school with the relentless teasing boys receive for crying. You learn to bottle that shit up by 4th grade to make it as a “big kid”.

I dunno, 33 now, still can’t bottle that shit up. I just make sure to avoid situations that would lead to it.

To be fair, I don’t recall ever being teased for crying.

Our culture doesn't have a lot of coming of age rituals or expectations. Lack of purpose and responsibility does not do good things to people or societies. Ambiguity in self identity can lead to emotional and psychological isolation, and things like loneliness epidemics. I totally agree with the need for communication, expectations/helping set goals, and love is spelled T.I.M.E.

Another example I'll add to my collection of liberal misgivings.

Liberal democracy and the liberal social and economic orders have done so much good for western societies, but this is another great example of how something they have displaced -- coming of age rituals and expectations -- has really had a negative impact on the people living in them.

What rituals and expectations are you thinking about?

My guess would be coming of age celebrations such as bar/bat mitzvahs, quinceneras, etc.

Yes. Unfortunately the society as a whole still dont recognise it as a problem. I am generally MUCH more worried about my boys in the modern world than my girls.

"leaving boys behind" is a big problem in current times, and still noone does anything about it. This is especially seen in education, where girls/women outnumber boys/men in higher education by huge margins (university of ljubljana here is 60:40 women, so 50% more women enrolled).

You are not alone. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/10/07/americans...

Mom? Dad? Is that you?

Joking aside, I’m the youngest in a family of 3 boys and 4 girls and your comment lines up with my upbringing. Being the youngest I got to see the teenager year insanity of my sisters all unfold. Another anecdote is that when one of my brothers did get in trouble it was always something significantly worse than my sisters.

Funny, I’m also the youngest of 3 boys and 4 girls.

Not to be snide, but was wondering if the number of bathrooms available in a family might matter. Growing up with sisters, that was a frequent source of tension.

We have more bathrooms than people. It has helped but teenaged girls are .... hard.

I have two boys age 8 and 11. It’s nontrivial keeping a boy alive between the ages of 3 and about 6. We’ve been in the ER so many times for stitches and other care that I asked if they had a rewards system or like a punch card for a free visit.

That’s so true. When I was a boy I was on first-name basis with one ER nurse. As an adult with a boy ... I’m on first-name basis with an ER nurse.

> As an adult with a boy ... I’m on first-name basis with an ER nurse.

Not sure if wife or son is also dangerous.

Have you considered that maybe it’s just you/your family?

Oh, I’m sure it is. I love it. I’ve always loved taking controlled risks. To the untrained eye it can look like being careless :D

I'm not sure it counts as "controlled" if you still end up in the emergency room.

Well, no one’s perfect. I’d rather take a risk and get a little hurt than be totally safe all the time.

The last time I was in the ER was due to falling off a skateboard and needing stitches in my chin. I was trying to learn to skate, at 45. My son got me a skateboard for Father’s Day. I always wished I’d learned to skate as a kid.

Pry 50% of my ER calls are due to bike wrecks. My wife always says the day I buy a motorcycle is the day she buys a black dress and veil :D

I'm not sure how any of that relates to a kid aged 3 to 6.

I have one son and one daughter. This has been my experience as well. Both of them are teenagers now. Dealing with my son is a lot easier now compared to my daughter. Just a few years ago, it was the opposite.

With 7 kids, you're close to crossing over from "anecdotal" into "dataset" territory.

A single data set for a single family which may not generalize.

I have two sons. One was a handful when he hit puberty and one was not. I sat both of them and a friend of theirs down one day to talk to the one who was a handful and talked to him about the impact of hormones on his mood. The punchline for that conversation was "Your problem is called testosterone, not My Bitch Mother."

All three boys laughed and all three boys were easier to cope with afterwards.

I wonder if you missed the joke in this one and took it literally? I don’t think he was intending to suggest it was literally actually scientifically rigorous evidence.

I have something of a tendency to take things literally online, but, also, it's becoming clear to me here lately that I sometimes miss friendly banter on HN because no one ever talks to me that way. If a guy here is being "friendly," you can pretty much bet dollars to donuts that he is really wanting to know if I will sleep with him, which makes it enormously difficult to figure out how to interact here "normally" and I sometimes don't know why in the hell I bother because it seems like a lose-lose scenario for me and maybe this entire thing is a giant waste of my time and will never be anything else.

> If a guy here is being "friendly," you can pretty much bet dollars to donuts that he is really wanting to know if I will sleep with him

Except the joke wasn't a reply to you, but someone else, so you can be assured they were not hitting on you on that one.

Also, you don't even know 'irrational' and 'ineedasername' genders and sexual preferences, so you cant say 'he' was trying to hit on 'her'.

Yeah, wow, I said absolutely none of that.

What I said was I fail to correctly interpret friendly banter that occurs between other people here because it isn't something I first-hand experience.

Being ugly to me and people downvoting me and all this crap for stating that doesn't change it. It's just more evidence that people are all too often not friendly to me as an individual, so I stand by all of my above observations.

1. People here are not actually friendly to me. They are sometimes faux friendly while treating me like nothing but a piece of ass, which I deem to be predatory behavior, the opposite of friendly.

2. That fact makes it hard for me to correctly interpret friendly banter between other people when it does occur.

3. I continue to wonder if posting here is a giant waste of my time given the amount of ridiculous crap I get for no real reason other than posting as openly female.

I misunderstood that you were were talking about interactions here. You could probably tell that based on my response. I'm not 'being ugly to you' - and I know you might not be referring specifically to me. But misunderstandings like this happens, and it's nothing personal and you also shouldn't stress that much over.

Seeing how (to me) you overreacted to both my and ' zadokshi' comment with a long reply about your stress and how much you suffer from these interactions, I guess I would suggest you either stop posting here - at least for a while - to relax, or create a username that doesn't indicate your gender or real identity in any way.

In a side note, if I was on this level of stress and disappointment (sorry, english as second language and the best word here escaped my mind) in other people and and interaction with them, I would try to see someone to talk too.

Edit: BTW, you literally said 'if a guy here is being friendly...'

Edit: BTW, you literally said 'if a guy here is being friendly...'

Yes, I did and the very next set of words is the following qualifier:

you can pretty much bet dollars to donuts

It's not some kind of "all men" statement, but that's likely how a lot of people are interpreting it. It's a "I have to invest so much ridiculous energy in trying to not accidentally signal that I'm here hoping some random internet stranger will pick me up that it makes it hard as all hell to try to behave normally and talk normally and interpret things normally."

Anyway, I said I was leaving. This is my last clarification. All other "Wow, I can't believe people are so wildly misinterpreting my words" reactions will be kept to myself.

Have a nice Saturday. (Or whatever day of the week it is where you live.)

Canada. Thank you, and have a great weekend!

You said something people disagree with (and mostly being guys here) that proves the point.

Then you accuse friendly people of not being friendly and treating you like apiece of ass, admit you cannot recognize friendly banter, and accuse people of sexism.

If someone here is unfriendly to others, it's you.

I wonder if you'd benefit from starting a new HN account, and try to not reveal anything that would let people connect it to your real identity?

BTW, I'm a guy, and I'm trying to be friendly, and I can assure you I'm not looking for a date.

Thanks. Sincerely.

But that's not workable for a long list of reasons that I'm both tired of trying to explain and tired of being told are not legitimate concerns or whatever. It boils down to this: men are not expected to hide their gender to participate online. Telling a woman to hide hers as a "solution" is dismissing her very real problems and compounding them.

It shouldn't be an offense worthy of being downvoted to hell to say "Yeah, I missed the joke for the following two reasons, one of which is no joking around allowed when talking to Doreen! Can't have that!

It's exhausting to have to err on the side of being excessively serious every minute I'm here because if I make the mistake of being my normal, friendly self, everyone wants my phone number so to speak.

Making that observation isn't me being a bitch, but getting downvoted to hell for it sure makes me sympathetic to the hords of women who openly hate on men and blame the conspiracy theory of The Patriarchy for all their ills.

Anyway, I need to go do other things. This is not a conversation I really want to have. At all.

Edited: Because auto-corrupt is the bane of my existence.

Sure, best wishes.

A quick parting thought: one feature of HN (with which I strongly disagree) is that downvotes require no accompanying explanation or justification.

I've sometimes been pretty vexed when my perfectly good comments got downvoted.

I'd encourage you to not read too much into a downvote. It can be impossible to divine what actually motivates each occurrence.

I downvoted because off topic personal issues

The main problem is that HN has no messaging feature, so people are probably skeptical of the claim that > 0 men are trying to hook up with you (or anyone else) on HN.

Pointing out a comment where this has happened would go a long way to bolster the claim.

Given the UI of Hacker News shows the username only in a tiny grey font that very few people read, has no profile pictures or DM functionality, I seriously doubt that most people being friendly here are trying to get into your pants. This isn't Twitter. Generally, I have no idea of the gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation of the people I interact with here unless it's explicitly mentioned in the comment to make a point.

Well handled. Did they take the lesson?

> My Bitch Mother.

It's always strange to see this kind of thing said. It's uniquely western that this behaviour would be tolerated.

In my neck of the woods, such disrespect would result in a hiding, such that by the time a child is 3 they know not to disrespect their parents... at least not to the extent of verbal insults like that.

What would anyone other than Ted Cruz allow someone else to disrespect their spouse like that?

My son never called me a bitch and the only time in 22 years of marriage their father ever did was to say "Honey, I think you are pregnant. You are being such a bitch." and because he never, ever spoke to me that way, I didn't say one word in reply. I just went and got a pregnancy test (like that same day or within a day or two) and, lo and behold, I was in fact pregnant.

I'm the one in the family with a potty mouth who swears like a sailor. It was funny to them and they all three laughed in part because that line was colorfully descriptive of his cranky, blamey behavior, not because anyone in the family ever spoke to me that way.

Ooof, I'm sorry... I didn't initially read your username and just assumed that you were a guy.

Ah HN. Where else can I read about someone abusing an infant with nostalgia, while also suggesting that it’s a failing of western culture to not beat ones children.

Here's my take on it... A younger non-parent me understands the western take on "not beating your children" very well. But the current parent me can also see why parents sometimes would beat their kids.(not that it is right.). Honestly, negative feedback/reinforcement is also needed to discipline(and I agree physical assault is the wrong way to do it.). The point I'm trying to make here is the stance against hitting your children stems from a "ideal well-adjusted parent" (not different from the "rational actor" in economics). And Yes, I'm contrasting the "ideal vs the actual". For context: I grew up in India in the 80-90s in a rural area. Personally, in my parenting I'm starting to use the "sama-dhana-beda-dhanda" ordering to some extent and customization for family settings of course.

I grew up in Australia in the 80s/90s

I was hit as a kid. I have no distinct memory of being hit really, but I have distinct memories of being scared of it if I misbehaved and parents getting angry.

As a parent now, I see two reasons a parent might hit their kid, and neither is acceptable to me.

(A) you lose your temper because the child misbehaves. This isn’t acceptable because you’re reacting emotionally. The outcome could be extreme, either mentally or physically.

(B) you don’t lose your temper and make a reasoned decision to hit the child. This is even worse because you’ve justified hurting a child, to yourself.

Its not news that how a child is raised will impact their outlook on life. I wasn’t hit a lot, and I’m generally able to not make a physical reaction (such as hitting) when I am upset with my son.

I’ve seen first hand that others who had more violence in their childhood (eg hit with a wire coat hanger by a parent) will themselves be much more likely to react with physical violence if they get upset.

It's worth noting, there is a pretty big difference between something like a simple spanking and being beaten with a wire clothes hanger. There's a trend to treat the two extremes both as "beating your child" and something a parent should be locked up for doing. I'm not a fan of that grouping.

There are times when a parent needs to do something that will make it very clear that the child's behavior is completely inappropriate. Things for which, if they do not teach the child this, it will cause problems later. For some people, that act may be a spanking or similar. For others, it might be making the child eat soap.

Personally, I'm a bellower. I almost never raise my voice. But when I do, I am heard... period; everyone in the house stops in their tracks to find out what has pushed me over the edge. I don't like yelling, but if my child is doing something that could cause them physical injury (or similar) and I cannot seem to get them to stop by telling them to... I raise my voice, a lot.

I’m like you, I’ll yell at him, and usually it’s to go “look at the wall” (aka naughty corner when you don’t have a corner that’s actually usable).

But the comment I replied to gives the impression of a pretty harsh implementation:

> such disrespect would result in a hiding, such that by the time a child is 3 they know not to disrespect their parents...

What happens if they don't look at the wall?

Louder voice, followed by moving him to the wall - as in, take his hand/wrist and move him to the wall.

That's a pretty rare event.

Where I grew up, corporal punishment was the norm. If I misbehaved at home, I'd have to fetch "the whopper" which was a thick leather dog collar.

If I misbehaved at school, I'd get a caning (bamboo) or hiding (short length of hose pipe).

I was never abused. Boundaries were always known, and the punishment for crossing them also known. If you got in trouble.

I mean... you do something cheeky, and the punishment is a bit of pain for 10 seconds. That was always much much better than being told how badly you'd disappointed your parents or teacher.

I'd take a hiding over a telling off any day.

FYI, my partner was also beaten as a child, but she'd vehemently against corporal punishment now. Our children are being raised without the cane.

Funny, but these data aren't exactly independent data.

This was obviously a joke.

A very funny one at that.

Anecdotal, but I got a chuckle out of it.

No peer reviewed evidence of that.

On the other hand, that is a strength in that it's an excellent control for family environment, parents' socioeconomic status and educational attainment, neighborhood quality, etc.

Perhaps they could repeat the experiment with another 7 kids and different enviromental details.

dude I snorted my coffee.

i have 6, all girls!

Six divorces then?

I guess that makes me half the man you are, good sir. Six daughters, lord have mercy...

Teenage behavior is heavili influenced by adults expectations and treatment of said teenagers.

this is the kind of hn humor I need

Do you think if this a difference between the nature of genders or a difference emerging due to how parents and/or society treats boys and girls differently?

its brain structure, hormones, inherited traits, etc.

Brain structure is also shaped by environment

of course. but even if you fix environment, girls will usually interact and experience the world different than boys which obviously will cause their brains to form differently. even though environment is same.

lots of studies about that. especially twin studies with m/f twins.

> lots of studies about that. especially twin studies with m/f twins.

Twin studies with m/f twins outside of an environment shaped by external imposition of traditional (or otherwise differentiated) gender roles and gender-based expectations and treatments?

If so, how was that acheived?

If not, you haven't supported the conclusion of differences even if you fix environmental differences.

Yeah, that minor little detail of all of society generally treating boys and girls differently is slightly hard to really escape.

Right. I can't imagine what "fixed environment" could even possibly be construed to mean. The conscious pressures are unavoidably pervasive, let alone the unconscious ones. Doesn't much matter how the parents parent. Try counting how many times in fictional media women are written to respond to every conflict by collapsing in a puddle of tears, vs men.

One thing you can do is look at people of the same sex but with different levels of testosterone. That would effectively control for environment, unless you think that higher testosterone has subtly visible effects that cause others to (unconsciously?) treat them differently—which actually seems likely, if e.g. a high-T girl would tend to do more "rough" activities and consequently wear "tough", non-delicate clothing—but that in itself would be a useful takeaway.

Another thing you can do is compare countries, or families, or perhaps schools, that are "more gender-role-restrictive" or "less gender-role-restrictive". Surely if the environment has an impact, then varying the strength of that environment would vary the impact. (Obviously there would be other variables to control for.)

Well those behaviours haven't changed for hundreds of years. Grand and Great Grand parents share many of the same stories. Surely their environment are much different to what we have now.

Well our current environment is also very shaped by the past.

There is no ethical way to ever know.

All of the above.

The genders clearly are quite different (on average with large individual variations). It also must matter a lot how society is structured to handle the young maturing. I don't think 2021 America is particularly good at this.

I have two sons and two daughters. What you described is exactly my experience.

Be careful what you wish for.

Seven is a fair amount! Any tips that those of us with two may have missed?

I think that in this case tip flow should be a two way street.

Your description of boys sounds like my 6 year old daughter. Except she's also emotional, moody, and can go from 0 to 60 in half a second. Can't wait till the teenage years, I'm sure that'll be a blast. Luckily our twin 3 year olds (boy/girl) are much easier so far.

I've overheard parents talk about how easy daughters are. Always made me laugh a little.

Mine are currently the opposite. My daughter (10) has been a handful pretty much since she turned three. Love her to pieces, but nothing about raising her is easy. My son (8) is super relaxed, laid back, compliant. He gets into fights with his sister, but she is the one who picks the fights. She's also much larger than he is, which does not help.

Girls calmer in their younger years? I have some outliers then! Hopefully it means we’re prepared for teenage :-)

Exactly the opposite for my family.

Any reason why? If you can tell us, it may be illuminating!

> Though by then the damage has already been done.

Wow that sounds severe, what damage was done?

I presumed he was referring to damage to the parents' relationship dealing with the female teenage drama.

Damage to all relationships involved.

My youngest sister got married young and against the advice of everyone that loved her, more because the groom was a scumbag than the haste of the decision. Well she went full revenge mode and had to be totally cut off from the family once she and her husband started suing my parents. It really put my act of rebellion many years prior, joining the Marines, into perspective for my mother - who had until that point still carried hard feelings. The stereotype about women being irrationally vindictive doesn't come out of nowhere.

I think your story reinforces the apple and tree stereotype as much as it does the irrationally vindictive stereotype.

Eh, my mother's conduct wasn't totally insane - I'd be a little displeased if my son not only selected a branch that prided itself on combat exposure (right as bombs started falling on Baghdad), but he also intentionally chose the one component of the Corps that guaranteed he'd be getting shot at for months on end. I wouldn't have taken it so personally, but I'd still be pretty irritated.

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