Little Monsters?

It is only too easy to read articles that portray boys in a negative light - right from before birth until adulthood.

When I was pregnant with my son there were times when he would not move much, on more than one occasion a midwife would comment "Oh, he's just being a lazy boy".

When articles are written about school they frequently portray boys as underperforming compared to girls, worse still they claim that boys disrupt girls education and say that girls perform better in single sex schools.

Boys apparently are ready for formal education later than girls (where is the problem in that given that we start formal education far earlier than any other European country, including Finland which has one of the best literacy rates in Europe yet doesn't start teaching reading until age 7) and will apparently charge around the playground causing mayhem and frightening girls.

It doesn't end there; when we try to find clothes for our little boys there is an excess of clothes with "Little Monster", "Cheeky Monkey" and even clothes with logos about the wearer being "naughty". By contrast, little girls are princesses and other supposedly desirable attributes. Clothes for little girls seem designed to make other people think that they are cute, loveable and need looking after whereas boy's clothes send out the message that they are naughty, cheeky, and generally badly behaved.

It gets worse; they are more likely to be given ASBOs, less likely to be trusted when out and about - who would you trust most/least - a group of teenage girls or teenage boys hanging around on a street corner after dark? Which would make you worry for their safety and which would make you worry for the safety of passers by?

When they grow up and hopefully have their own families, they are still criticised; fathers don't read to their sons enough, fathers are not a good role model because they work too long hours, fathers don't set a good example for their children, fathers are not there at all, resulting in children being more likely to turn to crime and do less well at school.

All this time and energy is spent putting stereotypes about boys out there, then we bemoan the fact that boys are not performing as well as girls and that they get in more trouble than girls, we complain that there are not enough male primary school teachers yet we have spent the best part of the last 20 years teaching children that men cannot be trusted - and worse, teaching mothers that they cannot trust other children's fathers with their children.

As for my own "little monster", he is affectionate, loves books, knows how to say please and thank you and is so keen to help. Yes, he can be naughty, cheeky and go charging around the house bursting with energy and expend some of it by jumping on the sofa when he thinks he can get away with it (think again!) but then so could his older sister at the same age.

I hope that society will let him carry on and develop his own personality without heaping unhelpful stereotypical attributes on him that simply don't apply.

Similarly, I hope that society will let my daughter carry on being her enthusiastic self and not dampen her spirit by continually portraying little girls as princesses who should mainly be concerned with how pretty they look, how nicely they do things to help other people and so on.