It's hard for me to relate to this personally because I was always held to higher standards of behaviour and academic achievement than my brothers were, a fact that is openly acknowledged in my family. I was expected to contribute more around the house, while maintaining the same level of schooling and work as they did. And we all learned to take injury, illness, and stressful situations in stride. I definitely acknowledge that I didn't engage in the same levels of aggressive play or violent confrontation that my brothers did, if that's the sort of thing you're talking about.

At the same time, we were all sensitive kids (e.g., fired up by perceived injustice, saddened by other people's pain, perceptive to subtle communication cues, etc). Our parents never taught us to fear, deride, or repress emotion or emotional expression, and I think that's served us well in terms of our emotional intelligence, diplomacy skills, and creative capacities in both our personal and work lives. I definitely think my brothers are more sensitive than the average guy, but I don't see that as a bad thing. It definitely hasn't stopped any of us from succeeding in stressful circumstances.

It's totally possible that my experiences are out of the ordinary and many girls are coddled more than many boys are. However, I suspect it's more likely that boys and girls tend to be coddled in different ways. For example, every guy I've dated (#notallmen) has lacked essential self- and home-care skills b/c his mom did all his cooking, cleaning, shopping, and healthcare management for him. That seems like a sort of coddling too.

In any case, I'm all for disrupting strict gender roles to allow men and women a greater range of permissible attitudes and behaviours. But when it comes to disrupting gender norms, I think we need to be careful about taking one set of gender expectations and socialization trends for granted as the standard to set for everyone. And we need to consider what skills and capacities we might culled from our collective herd from doing that.

Otherwise, we end up with people on one side saying, 'we need to teach men to be less aggressive or treat people with more respect,' and people on the other side saying, 'we need to teach women to be more aggressive or grow thicker skins.' The sweet spot is probably somewhere in the middle.