It’s Okay For Girls To Be Angry, And For Boys To Be Sad

Telling our children their emotions are gender based is harmful.

Photo by note thanun on Unsplash

One of the most vivid memories I have from childhood centers on emotions. My brother was angry often, and my mother always chalked it up to him simply being male. However, if I dared show anger about anything, I was told it wasn’t ladylike. Similarly, if he showed anything resembling weakness in her eyes, i.e. crying, he was told to stop acting like a girl and suck it up.

What it taught me was to choke down my anger, no matter how righteous. And him, to swallow his tears no matter the pain.

As parents, we often seek to mollify, quell — even extinguish — our children’s anger. Life is busy, we’re moving fast. Anger slows us down. It stresses us out. But the disruptive quality of anger is exactly what makes it a powerful agent for social change.

There is little difference in how boys and girls experience and express emotions, but there is a substantial difference in how we respond. We reward girls for being pleasant, agreeable, and helpful. By preschool, children believe it is normal for boys to be angry, but not girls.

We are so busy teaching girls to be likable that we forget to teach them they have the right to be respected. And the effects of that carry into adulthood. Women and men experience anger the same way, but men are much more likely to express that anger verbally, while women tend to keep it to themselves. In doing so, we lose our ability to defend ourselves.

One study found that in 75 percent of cases of everyday discrimination, women think of responding assertively, but they actually say something less than 40 percent of the time. The #MeToo movement is committed to changing that in the world.

We can change this within our homes as well.

Share the positive power of anger

Girls learn very early on that anger might break bonds in relationships, and that the most important thing in their lives is bonds and relationships. However, anger actually has an incredible potential to deepen connections.