As a teenager, did you feel that your parents gave different rules based on gender?

My dad thought my sisters should remain virgin till Marrage
He thought the boys should score on every date.

OH GOD YES.

My sisters he was uber strict with.

With me, he was a gentleman enough that he would agree with my mother until she left the room, usually because I had stayed out or something all night. Then he would threaten me with a beating if I upset his wife again, nobody, not even his son was allowed to upset his wife.

Then he gave me condoms and a little whiskey, and told me he didn’t like the way I was dating the same women for such long periods. You fuck ‘em and leave ‘em he told me. My dad was of a different era.

Good Lord, @Imadethisupwithnoforethought. I’m 51, my dad is 92 and I knew his father; who was born in the late-1890s. I’m not familiar with the era your father was born.

Four boys and four girls in my family. Growing up, gender didn’t make a difference as far as rules were concerned. The difference came in different generations. My Mom was tired by the time I was a teenager and the rules were a little more lenient for me and my last two siblings.

@bk I just assumed all Irish dads of that age were like that. Huh.

I’m an only child, but if I had siblings, I don’t think my dad would have raised us much different. He was all about equality, and I’m pretty sure he would have only brought up differences and acted on them, gender wise, if he thought it absolutely necessary. As for ’‘rules’’ though, I highly imagine that they would have been the same for everyone; age difference, would it have been applicable, would have been the only thing that would have made a difference in given rules, I think.

Come to think of it, @Imadethisupwithnoforethought, my husband’s dad was like that. Egads. The bollock.

Just my sister and I, so I don’t have a brother to compare to, but I did not feel treated differently if I had been a boy. In fact with things like going out I had a very late curfew and neither of my parents ever waited up for me. As long as I was with people they trusted I don’t think they worried when I stayed over with them.

Also, when I wanted to do “girl” things like be a cheerleader, my dad asked why I didn’t want to play football. I never felt like rules were different for me as a girl.

Older sister, younger brother. My mother was hell on my sister. No guy has ever been good enough. My brother and I could do anything. It’s night and day.

Maybe. It’s all girls in my family (including extended), so there’s no real way to compare. There was tons of gender socialization. I doubt if she had had a son my mother would have given him the same amount of comments about food portions, or spent so much time on his physical attractiveness, or put the same kind of pressure on him to be attractive to women. But she might have been just as crazy strict, but in different ways.

She never gave me any rules. To this day I’m still not sure if that was wise.

I grew up an only child in the 80s (I have a half-brother, but we weren’t raised together), so I don’t have anyone to compare in my own immediate family. But I had many friends whose families had different rules for sons vs. daughters. I remember thinking it was crazy that the girls’ chores always revolved around the kitchen, while the boys’ chores were yard and trash-focused, and crossing over was not allowed. That the girls had earlier curfews and stricter dating rules than their brothers, sometimes even if the brothers in question were their younger brothers! It made me glad I didn’t have to deal with that hypocrisy.

Recently, my husband worried that one of my daughters (who are his stepdaughters) was out too late (I think it was like 11PM, and she’s almost 17.) He had sons with his first wife, so I asked if he’d felt that way about his boys at that age, and he admitted he hadn’t. His worry was purely because she’s a girl. Yet another reason I’m glad we met too late to have children together. I love that man, but he is a bit of a dinosaur.