Some friends and I were just discussing this, this morning at swim class. It's fascinating to me, and I have noticed a lot of gender differences over the years since I have become a Mom.
When my now-16 year old daughter was in day care (14 years ago), I started noticing the differences. All the kids would be outside playing.....the girls would be in the sand pit, talking and working, huddled around some sand project. Meanwhile the boys would be in a herd, running from one end of the play-yard to the other.
I grew up with only sisters, and so having sons has been a big learning experience. I think it's the testosterone than makes them different. LOL. We have three girls and two boys....it goes: girl, girl, boy, girl, boy. I was very well-versed in girls by the time our first son came, and he was a shock to my system. Even in the womb, he was more aggressive.
Our second son is a little bit more mellow than his brother. They like to rumble and rassle, the girls don't. They tend to be less reasonable than the girls....they have much more of a "my-way-or-the-highway" approach to things.
They are all so very individual, it's hard to generalize a *whole* lot, but definitely there are differences that cannot be attributed to environment! :)
It's interesting that you mention that! I read a book recently that said mothers produce more testosterone when pregnant with a boy, and that most of the difference occurs during the 3rd to 6th months of gestation. So by the time you really feel the baby moving around, he's definitely a boy!
All my children (3 girls, 4 boys) are different from one another, but the big thing I notice that the boys have in common is all the physical activity ... running, jumping, thrashing, leaping, spasming. If I tell my oldest boy (10) to stand up, he can't just stand, he leaps up, spins around two or three times, waves his arms around, and levitates across the room. Drives me insane!
Of course, it was my 6-year-old daughter who put a dent in the wallboard with her head last week :-).
I grew up with 2 brothers (no sisters). The only problem is that my son is not like my brothers. They were very sports oriented: football, baseball, hunting, fishing.
My son is a computer geek (much like his mother and father).
However, he needs that boy outlet, and I don't know how to give it to him.
He does love the outdoors (camping). Unfortunately, you can't let kids run wild like we did when we were little. We do try to go camping every year, and we go hiking around the parks at our home. My girls also love the outdoors.
I would like to get my son involved in something at school, and it is very hard to find something non-sports (and not too girly). He's only 9, so things will change. I'm trying to convince that he should be in the band, but he doesn't like that idea. We got him a digital camera last year, and he likes that. So I'm hoping when he's in middle school and high school he can do yearbook or the school newpaper. I just don't want a kid that is totally into computers and nothing else.