Experience of childhood by gender

• • Parents are often stricter with daughters than sons, or certainly more controlling. While, as already mentioned, this is particularly the case with some minority-ethnic groups, it is also a general trend. This particularly relates to the amount of freedom a child might have outside the family home. Hillman et al (1990) found that boys were allowed to stay out after dark, cross roads and travel unaccompanied at younger ages than girls.
• • This contributes to what McRobbie and Garber describe as a “bedroom culture”. They argue that boys and girls develop separate youth subcultures because their experience of childhood and adolescence is very different, with boys being out on the town and girls being at home.
• • Bonke (1999) argued that there were more expectations on girls to perform housework and domestic chores than there were on boys