Real World Experience: Male Babies vs Female Babies

This is going to be a fun, short article to write. For the sake of the point I'm making, we are assuming our male and female babies are comfortable being male/female assigned at birth as identification of gender and feelings of such don't start manifesting in children until 3+ so we are sticking to cis-male and cis-female babies at this time only.

As a daycare teacher, I've witnessed a lot of different developmental traits in my kids over the span of 3+ years within 5 years (I took a gap between daycares). I also took a lot of child development and early childhood education courses throughout high school and early college--so I have a somewhat vague educated idea of male vs. female development.

Most courses I took and many parents have explained their pediatricians have said that male babies develop faster than female babies--another divide on sex from the very get-go. These babies have barely been here and now there's already a way of trying to pin the two sexes against each other.

As a teacher, I agree and disagree.

All of my babies from all daycares have all developed differently and at drastically different rates regardless of sex.

I have some male babies right now--that have older siblings (this is important for later)--that are easily walking and running around before they are even one-years-old. Another male baby I have is even using sign language pretty basically and ahead of even older children.

However, many of my female babies developed all of their teeth before male babies--I've had female babies start talking and forming sentences faster than male babies at one-years-old/going on two.

I've had more male biters than I've had female--I've only had one female biter--but I've had four or five male biters now since my first daycare in 2020.

Now, we can try and say it's on the sex of the baby--I'd argue that it doesn't actually matter.

My babies that are walking and signing--they have older siblings that are 2+ and they're watching them at home. My girls that are growing their teeth are on specific formula bottles. My biters have either had emotional disconnect, potential mental issues that are impossible to identify below 5-years-old, and also just struggling with big-person emotions in a baby body.

My girls that have zero siblings took a little longer to walk--but only a few extra months after turning one. I had one boy that took until 2-years-old to walk. He is intellectually average in terms of any illnesses, disabilities, etc. that I am aware of. He is now 7-years-old and can ride skateboards.

This leads me to more questions and concerns--why are we trying to pin female babies vs male babies? Why are we trying to compare growth and development? I have a baby now who is 10 and a half months old and her family hired a therapist because they're worried she is developmentally behind. In my experience with a sum of 30 or more babies over the span from 2020 to now working in and out of daycares, I don't believe she is behind. She isn't completely crawling yet and she's not fully pulling herself up--but that isn't any different than many of the babies I had that are now toddlers--sixteen months--and completely "on track" as female toddlers as well. They're walking, they're talking, they're running.

I have more time to take in daycare. So far, I have not seen a difference between sexes--just a difference of child development and is completely normal. Everyone develops differently and at different rates--but this is just the beginning of a sex/gender divide implemented in society, at least in the United States.