Male and female babies showed identical levels of motor performance; what differed was their mothers’ estimations of their crawling abilities. Mothers of girls underestimated their daughters’ performance, and mothers of boys overestimated their sons’ performance. Many of the physical, emotional, and verbal differences we see between boys and girls are largely socially constructed and reinforced through stereotypes. If we want our children to grow up believing that men and women are equal, we need to treat them as equals in childhood. If we want children to grow up outside the constraints of
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