Seems simple enough, but please feel free to add detail, color, explications, logical thought, irrational biases, and of course insults to Ann Coulter.
For the pedants among us, yes, I do mean that the average 13-year-old girl is more similar to the average 33-year-old woman than the average 13-year-old girl is similar to the average 13-year-old boy.
Public poll, ending date in seven days, one choice per respondent.
Physically, True.
From an emotional, personal and philosophical standpoint it’s too broad a question. We’d need to have a specific 13 year old girl, specific 13 year old boy and specific 33 year old woman for anything resembling an accurate comparison.
It feels really apples-and-oranges to me. It’s like saying a watermelon seed is more like a full-grown watermelon vine than it’s like an acorn. There were so many differences between me and the boys at that age, but there are also so many differences between myself then and now, it’s really hard to compare.
You’ve got the makings of a Lifetime special there.
I’m not sure if that would be an insult to 13 year old boys or 33 year old women.
I haven’t been 13 in a while, so I can’t say. However I do not believe that girls who are 13 are necessarily more mature than boys. If I’m wrong, then I’d be open to having it explained why. But I don’t see why that would be the case. Maturity comes from life experience, having setbacks and overcoming them, reevaluating yourself and your life, autonomy, introspection, etc. I don’t see why girls would be better at that than boys.
My understanding has always been that when people say “girls mature faster than boys” it has more to do with physiology than psychology.
It sounds like it’s definitely an insult to 33 year old women to me. 13 year old boys are 13 year old boys. Nothing to be ashamed of. But apparently women hit their emotional maturity peak at 13? I don`t think it’s remotely true but it does remind me of something…
Being an adult male I don’t know any teenage girls, so it’s been quite a surprise with this Twilight movie in the news so much to learn that it’s predominantly targeted to teenage girls. I know lots and lots of women aged 23-33 and they’re the only people I ever heard about Twilight from until now. I never gave it much thought but I was under the impression it was explicit and racy enough to appeal to adult women, since they seemed to like it. I’m really surprised to learn it’s primarily teenage girls who like it.
So maybe 13 and 33 year old females are alike in that they LOVE vampires and werewolves. oh no! 13 year old boys love them too! :smack:
When I was 13, I was like a 13 year old. If you had talked to me online, you’d nod and say “yep, I’m talking to a 13 year old.” I had the interests and life experiences of a 13 year old. I had the emotional maturity of a 13 year old.
That I happened to be like a 13 year old girl really didn’t make that big a difference. Sure, I was worried about the eventual size of my breasts, not the eventual size of my penis. But really, it’s basically the same stuff.
Unless you’re the guy who got caught with one.
It’s a case-by-case thing. I had a lot of male friends, and I had a lot of female mentors. I’d say at that point I was more similar to the boys my age. The women could only be said to be similar to me inasmuch as they could remember what it was like to be 13. After a few years of experiencing the world with a period and breasts and new, mostly unwanted attention, it shifted a bit. Though I still have more male friends than female.
Again, this depends on specifics, but I voted YES for this reason: quite a few 13 year old girls have mothers in their mid thirties. And I think they might actually have “more in common” than the girl would have with a boy her own age, depending on what “in common” things you consider.
My daughter is only 9 and my wife is 41, but I think, besides being females, they have many common interests–clothing styles, hobbies, taste in music, etc.
While children at that age are developing independent thoughts, their parents are still have a big influence on who they are. They have a considerable amount of commoness with their parents’ generation.
I also think a 13 year old boy and a 33 year old man might have more in common than a 13 year old boy and a thirteen year old girl.
I teach 7th grade, half of which consists of 13 year old girls and the other half 13 year old boys.
They have plenty in common and any 33 year old woman would have a hard time finding commonalities with the girls.
Note that I made no such assertion.
When I was a 13-year-old girl, I looked like I was 10 and while fairly bright and self-aware I was a complete child with no interest in or understanding of adult interests or emotions. So in my case, no way. I had several boy friends and we had tons in common, climbed trees together and had fun making up really nasty curses.
Many of my female friends and peers were waaaaay ahead of me at that time, though. Their bodies looked mature, they were dating high-schoolers, thinking about what college they wanted to go to, etc. They weren’t pals with boys, it was all about sexual and romantic interest.
I guess in general I think a young teenager of either gender always has more in common with anyone of their age than someone in their 30s. I mean, I am 24 now and always told I am ‘mature’ for my age. Most of my (single with no intention of getting ‘trapped’ in anything but a casual relationship, fancy-free, hard-partying) peers are in a totally different headspace than women I know in their 30s, who are usually established in a career, married or in a LTR, with one or more children.
Turn it around. If you are an adult, do you feel like you have more in common with other adults of the opposite gender, or children of the same gender?
I know I have far more in common with my wife, or other 40 year old women than I do with some snot-nosed 13-year-old boy.
How many 33 year-old women could see themselves being friends with a 13 year-old girl? Very few, I’d say.
How many 13 year old girls could see themselves being friends with a 13 year-old boy? Maybe not all of them, but certainly more than a few.
People tend to be friends with people who have stuff in common with them.
Yeah. I’ll be 33 in six months. And while I’ve met some nice girls who are 12 or 13 and it’s not unpleasant to talk to them, we don’t really have all that much in common. I can give girls that age advice (and I do, when not feeling mean at yahoo answers) and they can keep me current on teen stuff, but…
What a silly question.
By the time I was 33, I had
–Been through high school, college, and grad school.
–Traveled all over the country and to other countries
–Read thousands of books
–Fallen in love
–Gotten married
–Had a child
–Owned a house and a car
–Managed my own money
–Lived independently
–Had lots of jobs in lots of different fields
–Watched my father die. Literally.
–Lived in excruciating pain for months
–Had sex
–Gotten drunk and used drugs
–And about a zillion other things.
I’m sure most other 33 year olds could construct a similar list. The particular items would be different, and the range of experiences might be broader or narrower, but an average 33 year old woman would be able to make a list with a significant number of like items.
How many of these types of things has the average 13-year-old girl done?
Sure, she might have done some of them, and done some similar types of things that I haven’t done, but her list would be very short. Same for the average 13 year old boy.
I’m 38 and friends with some 10 year old girls, and we certainly have some things in common. We have many similar interests and likes. We find many of the same things funny. We roll our eyes at lots of the same stuff. We like helping other people. We enjoy life and have fun and look for the good in situations, people, and things. When they’re 13, we’ll probably have additional things in common.
But compared to the things I have in common with their mothers? No comparison.
It’s implicit, unless you’re trying to ignore the issue of maturity in its entirety. If 13 year old girls are closer in emotional and interpersonal and cognitive maturity to women 20 years their senior than they are to boys their own age then there can’t be all that much growth between 13 and 33. Although certainly when I said they peak at 13 I was being hyperbolic.
Hmm, I voted ‘‘true,’’ but you make a good point.
I just know that when I was 13 I felt like I had nothing in common with other 13-year-olds, least of all boys. I preferred to spend time with older women. Which means I can’t comment on anything ‘‘generally’’ because I really think I was freakishly different than most kids that age.