Kindergarten bromances. (Hi Livejournal!)
My kindergarten dudes are starting to be super affectionate with each other. They’ll hold hands, kiss each other on the cheek, and say “I love you.” Not all of them, but enough for government paperwork.
Sometimes it’s a “joke.” Sometimes it’s serious. It’s always adorable.
Those same boys would last about 5 minutes with that behavior in America before being called out as “faggy.”
The kissing on the cheek doesn’t continue through high school, but boy platonic friends are WAY more physically demonstrative than their American counterparts. It’s “normal” to see teenage boys walking down the street arm in arm.
It’s kind of sweet.
So when someone mouths off to me about how men ~* don’t show their emotions *~ and this is from the cave days or something when they couldn’t hug or a wooly mammoth would bite them and their testosterone-y testosterone, I’m going to drop some international anecdata on them because it’s all socialized.
Oh, and! The gendered play is a lot different too. Some of my boys love playing with animal dolls. And they ALL love to make everything into "mommy" and "daddy."
In peripherally related news:
This was my face today when my 7-year-old class wanted to know the difference between the sentences “Doing laundry with my mom” and “Doing my mom with the laundry.”
Also, I drastically need to update my highlights.