Of course, there’s the refrains in the media that boys are being left behind in education, are more likely to be held back, commit suicide, etc.
This isn’t really about that, though it might be connected. Why does it seem to me that Mormons hate boys? For a supposedly patriarchal church, there seems to be a lot of deep dislike for primary age boys – at least in my experience.
Here are three experiences that make me wonder:
1. I was once called to teach a primary class for “trouble makers.” The idea was that these kids were so out of control, they were disrupting the other classes. What did I get? A class of around a dozen boys. In fact, this created a segregated primary in the ward I was at. There was my class (all the boys) and the rest of the classes, which were all girls.
2. I served in a (different than above) primary where one of the presidency members, when doing sharing time had a policy of refusing to call on boys. She was not silent about this, and let everyone know. I seemed to be the only one who objected.
3. A straw poll at a ward activity came back with over 80% of couples preferring girl babies over boy babies. Personally, I just like kids, so the idea that a girl or a boy would be preferable seemed shocking to me, but everyone seemed rather content with the idea that people should prefer one over the other (and that girls were better than boys).
This is all rather anecdotal (and doesn’t include hurtful remarks heard in casual conversation), but these experiences are from three geographically distant areas of the church. I admit I’ve heard my share of men hoping their next kid is a boy so they can do “manly” things like play catch with them, but they seem to be rare compared to the venom I see aimed at boys within the church on a regular basis.