Why did boys get treated like they were older than what they were?

[Misty Avich]

This isn't a complaint, it's just a question.

I remember when I was 7 my grandfather died, and my parents didn't take me or my sister (then 8) to the funeral because we were too little. My older brother got to go, and also a male cousin - who was the same age as my sister. It was weird that an 8-year-old boy got to go to his grandfather's funeral but not an 8-year-old girl. Me and my sister just went to school that day. My cousin was no more closer to our grandfather than we were.

Were boys treated like they were older in the 1990s, or is it something else? I'm not up for debate, I'm just wondering, that's all.

 

[Judge]

Good question. Perhaps it may be about a flawed perception of maturity. An unfair and inaccurate assumption that young boys can handle the ritual of a funeral while little girls are considered to be more emotionally vulnerable.

The only other guess I can think of is when a parent somehow considers some of their children to have been closer to a dead relative than another.

But then parenting isn't perfect either...