Jarryd Lowe Prof. Mitra Composition 1: 1310-28 12-2-08 Nature Vs. Nurture In “boys and girls” we are being brought along on a coming of age story of an eleven-year-old girl in a rural part of Canada. In this story a young girl is changing from a child who wants to be like her father to a more stereotypical girl, and this brings up the argument of whether gender roles are brought on by genetics or by the social environment that one is brought up in. I think that in life and in this story there is a mixture of these two to some extent but for the most part gender roles are something that come from nature. Gender roles come naturally to a person even if they are surrounded by an environment not conducive to that behavior. The stories that the narrator tells herself before bed is a prime example of this. Even though no one knows what goes on in these stories besides her they begin to change and be more focused on things that are much more feminine in nature. These changes happen despite the fact that the narrator spends most of her time out helping her father and not inside with her mother. So even though she is surrounded by an environment of men she is still forming a more feminine mindset of herself. Although I think that it is significant that there is pressure from her mom to act more like a daughter rather than a son but if she resisted it for eleven years then why would it all of a sudden start sinking in. How I perceive what happened in this story is that after a certain amount of time she started to grow up a little bit and her mind started to change from just being a kid to being a “girl.” Another change that naturally happens is her perception of and the relationship between her and her brother. In the beginning the narrator just sees her and her brother a children, not as separate genders. Her being the oldest she naturally thinks she is the stronger and more useful one. This begins to change, as they get a little bit older, Laird begins to catch...