That meant he rejected boy-typical activities like the rough-and-tumble play favored by his brother and instead showed a strong and persistent preference for girl-typical pursuits, such as playing with Barbie dolls and dressing up in princess costumes. He also exhibited something else, as his mother had explained to me: behavior called childhood gender nonconformity.
Patrick was more social, attuned, and sensitive, addressing me by name and exhibiting genuine interest in what I had to say. At the time, Thomas was all boy, with such an instinct for roughhousing that, within minutes of meeting me, he had punched me in the arm. To protect their privacy, I had referred to them in print as Thomas and Patrick, so I will do the same now. Yet even then it had been immediately clear their personalities were profoundly different.
Would I find that the identical twin boys, whom I had met when they were just 7 years old, had turned out the way the studies suggested they would? Would they even remember me?īack in 2005, they had arrived as if stepping out of the pages of a Pottery Barn Kids catalog, twins with identical blue eyes, wavy hair, and freshly scrubbed handsome little faces. After all, 10 years is a long time, especially in the lives of children. I WAS APPREHENSIVE as I sat in the coffee shop, waiting for them to arrive.
