What is the conflict in ‘‘Boys and Girls’’?

The main conflict in this story is person vs. society,
specifically the narrator resisting the idea that she must behave the way society says
she must. Her mother reinforces this idea by complaining to her husband that the
narrator seems to prefer helping her father instead of doing housework with the mother.
During this period of time, girls were expected to be feminine and enjoy doing things
that would prepare them to be a wife and a mother. At the beginning of the story, the
girl is a tomboy, but by the end, she has been relegated to the status of being a girl
because she allowed the horse to escape. Her father sees her actions as weak, something
that the weaker sex would do. Even though the narrator realizes that women are not given
the same opportunites and status of men, she relents and accepts her role in
life.