Gender-specific toys, clothes, behaviour and music

[ailbhe]

Many of you are familiar with my long-standing rants about the British and how they need to colour-code their babies so that they can tell which sex they are. And how much I dislike pink, too.

I have recently begun to wonder (or possibly to realise) whether Linnea gets away with "worse" behaviour because she looks like a boy. The specific example I'm thinking about is from when we were out in a restaurant with some friends and their daughter, who was wearing a dress and tights - Linnea was wearing something Linnea-ish, which usually means gender-neutral trousers or dungarees. And gender-neutral means "boy" to most people. Anyway, the friends' toddler and Linnea were both running around between courses. Our friends were asked or told to pick their baby up and keep her in her seat - and we were not. Possibly the other baby was behaving more badly than Linnea, but I couldn't see it, myself - they were both running around the pathways at the edge of the restaurant, like a few other children during the course of the evening, and neither of them were yelling (though the one who was incarcerated in a higchair started yelling fairly quickly). The only difference we could see was that Baby A looked like a girl and Linnea looked like a boy.

Similarly, in playgrounds, people admire "his" speed, strength and agility, while cautioning their own daughters not to run or climb.

We wondered about Barbies and toy guns before she was born; I decided (unilaterally, like most decisions about Linnea - they seem to be filed in Rob's brain as "mummy's jobs" along with working out when clothes no longer fit and the weather is cool enough for another layer) that she can have guns and Barbies as gifts from other people if she asks for them. She won't be getting them from us. If she wants guns she can make 'em from bits of stick, and if she wants Barbies she can learn to make her own rib-cracking corsets and file her nipples off with emery boards, but I'm not paying.

(Ask us again in 6 years time - no parenting plan survives contact with the enemy).

I have a nasty suspicion that if she was a boy I'd buy her a Barbie less reluctantly. I am also pretty sure that if she was a boy I'd be less reluctant to dress her in pink. But she does have a pink coat! So I overcame that particular prejudice when confronted with 50 pence-worth of charity-shop washable warmness.

Boys don't sing the same nursery rhymes as girls. I have yet to perform a proper study of which ones the parents of boys sing, but I have heard a mother say that "that's a girl's book" about a book with a nursery rhyme in it. I don't know which rhyme it was though.

Comments

[sierra-le-oli.livejournal.com]

There's no doubt in my mind that society in general allows Linnea to be more active because they think she's a boy. Maybe someone can point to the studies that show girls are encouraged to be much more sedentary than boys from a very young age.

By coincidence, Wingnut and me were discussing how active Linnea was a couple of days ago (this was sparked off by a sexist toy catalogue). We wondered what would happen if she went to school instead of being home educated, if she would become less active or if the early training would hold.

By the way, I heard a lot of very positive comments about Linnea from other party guests, all remarking on how lively and active she was!

[ailbhe]

No doubt at all, eh? I'm still trying to have doubts because it's such a nasty idea. Grr.

Party guests - Aww, *blush*. I was very pleased that they all seemed happy to accept a child at a grown-up party as a human being and not a 'sgusting nuisance. It made for a very comfortable experience, sudden lunges for orange juice and peanuts notwithstanding. And that was an excellent salad. And we've decided what to get you for a housewarming gift now and would like to deliver it this weekend if possible.

I do occasionally think wistfully of a diet of junk food and television, to slow her down. I don't think it would work though.

[pauamma]

Tranks guns. Try them, you'll love them. (Just be sure to shoot yourself, not her. :-) )

[sierra-le-oli.livejournal.com]

It is nasty, isn't it. But there are so many studies showing how boys and girls are treated that it's impossible to ignore: girls being more likely to be praised for being quiet, discrepancies in marking between the sexes, etc. Despite the participating adults swearing up and down that they don't treat boys and girls differently, there it is. And that's one of the most awful things about sexism, it turns us into our own worst enemies.

I'd like to think that I do my best to be impartial w.r.t. children but can I trust myself? Without running myself through some of those tests like the marking one, I'd honestly have to say no.

Rest of the stuff in e-mail. :-)

[ailbhe]

I don't think we can trust ourselves - for example, I would be *more* willing to dress a boy in pink than a girl, which just proves I'm not impartial, even though I would like to be. I don't know how to be impartial without some kind of positive discrimination for traditionally-opposite-sex traits. I compensate by occasionally dressing Linnea in dresses (especially in summer), and I do encourage quiet play, which mostly means reading books or having tea-parties. She's getting a train for Christmas because Rob and I want one.

This world is broken. Partly I want her to be able to deal with it and get whatever she wants anyway, and partly I want her not to have to.

I'm very grateful that my mother raised us to think that girls can do anything they like. She only got two girlie girls out of it, too, and both of those can hike a mountain or wire a plug or hang wallpaper when they need to.

[webhill.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't know Linnea IRL, but I can't imagine she's more active/energetic than my little girl N (age 3). N started going to "school" a couple of months after her 2nd birthday, and is currently attending 3 days a week, plus doing some organized classes (music, gymnastics) on the other two days. Her teachers tell me she is quite active and "advanced" physically, on the playground. She has excellent gross and fine motor skills (she could write her name before her 3rd birthday; she can climb play structures that my 5 yr old has problems with). She was recently taken into the after-school "sports" class one day (I had an appointment and could not pick her up, the teacher felt bad and let her join in to the class even though she wasn't signed up for it) and the teacher told me that she "kicked ass" and was "better" at the skills used in the class than the 4 and 5 yr olds who had been taking the class for the past three months. No one was remotely discouraging, and they basically insisted I sign her up for the class because she loved it that much.

No one has ever suggested that I keep my girls quiet and let the boy run around. As a child, all I heard was "go outside and play, stop sitting on your butt" while my brother was told "go to your room and study." :)

I guess I am coming from a very different place...