How do you challenge preschool gender stereotypes?

[cockles]

My four year old boy is just getting into the rules about boy stuff/girl stuff (pirates are for boys, pink is for girls, etc) I challenge it everytime he says it - so it's become almost a game. And I talk about advertising and criticise it. But I wonder if that's the best approach - it certainly doesn't seem to be having an effect. I know that picking up these cues is important at this age - does anybody have any other suggestions about how to encourage him not to be sucked in by them?

[PosieComeHereMyPreciousParker]

Letterbox do some fantastic stories that dispel these myths.


Hark at me, I'm a newly eyes open person following a terrible endorsement of these attitudes when it came to my dd!! Not my older boys so much though.

[ForMashGetSmash]

My DD and I laugh at adverts togther, I have pointed out the improbability of Barbie's vital statistics and she can see that Barbie would not be able to stand up if she were real! Not on those ankles Mummy!

But my DD is 6 and has had longer than your DS to pick it up...I don't expect her to notlike girl things...but I do expect her to be open to liking "boys things" and to accept that boys are allowed to like"girls things"

I point out men in pink shirts for instance....or men with long hair...because those things are real and within her ken...rather than just an idea which she does not necassarily see played out at school.

[cockles]

I'm still struggling with the whole idea of 'boys things' - he tries it out on everything - 'halloween is a boys thing isn't it' we had today, and 'I hate girls'. I know it's part of forming his identity in his peer group etc etc but it is hard not to snap back!

[EvilAntsAndMiasmas]

I don't think you need to stop yourself from snapping back though, he is trying it out and needs you to tell him if he's right or not. And get his dad/other male figure to do the same if you can :)

[ForMashGetSmash]

cockles have you ponted out that YOU are a girl?

[ccpccp]

How about letting him develop normally, like all the other boys and girls, then discuss stuff like this with him when hes old enough to understand?

As hes only 4 it just comes across as mild brain washing, TBH.

[Pekkala]

ccpccp

re: "...develop normally"
There is no fixed 'normal', I'm not going to go into the nature/nurture argument BUT our gender identity may be influenced by society/ interactions with parents/ images we see in the media etc etc.

re: "like all the other boys and girls"
There will always be a percentage of children who do not conform to the societal 'norm'. How will they feel about themselves if no-one challenges the 'pink is for girls'/'mud is just for boys' crap?

re: "discuss stuff like this when he's old enough to understand"
Children are making sense of the world from the moment they are born - testing out their identities and own reasoning. I teach 4 and 5 year olds and believe me they are capable of discussing what it means to be a girl/boy AND of having their beliefs challenged.

[edam]

Tiresome, isn't it? You'd think after decades of feminism and quite a lot of progress in the 70s and 80s these battles would have been won by now.

ccpcc society enforces gender stereotypes - so there's no 'developing normally'. If you don't challenge them, you are letting prejudice constrain what your children think and what they can achieve. Boys and girls.

Just one tiny example of many: if you dress a baby in pink, people treat that baby one way. If you dress it in blue, people treat it quite differently. The test has been done repeatedly. Doesn't matter what the baby's actual gender is, dressing it in gender-signifying colours affects the response. Children are exposed to this conditioning from birth.

I have a ds - I don't want him thinking girls are inferior, or that he isn't allowed to enjoy things that are labelled 'feminine' or display characteristics that are labelled 'feminine'. I want him to be able to be himself.

[edam]

Another ridiculous example - you even have researchers in universities who are so blinded by conditioning that they spent public money on a very stupid study claiming that 'girls like pink' is somehow innate (they argued it was to do with gathering berries in hunter-gatherer societies). Idiots hadn't bothered to check first whether 'pink = girl' had always been the case. If they'd bothered to pick up a book, they'd have seen that pink used to be considered a male colour - in Edwardian times and IIRC up to WW2 pink was for boys as it was considered a pale red, hence active and aggressive which are still seen as male characteristics.

Would have saved a lot of time, trouble and money if the researchers had bothered to do a very basic check of their assumptions.

[Miggsie]

Having just returned from buying rugby style shirts and sweat pants and jacket in the "boys" section for 7yo DD, who wants to be outdoors and playing sports, and not in thin cotton jersey leggings I think we should challenge these stereotypes all the time.

Why are all the heavy weight clothes in the boys section? Why can't we have "outdoor and active child" section? It really pisses me off that the girl's clothes section assume girls will be indoors in spangly pink lightweight crap and don't need rugged outdoor kit.

[FranSanDisco]

I am doing my dissertation on this subject and it is fascinating. Carry on challenging and questioning your ds;s assumptions/stereotypes. I am finding through research that the free play ethos of pre-school/eyfs curriculum and low adult intervention often allows children's stereotypes to remain unchallenged.

[sethstarkaddersmummyreturns]

my dd this morning decided she was a fairy that goes around offering non-sexist alternative toys to children who are feeling constrained by their gendered toys:

Fairy DD: Why are you crying, little boy?
Imaginary little boy (ds1 wouldn't join in): Because I want to do baking and I've only got a toy gun to play with.
Fairy DD: There, I've changed your gun into lovely glittery baking things!

she was doing this wearing full pink fairy kit....

[sethstarkaddersmummyreturns]

LOL @ your sister.

I find it so funny when I teach dcs feminist stuff and they do completely unpredictable things with it. DD is fascinated by plastic surgery and she is always asking me to tell her more mean things that plastic surgeons do to people.
We were staying in a youth hostel recently and there was a toy phone in the lounge; she picked it up and went 'Hello? Is that David Cameron? I want you to make a law that plastic surgeons aren't allowed to make people look silly.'
There was a group of teenagers there on a GCSE field trip and they practically PTSL....

[EvilAntsAndMiasmas]

She sounds amazing! I want her on the panel at next year's feminist conference please :0

[sethstarkaddersmummyreturns]

LOL she would drive the organisers crazy with her primadonnaish requests - full-on tantrum if she doesn't get to sit in the seat she wants etc.
she would really have enjoyed the workshops but I think she was too young this year.

[Wholelottalove]

I bought DD (2.6) a medical kit recently with a stethoscope etc and a badge that says 'doctor'. She loves playing with it, taking my temperature and administering injections. My Mum came over the other day, say her playing with it and immediately said 'oh are you being a nurse?' DD said 'no, I am Doctor' :) Took me back to when I was little and girls were nurses, boys were doctors and that was it.

[cockles]

PMSL at 'developing normally'. I don't WANT him to be normal if that means thinking girls are rubbish. I had a good conversation with him this evening, saying things like 'I want you to be free as a bird - if you ever want to wear a frilly dress [like you did just 6 months ago actually!] I would be furious if anyone said you couldn't', etc.
Yes it's odd about his parents (both of them) being girls and doing everything that men do- he doesn't think grownups have to stick to these rules - girls and boys to him are very different from women and men. he did ask me the other day why lollipop ladies were always women.
That is very interesting FranSanDisco - I wondered about free play and lack of adult intervention. I am shocked at how often childcare workers greet the kids with 'what a pretty dress' to the girls and nothing similar to the boys. It's very catching.

[ProfessorLaytonIsMyZombieSlave]

So telling him (quite accurately) that girls can do the same things that boys do and vice versa (apart from a couple of biological issues) is "mild brain washing" and bad, whereas the (inaccurate) messages he's getting from all around him that there is "girl stuff" and "boy stuff" and that never the twain shall meet is... not brain washing and good?

I'm assuming that if a 4yo were to point at something blue and claim that it was red, you would smile beatifically and refrain from pointing out that it's actually blue because to do so would be "mild brain washing"?

Just keep plugging away; he will be absorbing the messages you are giving even if it's not obvious at this stage.

Oh, and DS really loves <a class="break-all" href="//www.amazon.co.uk/Three-Little-Pirates-Early-Reader/dp/1444000845?tag=mumsnet&ascsubtag=mnforum-21" rel="nofollow noindex" target="_blank">The Three Little Pirates where the three main pirates are girls, the bad pirate they are up against is also female and the "damsel in distress" is a distinctly non-stereotypical mermaid. And <a class="break-all" href="//www.amazon.co.uk/Night-Pirates-Peter-Harris/dp/140521161X?tag=mumsnet&ascsubtag=mnforum-21" rel="nofollow noindex" target="_blank">The Night Pirates with its crew of "rough, tough little girl pirates". I'm hoping that sort of thing will help in the long term.

[ProfessorLaytonIsMyZombieSlave]

Um, obviously first two paragraphs are to ccpccp and the rest to cockles.

[cockles]

I think what I'm struggling with is the gap between the story I tell him, and what he sees. In his social world - preschool - all the boys are stereotypically boyish and all the girls wear dresses and say they like princesses. When he does football there might be one girl, but usually not; there are no boys at the dancing classes I see. So he is, often, right. And this is in trendy N London.

[AreYouAZombieNoImArfasleep]

I'm pleased that my DS (nearly 6) still likes to play with girls as much as boys, some of his peers have started to tease the girls but he is still quite equal about it. I am not very girly though and just as capable of DIY/physical stuff as DP, don't know if thats made any difference. Its quite refreshing too to see that not all the girls at school are dressed in pink sparkly stuff! Another year or too will prob see a change, hope not though