This birthday party really got me thinking. . .

Oh and T-shirts saying "Lil Miss Diva" for preschoolers....yeah...'cause that's and admirable quality.

I don't know...I'd have to come visit you there to compare! :o

I have noticed it more though...Disney Princess everything . But yes, no little girls in skirts in -20 weather, so that's something!

CheerfulYank, I'd be interested to know if you think the 'princess' culture is as bad in the midwest where we're both from? I swear when I lived back in the U.S. little girls hardly ever wore dresses/skirts and they were definitely not all in pink. Wondered if the lack of skirts was due to it being so frickin' cold all the time though

Thumbwitch, I've got an acquaintance whose DH is very much of the 'it will turn him gay' variety. Their son is 2, when he came to mine and was playing with DS's stroller, his mum snapped a pic and sent it to her H, who texted back 'get that off him!' and he was dead serious . The mum is nearly as bad, she hardly comes to our playgroup because there aren't enough boys.

I'm nodding my head in agreement to pretty much everything on here. But I think we have to give our kids some credit, as well.

Addams - I grew up reading (amongst many, many other things) the traditional nursery and fairy stories and it's only with the benefit of adult understanding that I can look back and see how insidious a lot of the stories are in terms of their representation of women and how passively they're portrayed.

But, even with these stories forming a backdrop to my childhood, and even with me never particularly questioning them at the time, I still identified openly as a feminist from as soon as I could think, and just knew that there was more to life than the brothers Grimm would have me believe.

Obviously I also admit that this gender channelling is undoubtedly worse and happening earlier to our DDs than it did for us. But I think as long as you're otherwise pushing the right message and letting your DD know that anything is possible, then you have to have a certain amount of faith that that will seep in and she'll be able to step up to the plate.

Where are you, Addamsflimflamily? Nearly all our shops that sell toys have at least one aisle of pink crap as well (NSW), plus at least one aisle of Nerf guns and other such shit (which are, IMO, just as bad).

But what do you do when they ask you for it?

My DD's about to turn 4. Until recently she happily played with all kinds of toys including cars, train set etc as well as dolls. But now she seems to have got infected with the pink princess stuff from the girls in her class at kindergarten. I'm planning her party now, and she's just asked for princess plates that she saw in some shop. She even brought home a disney princess book from the school library (we're not in the UK) and it was awful - Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty - all remarkable in their passivity and dullness. I've said to her I think princesses are boring and don't have adventures.

I'm going to do the usual boisterous games like musical bumps, and hope to find a cheap book I can put in party bags that will appeal to both boys and girls.

BTW, don't slag off Early Learning Centre - here we have almost nothing but Toys R Us, which has aisles and aisles of hideous pink princessy Barbie crap.

An element of "it'll turn him gay", yes, but I blinded him with science on that one so he's never dared mention it again! He gets a bit antsy about fairies and the like as well - but has accepted Harry Potter, dragons and other fantasy creatures so I tell him he's being silly about that too. Which he is. Your DH sounds far more advanced - I thought better of DH while we were in the UK but as soon as we moved over here, he reverted to ol' Aussie standards (there are a lot of them out in the Sticks - I have been heavily patronised by one or two!)

DS is only 3.11 (argh!!!) so nothing about teasing yet - all his peers at playgroup etc. all play with everything as well. I wonder what the male equivalent terminology is for "tomboy" - something other than "cissy" or "girly" (or other equally derogatory term) would be good.

CY - Agree totally. I'm not a big fan of pink as it is - but my sister is and has created the same fanatical reverence for it in her 3 DDs as well. My eyes can't cope for long at her house...

What Trillls said. It's fine to like fairies and pink, etc, but little girls shouldn't have to love them and little boys shouldn't have to feel like they can't play with them.

When I have a little girl (if I have one, I suppose) I'll be fine with pink, but I'm big on getting kids outdoors so it'll have to be a pink shirt under her dungarees.
None of these Bratz-doll style clothes, no shoes with heels, no dresses you can't run around in though, I won't be havin' them. :)

Nah, mine's Australian and he...well, I guess we only have a daughter so I'm only guessing, but he rolls his eyes mightily at the 'Mother's Choice' brand and the nappies that say things like "Mums Get It" and whatnot, because he gets so insulted at being cut out of the loop of parenting, if that makes sense.

Just wondered whether it was a 'he'll turn gay' or a 'too girly - um I mean it doesn't reflect a boy's interests' or a 'he'll get teased' or a combination. DD has a play power tool set and cars and an insane amount of footballs and the like, but I think it's easier to get people to accept girls doing 'boy things' than the opposite, because patriarchy.

Pretty much starts with that, tortoise, but after I've systematically pulled his objections apart, he retires mumbling
He hasn't objected too strongly to DS going to dance classes (tap and jazz) because he also goes to football class - but I'm not quite sure what's going to happen when I add ballet in! Perhaps I just won't tell him for a bit...

Amazing how the ol' chauvinism stuff rears its head again! And I don't think it's just because he's Australian, although that might have an added bearing on it I suppose.

Can he put into words what his objection is, Thumb? Or does the conversation begin and end with "too girly"?

Wasn't there a thread sometime in the last year about someone wanting to find a spiderman costume for a girl? Almost impossible, she was finding it.

I find I am battling DH's attitudes much of the time - I fought for a toy cooker for DS and won, because DH cooks half the time so he accepted it was boyish enough - and then had a horrible job trying to find one that wasn't all pink and princessy (yes I know I'm buying into the gender bias by objecting to that but seriously pink girly shit really offends my eyes!). Got one in the end in primary colours which DS loves.

This Christmas I have got him a plastic crockery set (not exactly a teaset cos there's no teapot!) because he loves playing dinner parties with the stuff at playgroup - DH was all about that as well - but the one I have bought is again primary colours in a drying rack, so I will also be buying him a small washing up bowl so he can practise outside .

He has a mini-Henry vacuum (more from DH) and if he'd shown the slightest inclination for one, he'd have a toy pushchair as well - I discussed that one with DH and got the old face again until I reminded him that he had pushed DS in his pushchair almost as much as I had so was he ashamed of that? He backed down and agreed to a non-pink one, if DS wanted one.

madwoman, that's fantastic, I loved fishing when I was a kid!

'toddler beauty pageant' - yes, the 'banquet' part of it definitely had that sort of feel.

This is really hard for me because I like the mum very much but am just and the whole thing. To be fair though, I think it is a package party put on by this particular play centre and I don't think the mum had a lot of choices to make. At least I hope that's the case.

'aspirational' - I did really mean the type that aspires to be middle class, but they haven't quite mastered all the lentil-weavery requirements! In our area, this is definitely the play centre to go to if you don't want to hang around with 'common' folk--at least that's the impression the owner seems to want it to have. I think she seems like a stuck up cow. Very terse with me, but happy to fawn all over my one of my friends who has lots of money

oh, and we took all the girls fishing. it's actually outlawed by the guides here as it's murderous and Not Suitable. so we did it in secret. the girls loved it and particularly enjoyed the chopping off of heads. and then they got to cook them on the campfire and eat them. some rules are meant to be broken.

can i just say i am loving the idea of wearing disney princessery in an ironic way?

i'm reasonably proud of my girl's choices for hallowe'en this year - in years past they have veered towards the vampy, piratey, hallowe'en princessy feather boa type of things, but this year dd1 (11) was adamant she wanted to be a bumble bee, and dd2 (8) dressed as dumbledore, complete with vast beard and wig. i think we're out of the pinkery.

have posted lots about 'cinderella ate my daughter' in the past and it is a must-read.

i also wanted to share a small anecdote re scouts and guides. last year i happened to be running both cubs (8-10yo boys) and pathfinders (12-14yo girls) and caused great consternation one evening when my boys learned to sew on a badge, hoover a rug, iron their neckerchief, and make a cup of tea. the boys were fine about it - it was the first time any of them had ever been let loose with a hoover, a kettle, and iron and a needle and thread, however, one of the boy's dads (who also happened to run the beaver group - the 5-7yo boys) happened to be in the building and shouted to the boys 'why are you doing all that girl's stuff?'. greeeeeat. now i do have to go and look up the trans issue though. there's recently been all sorts of hoo ha filtering through from the states

One of mine was a witch (and not sexy, old Woolies outfit) and one was a ghost (two girls). No-one told me that Halloween was gendered.

Halloween this year saw DD3 sally forth done up as a mime artist and DD4 as Hermione Granger.

DD would have loathed that sort of party. Her 6th birthday party was a Crystal Maze party and all 10 boys and girls rushed madly around our garden completing challenges, getting equally as grubby and wet. Most of them wore comfy clothes and there was only one girl in a pink outfit (coincidentally her present to DD was a dog walking doll which DD thanked her for and then gave to DS who loves her). DD got board games, star wars lego, bug hunting kit, craft kits and a puffle. All of which were chosen by her school friends who know what she adores. We had pass the parcel and dancing to 80's classics and they all had a little trophy and a bag of sweets to take home.

Mind you we missed all the early consumer pressure by living abroad as expats for her first three years. DD didn't go to nursery (too expensive) or regular playgroup (no such thing), Tv was limited by language and we only had Cbeebies for two hours a day. All her friends were also expats and we spent most of our time outside freeranging the children in the local parks and woods. The atmosphere was much more on children having healthy bodies and being outside as much as possible (and eating lots more sweets!). She hasn't had a pink phase and picks and chooses the things she wants from the 'girls and boys' sides e.g. she has a hideous pink doll that she sleeps with.

The difference between there ang the UK was very very clear when we moved back, the gender divide seemed much more stark and came as a real shock to me.

and while we're on this subject, what about Halloween? and the fact that for women/girls there are two choices: mini-witch or sexy-witch.

My DD point blank refused to go to a party last night as she didn't want to wear the spider costume I made for her. She thought people would laugh if she didnt' dress up as the obligatory witch.

Boys get to have all the fun dressing up as monsters, ghosts, skeletons etc

wholly yes- I realise there can be all types of aspiration, but 'aspirational classes' usually means a certain type, rather than aspiration in general. Having re-read, I think perhaps Frank was using the term in the generic sense, perhaps because she isn't a native Briton? I read it originally in the specific way referring to 'aspirational types' i.e. people who strive to be upper/upper middle class.

very true notjustclassic- they seem to have stopped the green/lilac/yellow gingham bedding, and the animal themes .

mathanxiety- we have those blocks (and several other sets by haba)... I seem to have rather described myself there, actually...

Sounds like a rubbish party place, I have used similar venues for parties for my girls and a) we always have about 50/50 girls and boys and b) they all run around on the climbing equipment, eat the same food and have the same party bag.

Where you see the gender divide is in the presents given, lots of pink and princess sticker books. I send brilliant books to parties (e.g Roald Dahl, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Humphrey books) that girls and boys love to avoid this problem.

CaptainNancy - there are all kinds of aspiration, those who favour the style of party the OP went to are more likely to be raising their daughters to aspire to becoming footballers' wives, and their sons to be racing car drivers, or footballers.

Before my daughter was born, I imagined I'd dress her in gender neutral clothing, but from a small child's perspective, she'd be badly dressed. I don't want her to have to fight any battles until she is old enough to understand the context. So we conform.

It sounds like an awful place for a party - bleurgh! The craft stuff and mini wine glasses remind me of toddler pageants! What happened to pass the parcel and musical chairs, or at least a good play area with slides, ball pits, climbing frames, etc. More democratic there as even the girls usually turn up wearing trousers, long sleeve shirts and socks, just like the boys.