Trying to be more gender-neutral with baby

Goldie, my DS was exactly the same. Dh and I HATE vehicles and have lots of animals so we both went out of our way to encourage an interest in the animals but his overwhelming interest was/is motors of all kinds. Really weird. I have a DD so I shall be watching with great interest what she decides to like. I hope she inherits my father's engineering brain. All anecdote of course. I just couldn't imagine a less girlie place for her to grow up in. We shall see.

This idea that things have to be pink or blue is really bizarre and not what I remember at all when I had my DCs late 60s/early 70s. I was (finally) getting round to sorting all my old kiddy pix a while ago and I was struck how colourful their babygros and clothes were - oranges, yellows, greens, navy, red, some pink and blue but only in the same proportions as other colours. No one thought my DDs were boys because their babygros were (for example) orange and white stripes or navy and red square patterns. The colours and designs were so more creative then. The pink/blue crap seems to have become an obsession since the 90s as has, I'm pretty sure, this obsession with what is suitable boys and girls' behaviours/activities.

My DDs toy cupboards were a mixture of dinky toys, trains, cuddlies, dolls, guns (yes, I know....) puppets, meccano.

IMO we have gone backwards over the last 20 years - thus the confusion evident in the OP's mind.

What with the too early sexualisation of children, the celeb 'culture', the body image problems many youngsters have and, with girls, the baffling idea among some girls that you have to please boys (again something that was alienation to my adolescence and to my daughters' adolescence as well) I am so relieved I am not a kid today or have a kid today.

But then I suppose every generation says that.......

we deliberately didn't find out the sex because of this problem.
and told people that

we were given loads of clothes by someone who was clearing out - mostly boys' old clothes, but quite a bit of girls' newborn stuff
which meant the baby would just wear whatever.

when she was born and everyone found out she was a girl, it all started.

it's not even just pink, that's okay, pink is fine. it's the fact that girl's clothes are cut differently - all narrow cut on the arms and legs (which is annoying because babies are the same friffing shape!!) - also means that her cloth bum doesn't fit properly inside girls' trousers while the legs are really long.

DH and I have always made a point of shopping for more neutral stuff. it helps that i'm obsessed with space and dinosaurs, so most of her stuff is like that. and we go for bright colours.
then friends and relatives buy her girl stuff and it balances out - a mix of both.

toys can bw a nightmare though.
her aunty bought her a set of cars from ELC - she thought she was being all neutral, ut the cars she bought were all pastel pink and purple, so clearly aimed at freak parents like us who don't want to stereotype children. silly us!

following from what tallulah above says - actually, i think it is okay and desirable to buck the trend of society.
it's the only way a chance can be effected.
(but it might take longer than it took for the trend to take hold in the first place)

I have 2 DDs, 21 years apart. Yes, years, not months.

With DD1 I was really concerned about the whole 'girls are pink' attitude. I refused pink and frilly clothes. I bought gender-neutral toys. I taught her feminist nursery rhymes. It didn't help that she was MILs only GDD and the first girl in 2 generations for their family. Nobody (except PIL) ever told her she was pretty/ beautiful, but she was often told how clever she was.

We had huge problems with her all the way through primary school because she wanted to be a boy (she told me that), which increased as she started developing. Although she was undoubtedly clever she was really easily led and gravitated towards the lowest level in the class. Things didn't start turning around for her until secondary school.

DD2 has been head to toe pink since she was born. She gets given pink toys and we don't bat an eyelid. People tell her she is pretty (yet looking at photos she and DD1 are strikingly similar). I am now hugely aware of a small child's need to 'fit in' at school so when her grandma bought her a scooter we got a pink one- because I know her friends at school would say she'd got a boys one otherwise

Time will tell whether this approach is any better than the one we took with DD1, but TBH I don't think we could have done worse .

I really don't know what the moral of this rambling tale is except to say that it is difficult to buck the trend of the society you live in, and I suppose really I should have HE her.

We also had 3 boys between the 2 girls. They had long hair when it wasn't fashionable, and 2 of them did ballet for many years. They haven't found life quite so hard and none of them wanted/ wants to be a girl.

With DS1, we started out with everything pretty much gender-neutral. We bought clothing in as neutral-a-colour as possible. We got some non-gender specific toys. Then, at about 6 months old, his head started to be turned by lorries, buses, tractors, trains and so on. He made a bee-line for them in toyshops when he started toddling. I was really surprised but it really does seem to be something that he decided for himself. I didn't want to fight it - if that's what he wanted to play with, with no real external influence at all, then it's not for me to discourage him. So now we have a house full of what are traditionally seen as toys for boys.

The arrival of DS2 means that the house is already full of those things when he arrived, so there's no way that he can't be influenced by them and by his older brother...

It's funny how DS1's interest was piqued by all things transport from as soon as he was old enough to notice, though.

I think you're right to think about this, and to question the cack-handed rejection of things traditionally ascribed as 'female'.

Part of the problem IMO is that some parents, in a misguided attempt to bring their DDs up as feminists, encourage them to eschew toys, clothes and games traditionally associated with girls in favour of those traditionally associated with boys. This compounds the problem, as it communicates the message that 'boys' stuff' is better than 'girls' stuff'.

Far, far better to encourage boys to choose 'girls' stuff'- this is the only way the genderisation of childhood will be effectively challenged.

Oh, and make sure that some of the teddy bears/rabbits/soft toys etc. are female. It has surprised me how difficult I find it to say anything other than 'he' when playing with a toy.

"People always asked me 'how old is he?' because my daughters weren't wearing pink ribbons. Which if you think about means people assume male as the default unless women are identified with frilly stuff. "

Great post princess

Female character/ male character? Whats wrong with just seeing and accepting whatever kids grow into? It doesnt mean you have to deny their gender. Dd knows she is a girl but also knows it is just as ok to like football and spiderman as it is ok to play with dolls houses etc

I think it's great that you're thinking about this. But tbh you are getting off track and tying yourself in knots a bit

It sounds as though you're not sure about what you think. You say you want to be conscious of gender, but your evaluation of Margaret Thatcher and Rebekkah Brooks sound fairly typically anti woman, you seem to think criminal behaviour is more shocking in young women than young men, and you conclude with 'what was so bad about the traditional female character'?

Why not do some reading about gender, and try to work out what you think? There's so much wonderful feminist fiction and non fiction out there. Margaret Atwood and Marilyn French are both brilliant, Siri Hustvedt, Virginia Woolf, the list is long. Doris Lessing, Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer. If you have a good local library they'll help. And the baby might absorb some of the marvellous ideas .

But then - assuming that you decide that you want to limit gendered ideas on your DC - I think this is and isn't complicated. It isn't complicated in the sense that babies just want love, endless love, and milk, and clean nappies. And a lot of it is obvious. Don't paint everything blue or pink. Dont cover a girl baby in sparkles. Teach girl and boy children to run and swim and build stuff. Give girl and boy children hugs and kisses and let them cry.

That said, it is difficult, because we have been raised in this gendered world, and attitudes are insidious. The more subtle things are - what do we praise our children for? they respond so strongly to that. Girls - being helpful and kind. Boys - being strong and tough. How and what do we teach them about their bodies? I want DD to appreciate all the things he body can do for her, rather than how it looks, and have made DH promise to teach her how to throw and catch and surf. What possibilities do we articulate for their future? I am determined that DD will hear the words engineer and scientist as often as she hears teacher or nurse. I'm also talking to DH about the behaviours we model at home. We are planning our lives so we can share DD's and subsequent DCs' care, and will split the domestic labour as fairly as we can.

The last bit of your post is ILs. I have a MIL who says really stupid things like: 'if DD wants to dress as a princess, who am I to stop her?' DD is 7mo . MIL has only one child, my DH, and wants to indulge all her girly fantasies. Alas, as you may gather, I am a disappointment on this score! I have decided just to ignore her / let her get on with it. DD might love tutus and ballet, she might not. I hope that with healthy attitudes at home it will all come out in the wash and she will find something in life that she loves, and that she will love herself, however it ends up..... I think that sounds like what you call success too.

"Shouldn't feminism be more about teaching boys to be more like girls than teaching girls to be more like boys?"

That's bollocks in my books. Personally I try to teach my children that they can be whoever they want to be and like whatever they want to like (including cringey pink crap) and it doesn't matter what their sex is.

By ascribing certain characteristics to be feminine or masculine, you're just being sexist. Margaret Thatcher was a woman, to declare otherwise is sexist tosh, no matter what you think of her politics. Rebekkah Brooks is a woman, no matter what you think of her.

I would question your definition of traditional male and female characteristics. I'm not sure they're as defined as you think.

However you are right to think about the issue of gender stereotyping early on. Girls wearing clothes saying 'I love baking', and playing with pink plastic hair dryers might possibly be a reason why so many of them don't go on to do physics at Alevel. A lot of what you refer to is about personality and temperament and varies massively between individuals.

I dressed my two girls in whatever. Dungers, leggings, hoodies, or anything practical that didn't physically restrict them. When the girls go to school, I make sure they aren't afraid to play physical games in the playground because they might show their pants. (Again more leggings and trousers mostly). I am very anti pink until it becomes just another colour but that took about 8 years.

I generally bought toys in gender neutral colours and had a range of science stuff, footballs, cars, dolls, prams, cooking stuff, all sorts of dressing up outfits that didn't just involve a nurse's outfit designed like a strippergram (thank you sainsburys) and princess stuff.

People always asked me 'how old is he?' because my daughters weren't wearing pink ribbons. Which if you think about means people assume male as the default unless women are identified with frilly stuff.

Children as young as 3 came up to my kids and said 'why have you got a blue scooter, you should have a pink one'. You're fighting against a tide of crap influences from society but it's hugely important work (whether you have boys or girls)

Treat them as individuals, encourage them to explore what they love and ignore anyone who tells you 'it's because she's a girl/he's a boy' in the first few years at least.

Good luck.