FFS, do we have to start with the gender stereotyping crap so early?!

This gets on my wick so much - people just being blind to half of what's in front of them (the half where some kids do stuff associated with the other sex, while gleefully telling you all about the sex-stereotyped things they do).

Ds is a fairly sedate child, even when he was a toddler - liked sitting down and playing with pieces of things, watching ducks, would run and hide when other toddlers got noisy or rough. Basically he looks and acts exactly like me - you can't tell the difference between his and my baby photos except one has more 1970s furniture.

Dd is a total live wire, never still, into everything, climbs everything, wants to tip everything over, loves things with wheels and that make noise, happy to push to the front and shove others out of the way (she's not 2 yet so her behaviour is pretty normal!)

Anyone watching her will go "aw, she's playng with her doll" (that she's ripped the arms and legs off) but never go aw when she's playing with her digger or trucks, which she does so much more of the time.

And don't get me started on the mothers who spent a session going "oh, look at Boy hugging her, it's so sweet, oh she doesn't like it, never mind dd, it's so nice that he's hugging her" - encouraging non-consensual touch and expecting the girl to put up with it, much??

At least the blindness to non-stereotyped behaviour meant they said nothing at all when the second time the larger boy toddler grabbed her, dd turned round, punched the boy in the face and decked him.

I realised how often I do this recently when my friend was reading Snow White to DD, and she told her off for missing out the bit where Snow White goes to university and becomes a mechanic

I LOVE this! I wish I was quick witted enough to do this when I read to DD.

"But why, why do people do this?"

I have several friends who have boys and girls and who have brought them up the same. All of them, without exception, say that their sons and daughters behave differently - boys more into things, more rough and tumble, girls more bitchy and cliquey etc.

If women do backchat and smart remarks and social manipulation it's called bitching. If men do all these it's called politics. Watch BBC Parliament and you'll see what I mean.

I think it's that women aren't allowed to be outright aggressive and men are encouraged to be. Women have to be "Manipulative" and keep their aggression hidden because it's unladylike.

Really they're all on the same wanker spectrum though

I filter presents too. Disney princesses, Barbies and all of that ilk will not cross my threshold if I can bloody help it! Luckily my friends and family know how I feel but ex partner and his family would have her exclusively in pink, glittery frilly monstrosities and clutching a bratz doll if they had their way.

I know, Wol, it's just one of the common things people say. "Oh boys are a lot less bitchy than girls..." Load of codswallop.

Boys are less bitchy than girls? Naaah....If women do backchat and smart remarks and social manipulation it's called bitching. If men do all these it's called politics. Watch BBC Parliament and you'll see what I mean.

I'm afraid I filter presents, at Christmas I got rid of a vile book about how princesses love high heels and shopping!! For DD2, who at Christmas was 10 months old!

DD1 is 4 soon and would love a Lego pirate ship, googling it now. She loves the Peter Pan book at the moment, though I have to amend some of the more sexist passage when I read it to her

(I realised how often I do this recently when my friend was reading Snow White to DD, and she told her off for missing out the bit where Snow White goes to university and becomes a mechanic

I too hate this. My DS1 (age 3.5) can be boisterous or quiet. He likes kicking a ball or doing cooking and crafts. He is happy being the princess or pirate. His prize possession is a toy kitchen where his dinosaur collection lives.

I have two boys actually and people are always telling me that boys are less complex than girls; boys just need regular exercise like dogs; boys are less bitchy than girls; boys make better teens than girls; boys always love their mums more than girls; and so on.....

Well, my DH is actually quite complex, I am the one who needs regular exercise, neither of us are very bitchy, we were both terrible teens, and we both love our mums. We also both have full time jobs, both cook, both clean, do bathtime, get up all night long with small children. The only genuine gender difference our children see every day is that I breastfeed and DH can't. Oh and I really love mascara and DH isn't keen. I'm hoping that our very equal household with help offset some of the stereotyping.

To those whose relatives say there is a clear difference between the genders: scientists are now pretty clear that men and women's brains ARE wired differently. HOWEVER. This is due to socialisation and culture, not biology. We're all born equal. But girls are socialised to be more 'emotional' and talky. Boys are socialised to like sport and cars etc.

There was an article in the Guardian about this recently, by the 2013 science writer of the year. Can't link cos I'm on my phone but it was an interesting read.

DD is 2.5 and I've noticed the pressure for her to be a girl/comments on how she does not conform to 'girliness' have started ramping up.

"She's a tomboy."

"She's dressed/she looks 'like a boy'."

"She's got dirty hands - just like a boy."

"Doesn't she keep up with the boys well?" [some of whom are younger than her!]

She's a fearless little thing, full of heart and pluck. Because she's HER, not because she's a girl with 'male' characteristics. I really didn't expect to face this so early, it's incredibly depressing.

Do you think if we went into high street shops and all the adult clothes were segrated into pink and blue that these people would make a fuss at their lack of choice?

PleaseJust - That reminds me of a recent thread where a woman complained that she had been told second children were so much cheaper and this one was costing her just as much. Turned out that she'd bought everything in pink and flowery and 'couldn't' use it now that the second one was a boy. Even the bouncer wasn't neutral enough . I really didn't understand why she hadn't thought that one through. I'd have never bought the pink, but if I had I'd have used it for the boy.

On slings, I always see it as effectively clothing for the adult. I chose unisex because I don't want to be pink and girly all the time and I thought neutral was more versatile. Plus unisex is nicer for DH to wear because, no matter how feminist he is, he wouldn't be keen in going out in my dress, so I don't see why I should expect him to wear the sling equivalent. The sex of the baby inside the sling wouldn't cross my mind at all, just the sex of the adults wearing it.

My 2.5 yo shows a marked preferance for pink. She started in childcare around the same time she started this though and there was an older girl who's into hello kitty and pink everything, so maybe this was why? Although the older girl was the childminder's daughter and had never been in childcare and been brought up very gender neutrally. My friends 4yo boy loves pink and purple. It's impossible to tell if its completely socialised or if all kids like pink because its a bright happy colour, but lots of the boys are discouraged, because I went gender neutral from birth and dd loves pink. I try to treat pink like any other colour though I do avoid it where possible. I shop from the "boys section as well as the "girls section" and have a range of toys for dd. I feel I'm doing the best I can :-/

I was utterly gobsmacked when adopting our dog, though, a male, and said I'd like a purple lead as its my favourite colour. The woman looked incredulous and said "PURPLE?! For a boy?!"

Looking at slings online the otherday.

New born slings mind you. Woman was saying that it was nice for her daughter but needed something more masculine now as she was having a son!

I nearly started a thread about it. Especially annoyed that something she was wearing needed to match him.. we always default to male so they don't feel embarrassed... Even the babies!

I have never seen a man wearing a girl baby in a pink sling. Always blackgreygreen "masculine" colors for themselves....

TheBookofRuth don't worry - it sounds like we are quite similar in our views on toys and stuff, I don't think it is inevitable at all. My DD is now 4, and has been a nursery school for over a year, she still hasn't succumbed to a 'pink phase'. She doesn't mind pink, but her favourite colour is yellow still. When it was superhero day and they could all dress up, she spent ages deciding between her spiderman costume and her superman costume - nearly every other girl there was a princess that day...

I also find it incredibly frustrating when friends and family say there are clear differences, they don't treat them any differently but he is such a boy type thing. Then at parties they have girl party bags and boy party bags and pink princess plates for the girls and cars ones for the boys. I think an enormous number of people stereotype subconsciously and think they don't. I tend to pull DD more away from pink and princess stuff as I feel society pulls her towards it and so I have to balance that somehow!

My mother, who's read plenty of studies about how gender makes no difference, who's in a male dominated industry, with a selection of children with a full spread of skills, and a set of grandchildren who couldn't be more different from each other still says of DS that he's a 'typical boy'

Despite the fact that it was DS and my niece running around pretending to be dinosaurs at Christmas, despite the fact that it's my niece and nephew who like cooking, and despite the fact that given choices DS is as likely to pick pink and glittery as either of his cousins - ie. what they like is completely dependent on the kid, and not predictable at all by what is in their trousers.

She has two generations of evidence in front of her eyes, she's not exactly stuck to her gender-role herself, and still she says these things.

They're just so ingrained.

This starts so early. My SIL had twins - one boy and one girl. From birth my MIL was claiming they had various gender related personality traits. I could see absolutely no evidence of that myself. The stereotyping has only gotten worse as they've gotten older.

It works both ways too. I'm expecting a boy in the summer and when we told the PiL, the first thing FIL did was to launch into a story (for the hundredth time) about how, when dh was born the hospital were out of blue blankets. So, presumably not wanting a newborn to freeze, they put him in a pink one. FIL likes to bang on at length at how he went and made a fuss because he wasn't "having that. I wasn't going to risk confusing him about his sexuality"! Appalling. Makes me want to paint the nursery pink as a pointless gesture! Obviously wouldn't, but what a stupid thing to say (and be proud of).

It works both ways too. I'm expecting a boy in the summer and when we told the PiL, the first thing FIL did was to launch into a story (for the hundredth time) about how, when dh was born the hospital were out of blue blankets. So, presumably not wanting a newborn to freeze, they put him in a pink one. FIL likes to bang on at length at how he went and made a fuss because he wasn't "having that. I wasn't going to risk confusing him about his sexuality"! Appalling. Makes me want to paint the nursery pink as a pointless gesture! Obviously wouldn't, but what a stupid thing to say (and be proud of).