How to help gender neutralise my DD4?

[Teacher12345]

DD is already picking up alot of gender stereotypes at age 4. She is obsessed with makeup (I do wear it but only week days and barely since lockdown). She picks toys, often because they have a girl on the box so she says things like "thats a toy for girls" and today, her brother and Dad were digging up the garden and she said that only the boys could do it. I corrected this (always do) and said that girls could do it too but that she isn't big enough to use the tools. She often plays with her brothers toy tools, lego, like super heroes etc.
We have never intentionally encouraged gender sterotypes but we do ourselves fit quite stereotypical roles.
How do I avoid steer her in a way that doesn't lead to a life that is men do DIY, women do cleaning and childcare? Are there any toys that encourage girls to do more typically male tasks? She loves pink stuff so maybe pink tools etc?
I will make it clear that I want to do this to show her that she entitled to an equal life and will pick a partner, career and life that is not chosen by societal expectations!

You and DH have to provide the role models of equal sharing tasks and responsibilities.

Well OP get out into the garden, go to garden centre, buy seeds, plants and enjoy yourself I never thought of gardening as a mans job forty years ago nor did my friends. As for pink tools I got fed up with tools going missing so bought pink ones from somewhere and made it quite clear they were mine, hammer, screwdrivers, pliers. Just for random small jobs.

Men do wear pink, look at sport kits in rugby. Kids enjoy cooking, playing kitchen whatever floats their boat. Relax OP

FFS. Just leave her be. She's 4. She's a girly girl.

So what?

You doing anything is just as bad as someone who enforces their daughter to be extra girly. Just leave her alone. She's happy.

Well I have three dds and they are all different, so I'm not sure I'm such a definitive role model! (And none of them garden or diy despite seeing me do it!)

Don't overthink it. My dd loved pink and purple and glittery shit at that age. She now likes yellow and blue and is doing a degree in engineering

There's no way I'd spend money on extra tools! She can use the ones you have already.

Pink is neither here nor there unless she's refusing to use tools unless they are pink in which case I'd assume she is not actually interested.

I'm not totally into this gender forcing / gender neutral stuff , I was happy to let my daughters decide what they wanted, be it a garage for Christmas along side a big pink dressed up doll.
However, what immediately came to my mind is , what do you encourage your son to do / want ?
Do you and your dh buy him (pink ) toys ?

Nothing wrong with liking pink and glitter. Could you get her some child size gardening tools ?

Not RTFT

Children do seem to go though a stage at about this age where they have these very rigid ideas about boys/ girls, men/ women etc.

They tend to grow out of it, I think it's a stage where they are into black and white categorisation.

Many girls go through a later stage of rejecting 'girls' things while boys don't reject the boys things. The reasons for that are more of a concern.

What dingit says.

Four is probably peak pink-unicorns-glittery-fairies-princesses-toy irons for many girls.

I guess there must be a market for pink versions of traditional 'boys toys' as the last time I was in the ELC there were pink versions of garages etc.

The pink/blue division is strong at the age, but it gets better as they get older.

I agree that it's hard for lots of children to be what they can't see in terms of gender stereotypes.

@VictoriaBun Both kids get the toys they want. DD picks pink stuff DS picks science stuff. Both are enocuraged to do what the other is doing. Yesterday both kids did a science experiment followed by making macaroons.
Ds used to go to ballet and was given lots of funny looks being the only boy but he loved it. And when he stopped loving it he stopped going.
I don't care about what toys they play with, they were only mentioned because they are the easiest example of the world sterotyping kids into gender roles from a young age.

I agree it sounds like a good idea for you and your DH to mix up what you do a bit, casually drop in 'of course girls can do x' or 'of course boys can do y' if she says something about 'this is only for girls/boys'.

But don't overthink. My DD has two mums, and consequently she has no parental role-modelling about gender (well, she does, but it's pretty subtle and complicated!). She's 3. She sometimes tells me 'mummies do the cooking' or 'daddies like football' because she hears it at nursery or sees it in books or cartoons.

I think at this age they are trying very hard to understand how categories work, which is what makes them so keen on the 'boys do this and girls do that' approach.

I'm not sure that the mixing things around matters too much-unless you want to, just make sure that both kids help both of you out.

I wouldn’t worry. Let her like pink and glitter and unicorns.
When DD was 4 she loved princesses and pink and glitter and dolls and unicorns and all the rest.
Now she’s 12, she never wears skirts apart from school and the odd wedding etc, doesn’t hate pink but did her room out in grey and yellow, prefers blue for clothes etc. She’s better than her brothers at camping and starting fires and making stuff. Loves scouts. But she also loves drama, cooking, cake decorating, girlie tv shows, make up, sloths, crafts and art, etc.
The two aren’t mutually exclusive. Just make sure you model good examples. I do the gardening and DIY just as much as DH, he doesn’t do as much cooking as me but does sometimes, always helps with cleaning etc.

DH and I are both 60 and had ‘traditional upbringings’.
I do all the DIY in our house. I do all the practical stuff - change the lightbulb, fix the broken tumble dryer etc etc.
I played with dolls and like pink.
DH does most of the cooking and cleaning.
He played football, soldiers, scalextric etc.
She’ll find her own way whatever you do or don’t.

One of my sisters is a very girly girl - well actually two of them are. One worked for the military (senior civilian) and the other spends her days lobbing didn’t trees/diving a tractor...

FourTeaFallOut

My mum was trying to 'gender neutralize' me in the 70's with my lovely brown clothes and bowl haircut.

It didn't work, I loved sparkle and glitter and fancy clothes and high heels, and you know what, I still do. It hasn't held me back hugely, more than other women of my generation (ingrained sexism in academia has held back a lot) and I've achieved a lot.

Probably the thing that helped me the most though was marrying a man who valued me, my career and would move/do childcare to facilitate it, including international travel. Pay attention to your role models in that department as I've noticed, in lots of men, a desire to have clever nice wives and then just clip their wings a tiny bit, give messages that their work is less important, just slightly deprioritize them as the main event in the family- hence all the corona threads about women being stuck with all the childcare and their careers going down the tubes.

The second is that I had family support which helped stop the worst of the inequalities relating to childcare issues, as I had a back up plan if the children got sick. I don't actually know how you solve this other than encourage your daughter to choose careers that pay well so there are paid options or yourself/your husband help where you can. This is definitely what allowed me to push ahead career wise and why some of my equally clever friends have ended up falling off the academic ladder.

Don't worry about a pink phase, mine went through it and now don't want to wear pink, neither wear make-up even though I trowel it on!

I meant to say I agree with FourTeaFallOut

At 4 (and younger) my dd loved being a girlie girl, all things pink, dresses, etc. Came as a bit of a shock as we'd never encouraged it. Went with the flow and let her enjoy whatever she wanted whilst gently making sure she knew girls and boys could do whatever they wanted.

Also surprised me at that age that there were cleat differences in behaviour between the sexes. Pre-school she played with girls and boys equally, but at school she gravitated to girls because boys were "too rough".

Now at 9yo she hates pink, her favourite colour is blue, she likes the occasional dress, but jeans also and has a wide range of interests. She knows she's a girl, but doesn't stereotype her activities - likes stem, martial Arts, colouring, dolls...

I think you're overthinking this a bit. The trouble is, today's world is so 'instant' and 'digital', whereas when I was young it was 'slow' and 'analogue'! I grew up in a very similar family to the one you describe - me, a girl, and my brother. My dad worked and (unlike you, I'm assuming) my mum stayed at home to look after us.

No one actively parented us in terms of gender, though - as it turns out, I could change the wheel on a car before I could bake a cake! I was just drawn to a more tomboy way of life, and often accompanied my dad on work trips (he had the kind of job that was possible). I used to use child-sized tools to 'be like dad', but perhaps unlike a lot of other mums of that era (early 70s) my mum was also very handy. She would much rather be dismantling a wall and turning it into a fireplace in one of our house renovations than she would choose to do the cooking, ironing and washing. She used to say my dad had been in the RAF, and he knew how to sew on a button as well as she did!

But I guess what I'm trying to say is you don't have to actively 'try' to gender-neutalise your daughter (or your son for that matter). You just have to live your lives the way you do, and they'll pick it up. As they get older they will make their own choices anyway, you can only lead by example. You can't force it.

Enjoy your children, don't stress about gender stereotypes. Honestly, you'll look back and wonder why it was such a 'thing' as a cause of worry when they're teenagers and young adults.

Don't make a big deal out of it. I wouldn't actively encourage her to play with something or not. Also, why just your DD? Does your son play with dolls and like pink? I don't like that people encourage girls to be 'gender neutral' but no one encourages boys.

It's normal that your DD will like girly stuff, she's not being raised in a bubble with just you and DH (except under current circumstances!), there's stuff that enforces gender stereotypes everywhere. As long as you let her know that she can do other things, it's totally fine IMO.

Try to be generally good role models.

But apart from that, let her like what she likes and make her choices.

All this guiding and questioning her choices will give her the message that what she likes is 'not right' and you would like her to be different to how she wants to be be.

That is potentially a much more damaging message than: you can have the blue bike or the pink bike.' Ok, you want the pink one.

The message to kids should be: you are OK being whoever you want to be.

Not: you must all do and like a range of 'gendered' activities or something is wrong which we must fix.(message to the kid: we must fix you!)

I'd say not to worry too much...I was a super girly girl, all in pink frills, ballet, long hair, pink my absolute favourite colour. My parents were very stereotypical, dad went to work, mum stayed at home etc.

I grew up to become a professional in a very male-dominated field (well, it was when I started in it, not so much now...) and am the sole breadwinner in my family, while my DH is the main childcarer and does all the shopping and cooking. (still like pink a bit though...)

Dh thought gardening was something women liked as his dm did it. I otoh think it's a man's job as df does it.
Hence our garden looks like a badly maintained wild flower meadow (with a strip of potatoes). And we have a gardener (male btw)

I think often the "can't do it because it's a boys/girls" is often about a 4yo being unable to articulate why they don't want to do it and it's something they can express. It's also about belonging at times.

I was a very girlie girl-but also a daddy's girl. I was the one who "helped" df when he was doing DIY/gardening etc. My dsis, who was a tomboy all the way and dbr didn't have any interest in that.
In fact dsis once said that she thought it was bad that df hadn't taught us all the things he did and I was fairly speechless because he did-if you wanted and were interested. He often offered to show us all, but I was the only one who took up his offer ever.