to be fuming at sexist Christmas Presents?

[WomanlyWoman]

I attended my first PTA meeting the other night, during which I discovered that the pta have bought Christmas presents for every child in the school. Nice, right? Then I realised the presents were different according to gender, the older children get books, the younger ones such as my child, in reception, get crafty things from Yellow Moon. Great, except - the girls get flower presses, the boys get cars.

This has really p-ed me off bigtime. For one, my daughter likes cars, car was one of her first words, she adores Lightning McQueen and doesn't seem to realise that it's meant to be for boys. So what message does it give her about herself when she sees the boys getting cars while she gets a flower press? Admittedly she would probably like a flower press too, but that is not the point. What about nature loving boys? Why are these children being given the message that active dynamic machines are for boys and pretty, passive things like flowers are for girls? A nature theme for all of them or a transport theme for all of them would be fine by me, but this just seems so wrong.

I'm very shy by nature and I hardly know any of the other parents. The pta meeting itself was quite an ordeal for me, so I didn't speak up at the time. I thought it was pointless because the presents have already been bought. Why make myself unpopular, so soon, when it's already done and dusted.

Then I started thinking, it's only October, there may be time to send them back and order different ones if enough parents express an opinion similar to mine. Not sure how to go about it though. Opinions and advice appreciated.

The OP has already joined the PTA though, that's how she says she found out about the gifts. So nobody is suggesting she join something she doesn't want to take part in.

FWIW OP, my son loves to join in with anything. He has loads of cars, but he also has a bright pink kitchen he calls his cafe, he enjoys helping me to bake, he has train sets everywhere and loves his dolls pram. He would enjoy a flower press very much, in fact I'm thinking about getting him one for Christmas just based on this thread. I wouldn't be unhappy with him getting either gift at school (well, playgroup, he's not at school yet).

Sexism and sweatshops are two. different. issues.

With your own DC's though, GlitterandGlue you can have the dialogue/ relationship that does negate/ influence any outside messages you are constantly bombarded with. My mother would not allow me to have Barbie/ Cindy dolls, and they were my most desired item on my wish list!I'm sure I would have soon tired of playing with them having been allowed and still grown up the same confident, free-thinking adult I am now.

Yes, agreed books would be better all round, BeerTricks. Projectbabyweight I'm suggesting shite produced in sweatshop conditions is probably the bigger issue in the very privileged society we live in.

It's a bit unfair having a go at the OP for not being more involved, or raising the issue earlier as she has a child in reception and this was the first PTA meeting she could go to. Nor is this about individual children who may or may not like flower presses/toy cars. Or about whether children should or should not be grateful for any present, regardless of whether they may like, need or ever be likely to play with them. NB I don't know anyone who only had one present at Christmas, children may or may not be spoiled for presents, but that's another thread really (and then the argument should surely be that the PTA shouldn't be giving a gift at all).

The point is that reinforcing gender stereotypes is a bad thing and should be combated when possible, and in this case it is totally and utterly unnecessary.

The point is that reinforcing gender stereotypes is a bad thing and should be combated when possible, and in this case it is totally and utterly unnecessary

Or alternatively, that an entire PTA of Other Parents at that same school thought it was a great idea, and the OP is thus BU?

Not read whole thread. I think OP should leave it for this year. Going forward she should voice her pov about this - with which I personally have a lot of sympathy. The rest of the PTA may or may not agree - presumably it is a democracy. They may not change policy, but on the other hand they definitely won't if no-one raises the point.

Whatmeworry - then the entire PTA are wrong and the OP is right

Sorry, I just had to repeat that..... says it all really.

MrsBunty, that's great for my own child, but these presents being given like this (plus all the other messages) still give that negative message to all the other children. Which is exactly why stuff like this would be challenged. If every single parent was savvy enough to realise that it doesn't matter at all what kids want to play with as long as it's not, say, axes or firearms, then we'd not have a problem.

I don't just want to protect my kid. I want to protect all of them from this bollocks, because they all deserve to be happy with themselves and ought to be kind to others, and that is why I challenge this sort of thing.

*why stuff like this SHOULD be challenged.

There is a strong possibility that this is not the collective view but falls into one of the known pitfalls of committees:

They do things the way they always have been done and nobody really thinks about it

One person has been given the power to make the decision. That person makes the wrong decision.

Most of the committee are not really bothered and/or are thinking about other things and one person has a particular point of view that they push through

Lots of people don't like it nobody says anthing for fear of rocking the boat/saying the wrong thing/looking a fool/drawing attention to themselves or they think someone else will say something.

I don't think it's rocket science for a PTA in the 21st century to grasp that the gifts should have been neutral of any prejudice (racial, gender or otherwise) and ethically produced. If they didn't take that into account, frankly, it's appalling.

The fact that a bunch of parents at one particular school are prepared to nod through any old sexist tosh makes it right

Anyone who is so convinced of the rightness of their cause that they cannot consider that the entire PTA of parents at the same school may just have a valid but different point of view is just another type of bigot IMO.

YANBU - I would be really unhappy about this too for all the reasons everyone else has said (and I'm too tired to come up with anything else)

But whatmeworry they can't have an equally valid but different point of view, if that view is that sexism is ok. If homophopbia is ok, or racism, in the pta's view, the school would find itself a new pta pretty quickly!

I was having a chat the other day with my son's friend (aged 7) about when he got a knitting set from school fete santa when he was in reception 3 years ago. It was late and they had run out of boys' presents. He is still outraged and amused in equal measure.

Your child is probably still 4 or just turned 5. At that age they are still quite open to different ideas regarding what boys and girls do. But over the next year or two , the majority of them will metamorphosize into very girly girls and very boyish boys.

It's not that they are victims of any sexist conspiracy. I think they are learning to be their gender and do so at first in a cartoonish sort of way, and (hopefully!) later they will develop a more subtle understanding of what it means to be a girl and what it means to be a boy.

So to me, no point in putting your subtle views of gender on them yet. They just haven't reached that level of maturity yet. So let the girls have flower presses and the boys have cars. Most children will be very happy with this. And the presents are really for them, not you.

Girls and boys are largely different because society tells them they should be. There is very little innate difference at birth, although brain plasticity added to social pressure does develop differences as they get older (remember that early episode of Child Of Our Time where they dressed the babies as the opposite gender and gave them to other parents to look after for half an hour? They virtually all pushed trucks and "boy" toys onto the babies dressed as boys and dolls and "girl" toys onto the babies dressed as girls, regardless of what the babies were actually doing. And plenty of studies have shown different behaviours being reinforced in babies who are (or who are believed to be) male or female).

The single greatest predictor of how much time a girl spends playing with cars or construction toys, and how much sport she plays, is whether she has an older brother -- nurture rather than nature.

DS and DD1 are different in a whole realm of different ways. Some of these follow traditional gender lines (DD1 was always more into dolls than DS; DS was intensely physical from an early age and ran, climbed and threw himself off things with impunity while DD1 was more cautious) while some (just as many, TBH) run in the opposite direction (DD1 likes to play football and rugby while DS can take or leave rugby and dislikes football; DD1 has always been more interested in cars than DS is; DS is more sensitive to emotional nuances of situations than DD1). I could nod sagely and say that the first lot of differences are because boys and girls are different, while the second set are idiosyncratic exceptions to the rule that can be discarded when considering gender differences. But I really can't see that that's the case -- all of their differences seem to me to be down to them as individuals rather than to their gender. And the neuroscience seems to bear that out.