to be sad that my DD has now passed gender discrimination 101?

[ICBINEG]

My DD can now accurately pick out the boys and girls in her peer group (age 1-2). Presumably she has successfully identified that boys and girls are dressed differently/have their hair cut differently.

This is entirely due to adult imposed gender discrimination, as she a) isn't looking at them naked, b) can't possibly be detecting the very subtle actual differences in behaviour/appearance.

So lets hurry onto the next lesson:

Society expects girls and boys to behave differently and have different interests, strengths and weaknesses.

Before I could at least wonder if, when she saw in books that all the girls are doing different things to the boys, she might not realise which was which and specifically which group she was 'supposed' to be in. Now I know she will be learning exactly what is expected of her every time a tired old stereotype is rolled out.

[ICBINEG]

south and does your OH also mostly wear pink? Does your DS like pink just as much? Or did you some how treat your kids differently...or discriminate between them?

[ICBINEG]

magatron sorry if you thought I was ignoring your contribution...I can't answer everything at once....

Maybe some people are more or less susceptible to advertising, trends etc.

I personally have no engagement with fashion and work in an almost exclusively male environment....

[GinAndSlimlinePlease]

I think you may be overreacting slightly . Are you feeling ok IC?

seriously, I would want any child of mine to be confident enough to play with what they want to play with. regardless of society's stereotypes. being able to differentiate between boys and girls really shouldn't change that?

[hamdangle]

You are thinking waaaaay too much about this. Girls don't necessarily prefer pink because they're trained to. My mum never let me wear dresses or pink or have dolls and stopped me from being a bridesmaid when I was little. As a result all I wanted was pink and bows and pretty things and I still do! I always wear dresses and heels for work.

My DS1, on the other hand, wore a purple sparkly tutu EVERY single day in nursery. The nursery nurses kept trying to coax him into a batman outfit but he wouldn't have it so they took it off him every day before I got there! I turned up early one day and saw him. They were apologetic till I pointed out that he wore fairy wings every night at home anyway. It made me feel so sad to think that they had been so worried about it or thought that I would even care.

He only ever played with dolls too and I don't think I ever bought him a car. I don't think he would have known what to do with it!

[Sparklyboots]

I think you may be overreacting slightly . Are you feeling ok IC?

Tres patronising

seriously, I would want any child of mine to be confident enough to play with what they want to play with. regardless of society's stereotypes

Tres burying-your-head-in-the-sand-about-the-power-of-society's-stereotypes

[catgirl1976]

DS has long curly hair and is wearing red and white stripey trousers and and red top

I think, if we were out and about, people would know he was a boy because

a) I refer to him by his name, which is Tristan and unusual for girls and
b) I refer to him by "he" and "him"

I doubt they could tell by looking at him, but the names of children and how they are refered to by those around them "he, her, she, him" etc tends to be a bit of a give away

Maybe your DD is picking up on names and language rather than appearances / clothing given most children are dressed pretty gender neutrally IME

Unless we move towards gender neutral names and gender neutral language I think your DD might be able to tell them apart whatever they are wearing.

[ElegantSufficiency]

Come back to me when your dd is 11. i have informed my dc alobg the way of marketing and how it makes everything seem better than it is. ive told my dc that because they are healthy sporty and active they will look every bit as good goung in to pennys and creating their own look with the same money that would buy 1 holluster hoodie.
ive always taljed down the products my dc has wanted and talked up lego and meccano.
i feel u r going to get a huge shock tho. both at the piwer of advertising and your dc not accepting your way of seeing things. u will have a blank canvas on your hands if she doesnt turn round and rebel.
my own dd loves painting her nails and putting pink stripes in her hair. temporary tattooos. i just think u r cruising for a few big shocks.

[JacqueslePeacock]

ICBINEG, I always find your posts on here interesting. I looked at the photo of your DD and wouldn't have had a clue if she was a boy or a girl (perfectly fine at age 1-2, I should say!) I especially find what you say about her now knowing the difference between her clothed male and female peers interesting - not least because a lot of the stuff I have read on gender differences and whether they are innate or not focuses on children of this sort of age, and uses their liking for trucks vs dolls etc as a sign that it must be innate. I think we vastly underestimate the amount of socialisation that our children have been through at this age, and that until we can test newborn babies for this kind of thing we will really struggle to be able to say anything useful from that kind of study. (And even for newborn babies, I have read that we talk to our foetuses differently in utero depending on what we think their sex will be!)

[goldenlula]

It is odd isn't it, op you are concerned with the fact your dd at a young age can differentiate between male and female, while my ds2 at 4.6 years is still being seen by SALT, with one of the reasons being because he doesn't differentiate between male and female (as I said that is just one of the reasons).
My dd rarely wears clothes that are solely pink, she has a rainbow of colours, infact it is quite possible that ds1 has more pink in his wardrobe! Ds1 has always preferred pink, until about a week ago (aged 7.5) when he confided in me that he thinks he prefers red now, but that he will still wear pink as it is a shade of red!
Ds1 was always being mistaken for a girl as a young child. It didn't really bother me, just found it odd that the reason given was his curly hair, as if curly hair is only to be found on a girl! Dd does where a lot of dresses though, bu they do not restrict her in any way at all.

[goldenlula]

Where???? Wear obviously!

[ElegantSufficiency]

But. the nail varnish i can handle. what is important is that she doesnt prioritise looks over study, that she feels entitled in a world of entitled men to march to the beat of her own drum, that she never dums down to win male approval, that she doesnt go through life needing male approval, that she likes herself, and can draw a LINE between what she wants and what others (inc society) may want from her.

alk of this stuff is so much trickier. putting a toddler in a blue coat is easy. that's y i dobt mean to patronise u. when yoyr dd is older u will see new things to focus on. you will have a varying amount of control over them.

[Timetoask]

Ridiculous!

[GwendolineMaryLacey]

This is hysterical. You are talking like this is new ffs. All that has changed is fashion. Even bloody cave dwellers wore their animal skins differently depending on sex.

[AngiBolen]

You can train your DD to like pink? Really? How can I do it....I would really like a pink room in my house, and 7yo DD isn't playing ball. (She does however want a One Direction bedroom. I'm not sure what that says about society)

9yo DD loves his pink jumper very, very much though.

OP, from the picture you have posted, your DD does look like a boy. I too looked like a boy when I was that age.

[JugglingFromHereToThere]

My DS often chose to wear dresses as a toddler. He was especially fond of a white one with little strawberries on which DGMa had made for slightly older DD.
It was nice he gave it a new lease of life ! I guess having an older DSis may have been an influence.

I think it's a shame that society seems somewhat obsessed with making sure boys and girls are put in the right boxes - play with the right toys, and wear the right colour clothes etc.

So, yes, I think Mothercare etc. have gone too far in one direction with their pink and blue clothes departments, but possibly OP has gone too far in the other. I would be pleased if my toddler was able to say which of her friends were girls and which boys, just like I'd be pleased if she'd noticed the difference between cats and dogs, or cars and trains - or like my DD at just a bit older than OP's, could tell you the names of all her dinosaurs !

[GirlOutNumbered]

Yabu.

[clippityclop]

Gawd. I've read most of this and have a headache... As I type one dd is happily watching Scooby Doo which her best friend has just announced is" just for boys, but OK really" and other dd is busy with the pink felt tip pens. Friend's son was here earlier having a lovely time prancing about in one of my dds old ballroom dresses and has now gone to his football training. Like your dd they are all themselves, all wonderful for who they are, it's what they do that's important and not what they look like, we're all on a spectrum of masculine/feminine, all unique. I wonder of your daughter is your first child?

[WorraLiberty]

OP, why ask if you're BU if you're so very sure that you're not?

It's just waste of everyone's time surely?

And imo YABVU for over thinking this spectacularly.

I hope you don't end up projecting your own issues onto your DD.

[Wishiwasanheiress]

Oh ffs is this ALL u have to worry about?

[somewhereaclockisticking]

there are times when I can't tell and this leads to a very awkward moment when I don't wish to make a fool of myself or insult that person - and then immediately opt for the wrong gender and want the floor to swallow me up.

[southbank]

No op my dp doesn't mostly wear pink,he doesn't mostly wear any particular colour.
I don't mostly wear pink,I like it but I don't just wear it.
My favourite colour is green,what does that say about me?
My dd wears a mix of colours,but just to wind you up even more I actually used to deliberately dress her in pink when she had no hair as I used to be so pissed off with people saying how lovely to have 2 boys,she's a girl so I wanted people to address her as such.

[Shesparkles]

When my ds was a baby, if I had dressed him in very feminine clothes, he'd have looked like a boy wearing girls clothing.
Boys and girls as babies are physically different. In general, boys tend to have a bigger head, bigger hands etc than girls. Hats why they follow different growth and development charts.

Whether you like it or not, humans are PROGRAMMED to tell the difference between the sexes from a very young age, just as your child is doing, it's called BIOLOGY, and no amount of hand wringing over trying to make males a d female the same, is ever going to change that.

[UniqueAndAmazing]

catgirl - that's great in theory.
BUT

I often call DD by her name, which is Eleanor, so obviously a girl's name, I refer to her as "she" and "her" and even sometimes say "come, on then, madam!"
and still people say "oh, he blahblahblahblah" or "look at him" or "he's got a lovely smile" and "what a cute little boy" and "isn't he just a typical boy!"
etc etc.

precisely because she's wearing practical clothes and has very short hair.
(actually, I had it even when she was dressed head to toe in pink once, so )

[LegArmpits]

Lol.