To think the 'pinkification' of girls is only going to do damage in the long run?

[katykuns]

www.telegraph.co.uk/women/mother-tongue/10075913/Meet-the-mother-who-hides-pink-toys-from-her-daughter-and-uses-blue-boy-diapers.html

Very feminine, pretty clothes, in specific colours. Toys that encourage vanity, motherhood, no real aspirations... AIBU to think that if this doesn't stop, that we are actually going to go backwards? Obviously parental influence plays a strong part, and most women do not reinforce the idea of the 1950s housewife is something to aspire to, but surely these gender stereotypes are just unnecessary?

I also think the article should acknowledge boys that don't fall under the 'rough, mischievous, mud riddled' stereotype that I see in toys aimed at boys.

YABU to suggest toys that encourage motherhood are harmful? Why would they? I'd say to even suggest such a thing is harmful, that 'women's work' is something to be looked down upon? No, no, no.

Both of my children, a dd and a ds have enjoyed playing with a baby doll at some stage and they both like to pretend cook and hoover.

I agree with everything you've said Llareggub. If you look at the 1976 Argos catalogue on Flickr the toys in there are almost the same price as they are today! They were so much more expensive then. My parents couldn't afford to buy us many toys, never mind in two different colours.

I also agree about the guilt and peer pressure thing. DH is a bugger for telling DS some toys are for girls, not boys, because he worries that DS will be picked on for liking what other children will perceive to be girls' stuff. He thinks it's all very well having your own convictions, but not at the risk of your kid being beaten up in the playground. It's quite difficult to argue with.

Some confusion on this thread.
It's not that pink is intrinsically rubbish.
It's that girls are first brainwashed to like exclusively pink things, and then it turns out that pink things are certain sorts of things that lead them down certain paths.
I mean take the often trotted out example: a pink ELC play kitchen and a red and blue ELC play kitchen. Apparently harmless enough, because it acknowledges that both boys and girls like to play with kitchens. But actually it reinforces an idea that to be suitable for a girl, it must be pink; and therefore that there are some things that are not suitable for girls. If you only had the red and blue play kitchen, and everything else - or if there were no gender colour rules - then the world would just contain a mass of ungendered objects for children to explore.

Will read and reply properly later but I think moderation is key...

Oh and having just noticed the post above me, thought I'd mention my DD is getting more Lego for her birthday next month, to supplement the huge box my friend gave her at Xmas. She doesn't have any of the Friends stuff. The Lego I am surprising her with is a Spongebob set :o

Miaow - that's the good stuff you're right - but fortunately effectively indestructable. and you can get it on ebay

Aye, MiaowTheCat, and that were if we even got time to play with lego, after working 27 hrs a day down t'mill

It's interesting reading younger MNers describing some pinkification in the 80s, as I was a child of the 70s and whilst attitudes in society were more sexist (or openly sexist), kids' clothing and toys were much more unisex and ungendered. Partly because everyone had less, so you wore more handmedowns and just shared whatever toys there were, but the idea of lego for girls and lego for boys would've been ridiculous to even a massive 70s bigot!

My son loves cats. Other parents are already making comments. It is beyond ridiculous.

Qudlibet If Celia Fine is correct that gender is defined by social conditioning how would she explain a little boy who was the brother of one of DS's friends; he wore a jumper on his head from age 1 to have 'long hair like a girls'' and he wore dresses whenever he could (he had 2 brothers and his mother said that she wasn't desperate to have a girl when he was born). Also in our NCT group there was a girl who wore boys clothes and described herself as a boy.

It's awful the way certain colours/toys are targeted for each gender. I find it virtually impossible to get decent boys clothes/shoes which aren't sludge coloured or have awful aggressive slogans/pictures on them. The clothes are like some hideous uniform styled on the army.

I found my daughter had an anti pink back lash from around 9/10 and now refuses anything pink or frilly.

My 3 year old makes a bee line for boys toys when he didn't used to. I'm pretty sure that is social conditioning which he has learnt since starting nursery.

Oh, and everything curryeater says.

Ppearfruit, um, the examples you give exemplify Cordelia Fine's ideas perfectly, not contradict them! Social conditioning teaches children from an incredibly early age that girls have long hair and wear certain clothes and vice versa for boys. Even we, as parents, enforce this, as mums generally have longer hair and wear outfits we recognise as female, and dads have shorter hair and wear male outfits.

Those children you describe were not aping some innate gender truths, they were play acting with what social conditioning has taught them means male or female.

chillin You are SOOOO right why is it de rigueur to downplay nurturing? Why is a boring factory job more valuable than bringing up your children ! (this applies to both sexes BTW)

Liking pink is no way genetic!

I do however believe, that in general, and of course there are lots of exceptions and a whole spectrum of children in between, that girls and boys do play differently and have different interests.

ERMM yes but they weren't the gender that (society is saying they should be) they supposed to be were they? these children were deadly serious not playacting BTW. So willies and vaginas are not real then purely a result of conditioning?!

I think what we have to ask ourselves is "does it really matter?".
no is the answer. i played with pink toys and wore pink clothes and yet i have a degree; run my own business and used to be a senior manager in a construction company. Ditto for lots of my girly friends. making it an issue when it isn't is forcing adult misconceptions on innocent kids.

Therefore yabu!

I think it's much a do about nothing, if dd wants pink, princess, frilly type things so be it, likewise if she prefers a truck and tractor so be it can't say I have ever held a strong opinion on it. Certainly don't believe playing with pink frilly things will turn her in to some passive 1940's housewife with no ambition or opinions far too opinionated

She likes power rangers at the minute has a blue suit handed down by ds however she wants to be the pink one, should I tell that under no circumstances should she wear that or else she is doomed?

Oh also in Victorian times little boys wore dresses till they were out of nappies as someone said upthread and litttle girls wore blue. It's just a fashion and IMO the worst part of cheap plastic toys whatever colour is the environmental damage caused by the manufacture and disposal of them. Humanity will be long gone and just leave piles of effing plastic.

Pink is a pretty colour, girls have a finer eye for aesthetics and wanting to look pretty, feels like a genetic thing to me. I like pink too!

I can't take all this very seriously. DD was a total pink fairy princess type; now she is 11 and a feisty kick-your-butt-with-my-huge-black-Doc-Martens type. Having tried pink fairiness extensively, it wasn't for her in the long run.

She's always known she had my full support to explore what and who she wanted to be.

Did anyone hear the Warplay expert on the radio (a psychologist who had studied at length children's desire to play games with weapons), on last night, was it the PM programme? She was talking about how we have so many misconceptions about play with toy weapons, who likes it, why they do it, what impacts it has. I can't help but wonder if there's not something similar about pink; the real problem isn't that girls are pushed hard into pink but rather than boys are discouraged hard away from it.

I'm with lljkk. I just can't take it too seriously. I have 2 dds. The younger one was mad for everything pink and princessy when she was younger but already by the age of 7 she is outgrowing it.

I had to laugh at the op's line 'toys that encourage vanity, motherhood, no real aspirations'. Is motherhood not something to be encouraged? Is being a good mother not a valuable aspiration?

Would pretend make up, princess dress up etc not encourage vanity if they were red or yellow?

ppeatfruit

Not just Victorian times. A recent Sunday supplement showed a lovely pic of Prince William and Harry in dresses when they were babies. Times, fashions and customs all change in time.

Funnily enough I think it all depends where you go to shop. A quick browse on John Lewis shows very little of this 'pink' phenomena. However, visit Mothercare and it's a bit more 'in your face'. Not enough to bother me particularly but then I don't think about it much and don't go for the 'conditioning' thing too much either.

YANBU. I am proud of DD aged 7 who refuses to wear pink, has never been interested in dolls or tea sets and her favourite hobby is football. Anything 'girly' is rejected. Her brother however loves all of the above and sleeps with a big pink teddy every night .

The only bit I disagree with is the suggestion that toys that encourage motherhood are somehow wrong. Granted it should be across both genders and it should be parenthood but I do think most of our children will have children themselves. If they do it will be a huge part of who they are and how they do things and an achievement as worthy as a promotion at work.

Whenever these discussions come up on MN I feel being a parent and wanting to parent is seen as something inferior as though work should be your priority.

I want equality. That to me means acknowledging that children need to be cared for. I want to see that role shared amongst men and women and for it to be seen as normal. I want work to accommodate that role for both parents and it not be a case you have one or the other.

I just don't understand all these arguments. I loved pink as a girl, I had loads of dolls and a Wendy house and kitchen. I then moved onto barbie/sindy dolls which I played with until I was about 13. I always wanted a career and went onto university and have been very successful. My dd (7yo) went through the pink and princess phase but has now moved onto star wars and harry potter. My ds (5yo) also had a princess phase copying his sister wearing princess dresses. He has now moved onto skylanders and Star Wars.

I just don't get that being into pink/Disney princess/barbie is psychologically damaging. Let you kids play with whatever they're interested in and nurture them to be both caring and independent.

It is definitely more prevalent now. When I was a child pink liking girls were considered a bit naff and hardly anyone ever admitted to liking it The explosion in pink sparkly crap is fairly recent

Going back to the OP which says, AIBU to think that if this doesn't stop, that we are actually going to go backwards?; is there any evidence to support this theory? Has academic attainment in girls born after, say, 1995 dropped exponentially? Do we have fewer girls going to university or further education? If not....seems like a lot of fuss over nothing.

You could argue that the impact of this trend will only be felt years down the line, when this generation have their own children. How many will remain working, and how many will embrace a life of "vanity, motherhood, no real aspirations"? And anyway, why's that such a bad thing (the vanity thing aside)? There's a vast amount of MN'ers who have made the choice to focus on their home life, not work and raise their children and spoke openly about it on a thread last week. They mostly would have raised in the "golden era" of genderless toys in the 1960's- early 80's. I'm not seeing a link here.