To be saddened by this casual gender stereotyping?

[SuiGeneris]

DS went to a third birthday party recently. Lovely family that we would like to get to know more. As seems common round here there was an entertainer who spun out a story and games on a pirate theme. It started off with there being an island full of monsters that the boys (aka pirates) were asked to scare away "so that it would be safe for the princesses to come onto the island". I was stunned (and, it must be said, sad and irritated) that in this day and age, in London, in an educated environment, this should be acceptable. Of course the hostess probably had not heard the story before and the other parents would not have said anything through politeness but.. Really??

As it happens DS asked to be a princess when it came to the face painting and none of the other children said anything. At just 3 I think they are unaware of stereotypes, so why foist them on them?

YABU to even be remotely bothered.

I'm in the camp of getting extremely bored with these kind of threads. Children aren't stupid, brainwashed robots - playing a princess at a birthday party isn't going to make a girl believe she must grow up to be pretty and marry a rich man.

It is up to you, your partner and other people in her life to instill the right values and encouragement in her life to be able to become whatever she wants to be.

It was a party, most of the children had fun. End of.

This ^^ (some people on here won't be satisfied until all babies are born gender neutral with no sexual differences at all!)

It's not being a princess that's the problem imo, it's the princess being wake and needing the pirates' help.
We can have kick-ass princesses too.

it is all very well i shilling the right values in the girls and telling the girls they can ve whatever they like but someone had better let the boys know too.

that is the point, these gender typed roles have more affect on the thinking of boys than girls because the girls get theironing views moderated by people telling then they can ve what they want to be. and yet the assumption is that boys don't need to ve krpy in that particular loop. this thread is full of posters saying i tell my dd she can do what she likes but very few saying i tell my ds that girls can be whatever they like and so can you.

those boys will some day be the men that your dds will work with, share a house with and bring up kids with. someone had better fill them in on the script that says they can use a Hoover get up in the middle of the night earn less then their brain surgeon wife etc. and that that is ok.

i have done lots of jobs in typically male sectors. my belief in what i could do was not the problem. but there was a problem.

Not read the whole thread but I went to look at the nursery at an independent school near me this week. I was shown around by the registrar and was told 'the girls do ballet and the boys do football'. I was and .

Luckily I was just being nosey and don't actually want a place there!

It is annoying. I'd be sad. It's a load of lazy bollocks and it sets the bar early on. I think that people who don't object are often not parents/parents of boys only/parents who happily dress their 'princess' in pink and don't mind that she isn't remotely aware that she could be a nurse or a doctor when she grows up.

I think all the people talking about how the children could have chosen to ask to be put in the other group are kind of missing the point.

Yes, an individual child could. An opinionated, strong willed and vocal child might yell "I want to be a pirate". (DD2, looking at you there).

Other children, the shy children, the laid back children, the children most pulled by peer pressure (DD1 would be in this group) would go along with it. So they would stand still and wait to be rescued.

And it's not a problem that this time they were grouped this way. It is a problem that time after time they are grouped this way. If you look, the overall messages are remarkably consistent. And children don't have to be able to understand and process these messages to absorb them. Hence the children who have never been told that football is for boys, or boys don't wear pink, but who (seemingly out of the blue) come out with these statements.

No one jumps up and tells girls not to do physics. But by A-level hardly any do. Now that could be purely genetic (though there is no reliable evidence to support a pure genetics viewpoint), or it could be in large part the messages our children receive as they grow up about their roles in society. So if no one is telling our girls not to do physics, something more subtle is going on.

There are lots of other examples, but I won't list masses. Gender stereotyping isn't about the seriousness of one incident. If one incident was really serious, most people would disagree with it. It's the drip drip, like water on stone, over the years.

So the people with boys on this thread, dress them regularly in dresses?

Or are the posters saying yanbu all got just girls?

I have girls.

No, I wouldn't go out of my way to dress a boy in girls clothes (although he could if he wanted to).

But I recognise that as an aspect of gender stereotyping that I wouldn't be strong enough to stand up to. Doesn't mean it's ok. It's all part of it being ok to be a boy - there is a word for a girl who is 'boyish' and physically active (tomboy). There isn't even a word for the other way round (other than sissy) and it is seen as terribly degrading for a boy to look like or behave like a girl. It's in our language - hence the phrase 'cried like a girl' applied to males.

I hate how these conversations always come down to ridiculous statements like 'so do you put your son in a dress?'

FFS
There is a big difference between dressing children traditionally but not head to toe in fucking pink or blue. There is an even bigger difference between putting a girl in a dress every so often & telling her she needs to shriek & be rescued by a big strong boy.

Extrapolating arguments to this level is puerile.

I have one of each. I've been able to hand down a lot of clothes. I do not dress my son in dresses, but then I rarely dress my daughter in pink.

She is 3.5 & already I am having to work very hard to convince her that girls are equally brave, as likely to be a dr or engineer etc

The other day on a well known radio show, a DNA was introduced as a 'female ' dj.

Is this ok?

FFS a DJ (as in club dj)

babiesinslingseathair put this very nicely.

No one really wants to be the boring pedant at the party, but this whole princess thing is just complete nonsense. Reason being that it's assumed and unexamined.

I know too many mothers who just buy into the whole thing because it's done, not because their daughters beg them for princess crap. If it were truly daughter-led, rather than adult and consumerist-led, then it would not be nearly as pervasive and we might get a handle on the whole affair.

YANBU. I'd be furious if my DC attended a party where the entertainer thought it was appropriate for the boys to "save" the girls!!

I also think it's shit that the girls were given the passive role. YANBU.
A few replies here have said, ah but your DS got to choose to be a princess, because they haven't read the op properly: the boys were told to be pirates, they werent given a choice - it was later on at the party that he chose to have his face painted as a princess.

Those who are 'bored' by threads discussing gender stereotyping, jeez but just don't click on it

I genuinely don't understand why playing the role of a character who is weak, helpless and ultimately pathetic is seen as desirable for either gender.

Kids like pretending and by dictating to them what they should pretend to be we miss the point a bit! I quite agree that this also means girls shouldn't be told 'you are the princess' but I have to admit that I feel given free choice most girls would opt for princess and most boys for pirates. Only on Mumsnet have I seen so many boys who dress routinely as girls.

Does dressing up as a princess, being called "princess" by dads, mums, whoever, REALLY make girls think "ah, that must mean I am helpless and passive and must stand by while the men rescue me" though? It doesn't seem so to me. All the little girls I know are opinionated clever little things AND like wearing the odd tiara or having a tea party. There just seems to be a great deal of misplaced angst here.
I would understand the outrage if an OP posted about a little girl terrified to do anything remotely boisterous because she'd been told she must stay neat and pretty etc, but this was just a party game which presumably the kids played, then moved on to cake or whatever without a second thought.

I agree with the OP - it's lazy stereotyping.

We should care about this.

I don't think that they do, moley. I think that's a connotation we as adults add to their role playing and fantasy games.

I think it is interesting though. For many years now, girls have had the message that they can do what they want to do. There's still a lack of uptake in female mechanics, electricians, and plumbers and the like. Meanwhile, boys still steer clear of midwifery, nursing, primary school teaching.

I know as soon as you say that someone comes along to insist that their DD is a wannabe mechanic while their DS is a midwife with a penchant for ballet in his spare time but statistically this is true.

Is it because of the subliminal messages kids get? I really don't think it is, not now. I think that anything that encourages one gender into something traditionally dominated by the other is a good thing, but all the same, there are strong indications that these jobs and courses and interests are dominated by one gender over the other because of preference.

And when we applaud princess-attired little boys and girls charging around dressed as cowboys, we miss the real point about gender inequality. It isn't 'unequal' for a boy to be a pirate and a girl a princess. Because forcing somebody to be something they are not is a one way ticket to misery.

Exactly, Teapots. I wouldn't be any more or less proud of my kids if they broke gender stereotypes, than if they chose to do things that conformed to them completely. It's not a positive thing, or a negative, it just is.

And actually, pirates in rl are male
And princesses in rl are female.
So no stereotyping whatsoever.

I actually think, that when say the girls reach say, 14, even their parent do not really want them to be car mechanics and miners.

I dont think I have ever seen a thread on here about that.
"My DD wants to work in an office, but I want her to do outdoor work. What can I do to".

YANBU

it is the little messages that children are constantly getting it is very powerful and hard to get away from

Where is the strong evidence that jobs and courses are dominated by one gender rather than another because of 'preference' Teapots? And if you mean innate preference (rather than socially conditioned preference), where is the evidence that that is the kind of preference being exhibited?

Your argument is a good one, and I agree that it can be deeply negative when 'female' interests are portrayed as less valid than male ones, but I depart from you on the other conclusion. For years girls and boys have been told that they can do anything, but they are still conforming to strong gender roles in most cases. Does that mean gender roles are innate, or does it mean that we need to be consistent in what we show children as well as what we tell them?

Just as I wouldn't expect my daughters to grow up with a healthy body image if they heard me constantly dieting and criticising my figure (whilst telling them that they were beautiful and perfect and educating them on nutrition), nor do I expect my daughters to stand a fighting chance at building their own identity if I don't pick up on gender stereotypes for them. It's the least I can do to give them a fighting chance.

And whilst I don't have an issue with princesses per se (except the bizarrely sexed up Brave), I do feel that all of us accepting 'this is just the way my daughter is' is simplistic. Because undoubtedly some of those girls would like princesses and pink and sparkles, but all of them are receiving some pretty potent reinforcement for liking those things. I have no qualms in admitting that DD1's (fairly mild) current princess liking seems to be mostly because she has become friends with children who are obsessed with those things. That is societal and peer influence. It happens in everything, and it happens in adults too (music popularity, tv, food...). Societal and peer influence are not inherently bad things. They shape us as people and help us find a role in the society we are born into. But it's precisely the reason we ought to cast a critical eye over what those influences are and whether we agree with their message.

I am glad this has generated such debate. For those of you who asked, the entertainer did repeatedly say the girls were to be pretty princesses and the boys pirates. DS did not take part. Then they had face painting, where the boys received fake scars and the girls flowers. DS asked for flowers and proudly wore them on to a second (grown up) party that evening. He DID notice that the girls had more flowers drawn than he had and asked why (one of his very first ones).

OP you want to worry about gender stereotypes? Then wait till your DS is a bit older and being told he will not do as well girls in school or as one ridiculous radical feminist teacher told ds2 all boys are potential rapists (he is 13).