to ask so what if people think that?

[pinkbluegreenyellow]

Friend recently had a baby boy. Her DH goes on about how 'strong' he is, how big and tall, how much bigger than other baby boys he is. Fine. He is a big guy himself.

What irks is any suggestion that his son might, god forbid, appear 'girly' to others. For example, his son was gifted a t shirt that had a pink stripe in it. It's being given to charity as 'no son of mine wears pink. Don't want you being mistaken for a girl'. Friend's cousin allows her small ds to dress up in both cowboy and princess outfits and this is met with a sneer too.

Leaving aside the notion that pink is for girls, I want to shout so fucking what if people think he's a girl?? Like being a girl is weak and pathetic? I get that you might want people to assign the correct gender to your child but is there the same fear attached to people thinking your child might be a boy? As in , I can't dress her in blue, I don't want people to think she's a boy?

I take it that that may imply I was making you have a ruck. You were having it already.

Hahaha muttoncadet.yes.

One of my boys likes wearing dresses- he's so happy when he dresses up. He's 7. He loves princesses, he has dolls. He has some of dd's old clothes, sparkly tops etc- but he won't wear them outside, because he's embarrassed- he thinks people will make fun of him. He won't tell his friends he has dolls, or what his favourite tv programme is, or that he really, really wants a purple dress to be sofia the first. If he decides when he's an adult that he still likes wearing dresses, we'll support him- far worse for him if we wouldn't let him now and he grew up hating us for 'making' him be someone he wasn't. I'd sooner he was happy with himself, knew himself, grew up knowing he could be himself without judgement at home.

My middle boy once had a woman nearly fall over herself in horror at him- because he had on a pink t-shirt. I laughed to myself, as she muttered to a woman in the queue between us, how there was a boy, in pink- as if it were shocking.

I've always found it odd that people wouldn't dress a boy in certain colours- do they follow this for themselves, never wear blue- or trousers...

I really couldn't care if someone thinks my toddler son is a girl, he's been told he's too pretty to be a boy several times, which I always think is a strange thing to say. He looks like me (my dc are all clones of me, with a little tiny hint of dh)

...far worse for him if we wouldn't let him now and he grew up hating us for 'making' him be someone he wasn't. I'd sooner he was happy with himself, knew himself, grew up knowing he could be himself without judgement at home.

[Applauds] I haven't got a parenting award to hand, how about a it's fresh, DH just made it.

What an amazingly ridiculous thread - talk about handbags at dawn, though not for blahblah obviously.

Handbags only for the girls!

What a shame that this has deteriorated into some personal sniping.

To refer back to the OP's point - a baby has no care whether it is dressed in pink, yellow, blue, black, or brown (or any other colour). Wearing of a particular colour does not instil a particular behaviour.

Society at large may not accept men in dresses, but that is not what we are debating.

And to go back to Jux's point, pink used to be the colour to dress boys in. It was a diluted form of red, which was considered masculine.

Boys are meant to be better at visuo-spatial tasks than girls. And girls are meant to be better at communication tasks than boys. That doesn't mean that they all are though.

As an example, I am far better at visuo-spatial tasks than dh. I was far better at v-s tasks at Uni than anyone else in my year - boys and girls. I wasn't wrong, I was just not typical. There is noting wrong with me at all.

To say that girls and boys are different is oly true to a certain extent. Our gender is a tiny tiny part of us, and to a great many of the people and circumstances we will encounter throughout our lives it will be largely irrelevant.

There was a time when women and girls only wore dresses and skirts. Never trousers. Then some women started challenging the social norms and wore trousers. Was that just wrong? Should they be castigated? No, of course not. Through women like them we are no longer chattels, and we are allowed to vote and work and own property, and all sorts of other freedoms which had been denied us.

Nowadays, thoughtful people are challenging the norms of society using the education of their children. If you allow your own child to wear dresses when he's a boy then a whole classful of children are learning that clothes do not 'make the man'. Furthermore, they are learning tolerance and what is actually important about a person, not to make snap judgements, a whole host of things which are good things. (Except for the children whose parents don't understand and are shackled by the idea that challenging societal norms is a bad thing, and learn instead to take the piss and make foolish judgements about others on the strength of something which is not important at all.)

Unfortunately, without societal norms being challenged, society becomes stagnant. Progress is not made in any field by always playing safe, always doing things the way they have always been done.

Boys wearing dresses, or pink, seems such a pointless and worthless thing to get worked up about.