To think gender colour coded lucky dip is unacceptable?

[asharah]

Helping out with the PTA I discovered kids were being asked to bring in lucky dip prizes, wrapped pink for girls and blue for boys. I was really shocked. Surely our kids should be encouraged not to discriminate and play with all toys? When I shared my concern that this reinforced unhelpful gender stereotypes some parents came back saying they didn't want boys to be upset or teased for receiving pink fluffy toys, or vice versa? I've never come across gender separated lucky dip before, and encountered hundreds. Is it normal?

That is a great list of toys Liney and I am in most things boringly keen on gender neutrality. Son's favourite colour is pink, daughter is keen on fossils and geology yada yada.

However I let it go for fairs and party bags. Most lucky dips I see have separate boxes for girls and boys, and it is very hard to find a good variety of gender neutral stuff for about 20p an item. Organisers are either buying stuff on a limited budget or relying on parents contributing items, and I suspect asking for gendered things means a better response rate.

I got irate about it when PFB was 4, now I just make sure my kids know they can choose from either tub, and let them choose what colour pen they give in each child's party bag etc. We also put bracelets in girls' party bags sometimes (depending on the girl), so shoot me.

I get more cross with people who try to talk a child out of their clearly stated choice for eg face paint or a tattoo if it's too pink for a boy or not pink enough for a girl.

Of course some stereotyping comes from our environment, but even so, the stereotypes exist for a reason bigger than just that. To pretend otherwise is pointless.

What I don't like about this whole issue is that it's almost telling boys they are wrong if they like typically boyish stuff and don't like pink sparkly stuff, and telling girls they are wrong if they have no interest in cars and trains but love princess dresses and glitter. It shouldn't be like that.

It should all be available to children because children like all of it. There's no harm in letting a child have some choice so that they are more likely to get a lucky dip prize they will enjoy.

My ds x2 would have been very unhappy to receive a girly toy.
What about hair bobbles, I'm sure the boys wouldn't want these, or making bracelet sets.
YABVU, but it doesn't surprise me, you won't be on your own.

We held a Xmas Fayre last weekend for our Scouts. My DDs wanted to do the lucky dip. They were told by the stall holder "that's the girl's bag". DD2 happily pulled one out and beamed away. DD1 pulled over the other -'boys' - bag, and chose one and beamed. Both went away happy. No drama. Why does everything have to be a drama and a fucking 'thing'.

The problem is that the children are not gender neutral (yet). You could do a gender neutral rule for the toys but that might be trickier than you imagine.

IME it's the parents of girls who peddle this myth of gender neutral gubbins, along with "do they use their penis to play with it?", the parents of boys respond "well actually, yes - they frequently do".

Hi! Pleased to meet you. Two boys here and already I'm sad about how DS1's 'choices' of what he does and doesn't like and who he does and doesn't play with are being influenced by his friends and by the world around him. And he's still at a ludicrously liberal nursery that challenges the boy/girl stuff whenever it comes up, and with a high proportion of parents who hate it too. I'm dreading school next year.

The way we (as a society) steer children into things that are 'for' their gender is shit for both boys and girls, frankly.

But you're talking about the effect, Big, Alice, New, Osolea.

I'm talking about the cause.

You don't mind the effect. Your choice.

What about hair bobbles, I'm sure the boys wouldn't want these,

Girls with short hair might also hate them. It's a fairly shit lucky dip prize. What's so difficult about trying to choose things that will appeal to the broadest number of kids?

I am somewhat of an expert in the field of PTA school fair lucky dips, having organised and run two each school year from Nursery to Year 6 at now 14 year old DS2's primary school. I make that 16 lucky dips.

It will be to limit the amount of children asking (or demanding in some cases) to swap their gifts for something else! I started off the right way, with all gifts in one tub & wrapped in whatever paper I had to hand. After 2 or 3 years I changed the system to a girls' tub & a boys' tub. PURELY to save all of the "yuk, that's a girls toy, I'm not having that" followed by a disgruntled parent demanding their precious little snowflake must choose again for free because his gift "isn't suitable". It wasn't just boys & parents of boys complaining - it worked both ways.

I always gave every child the option of picking from either tub though.

the request was changed to 'gender neutral' gifts before the kids received it - ok, but i'd've rathered 'a gift suitable for any child'

TBF 'gender neutral' has the best chance of being widely understood and resulting in the desired response.

I don't get what the problem is - if you give children toys randomly, some children are bound to get something they don't like, gender stereotyping is not going to prevent that.

If the boys don't like their hairclips (which, by the way, is not really a toy?), then they can swap it for something a girl got and doesn't like.

And if they are not successful doing this, then maybe ... girls actually do NOT want that pink stuff so very much.

Sigh. I can't bear it when people argue that girls choose pink fluff and boys cars as an argument that this is genetic and not because of people like the OP talked about making this so.....

I think this could be more to do with the way toys are marketed as girls or boys, and therefore what children believe they are expected to like.

I think you should watch The Secret Life of 4 Year Olds

Santa I can remember 30 years ago being told my interests in walkie talkies , insects, telescopes and playing McGyver were 'boys' stuff'. I can recall very clearly how strongly I felt that those things were NOT just for boys, that they were just things. I can remember saying so (feisty kid).

It is a bit dispiriting that from 1985 to 2015, the only progress made is that if I was 8 years old now at your fete, I would be allowed to pick from the BOYS tub with no fuss.

I had long hair when I was little and I would have hated getting hair bobbles as a lucky dip prize.

I agree with pp who think gender neutral prizes are preferable. And that children are conditioned from a very early age to think that some toys are for girls and some for boys.

One pp mentioned giving the top table in her class a bag of toys, and that the girls picked the girly toys and the boys picked the boyish toys. If my teachers had done that sort of thing when I was in school, then I'd have probably picked the girly toys even if I preferred the boyish toys, because I'd be worrying about the other kids mocking me if I picked something that girls weren't "supposed" to like.

Thing is, even if they don't physically stop kids from choosing the 'wrong' gender prizes, it takes a strong girl to stand in front of everyone and pick the blue one, knowing that everyone thinks it's for boys, and (sadly) an even stronger boy to pick the pink one, especially older children.

Some kids do have the confidence to do so, which is great, but not all will.

There will be many girls who would be just as disappointed as boys to receive a pink fluffy purse, and certainly some boys who would be pleased to get it. Probably more if we didn't live in a time in society when stereotyping has reache absolute fever pitch.

Isn't the point of a lucky dip that it's random, and you could get anything?

What on Earth is wrong with girls toys and boys toys, and with a girl being girly and a boy being boyish in their preferences? Why do genders necessarily need to be blended? Only on MN I come across such insistence on gender-neutral upbringing.

The bobble was an example of what a boy wouldn't like, not that all girls would love them.
I don't understand why all of a sudden everybody seems to be jumping on the gender neutral band wagon. It's nothing new and rightly so my ds1 was playing with dolls at school twenty years ago, it was encouraged.

By distinguishing between the two, children can choose what they want.
My dd would have chosen a boys toy too. None of my ds would have choosen a girls toy.

I think I can safely say I don't know a single, solitary boy who would be pleased to receive a pink, fluffy purse!

DS1 got a (gender neutral) purse on the cover of a magazine a few months ago. He likes that.

littleLion "Marketing is the very worst culprit."

I'm not sure. I think other adults are more of an influence on my children than marketing. In these days of cbeebies, cbbc, series link and a 'skip forward' button, I think my children see less marketing than I did as a child. They've grown up in a little bubble where pretty much, home, nursery and school have all had adults who let the child choose freely. But the real world creeps in when other children say boys don't like fairies, or urrgggh only smelly BOYS like football, or granny or a friend's mum asks DD why she had the ugly football sticker when her friend got the pretty fairy one, or other parents and children point and laugh at the boy with the pink glitter tattoo.

And you can't bring up a child in a world of nongendered items only. You can only affect their perception of how gendered they are - butterflies and football exist whether you like it or not. We get to influence whether our children see them as "only for girls/boys" or not, but their friends, and therefore their friends' parents, also influence it.

What on Earth is wrong with girls toys and boys toys, and with a girl being girly and a boy being boyish in their preferences? Why do genders necessarily need to be blended?

Because most "girl toys" are not toys but things that only serve the purpose of grooming girls to become men's sextoys.

Hair decoration? Not a toy. Purse? Also not a toy. Doll? A toy, but with rather limited play options if the doll is visibly a baby.

Gender is a hierarchy with women at the bottom. It is not good for girls.

And as for pink fluffy unicorns, which are legitimately toys ... just look at the male fans of My Little Pony ... yes, boys would like to play with that.

Pretty Nothing wrong with it at all, its the assumption that all girls like the same things, and all boys, with no overlap.

New That's the thing, it's not new at all. The whole stereotyping shebang has got so much worse in recent years. I don't remember such stark pink and blue/girl and boy divides when I was younger, compared with what we see now, and I'm only in my twenties.

DD got a lovely gender neutral gift out of the kid's lucky dip run by my local parish council. It was a ceramic bonbon dish...

As a child I would also go for the blue, as I do for DD if she gets one of those pink/blue kinder eggs.

"What on Earth is wrong with girls toys and boys toys, and with a girl being girly and a boy being boyish in their preferences?"

What makes a choice 'boyish' or 'girly' though? It's only habit, and quite limiting really.

"Why do genders necessarily need to be blended?"

They don't. Just let toys be toys, and let them choose, free of expectation that 'this is for type A and that is for type B'. And for a tombola, where they will choose unseen, it's best to have items with the broadest possible appeal.

"Only on MN I come across such insistence on gender-neutral upbringing."

That's a strength of a large website such as this. It takes you beyond your immediate (probably endogamous) circle.