Pink and blue at NURSERY

[creepymumweirdo]

WTF? Am I being thick/twattish here but why the hell would nursery do this?

They're thinking of having polo shirts for the kids so parents don't get upset if their kids clothes get messy (send your kid in scruffy clothes? Another issue). They have suggested pink polo shirts for girls and blue for boys.

Surely we're all trying to help kids break out of gender stereotypes not reinforce them? At 1 year old!

Some girls might genuinely like pink (I'm not one of them) and boys blue but why differentiate at all? Just pick a nice neutral colour that washes well and have done.

I've got my propper outraged face on right now. A rare thing.

AIBU?

Why do they have to be different. Why not same colour? Plus it helps parents with more than one child share/pass on clothes.

I am not putting my boy in purple or turquoise!

Yeah, purple is such a girl colour!

On a totally unrelated note, here's Emperor Justinian I of the Roman Empire, wearing the Tyrian purple restricted only to the upper echelons of Roman society.

Yeah, purple is such a girl colour!

You are free to refuse to put your girl in pink, so why can't I refuse to put my boy in purple? Some of us would have the right to chose but not others?

My son would never accept to wear purple anyway, so it wouldn't be worth a daily fight about it.

You can put your boy in whatever colour you want to, Coddiwomple. None of it will make his penis fall off though. It's okay.

Also, my girl does wear pink (and blue! and every other colour!) sometimes. I'd still be absolutely fuming if her nursery had been sorting the kids into compulsory pink and blue T-shirts from the age of babies, though.

I'll ask again - why?

Also, what if your son's school uniform one day is purple? Mine was...

Purple is my very macho 19 year old son's favourite colour. Not that I'd care if he was camp.

It's the segregation not the colour

YANBU

2yr old DS wears a red polo shirt, as do the little girls.
They give no shits about this pink for girls, blue for boys nonsense, they're just babies 🙄

It pisses me off endlessly

How very kind of you 53rdWay

My kids are not gender neutral entities, have different toilets at nursery for a start, so putting them all in a neutral brown uniform will not completely erase their gender you know.

What about putting the children in different coloured shirts according to race?

No?

why? because I am still free to chose the colour and the clothes my kids wear, and I refuse to put my sons in purple, it's a free country.

Thankfully, there's no local school uniform in purple around here, the schools seem to have chosen perfectly suitable colours for everybody, navy +grey or dark green + grey.

Coddiwomple, what is it you think I'm saying? I'm lost here. Gender neutral entities? Neutral brown uniform?

Why 'thankfully'? Why is purple not a 'suitable' colour? I don't recall any of the boys at my school getting a case of the vapours at having to wear it. Why is green suitable and purple not?

Guess you won't be sending them here then

www.wesleycollege.net/

I don't want my boy in a girly pink, purple colour. If pink or purple were not considered girly colours, people would not be so outraged at the thought of their girls wearing them.

No one complains if you put the girls in navy and the boys in black, funnily enough.

Yeah, I'd still be complaining if my child's nursery wanted to put all the girls in one colour and all the boys in another, no matter what the colours were.

Wearing purple "won't make his penis fall off. It's ok."

No one's trying to erase gender. The benefits and pit falls of the is a whole other conversation.

Bit why highlight the differences between people when they're just babies? My son will learn that 'pink is for girls and blue is for boys' from HIS SCHOOL! An institution! I thought I might have to have the 'some places have rules we might not agree with but we have to go along with them sometimes' conversation when he was, I dunno, 12. Not at nursery.

The more I think about this the more it worries me. I overheard a nursery worker say "don't worry, the other boys will be here soon and you'll have someone to play with". At the time I was mildly but now I'm worried there's a pattern here.

Should have been a couple of hearty laughs after that first quote. Soz. My phone deleted them.

Purple is a girly colour? Really? 🙄

I don't see why a big deal has to be made. Pink for girls, blue for boys - what harm is it going to cause?

There's so much fuss about colours that all the 3 year old I know (not that many to be fair) know that "pink is for girls". They even had a discussion about having long hair the other day, without any prompting or input from the nursery staff who was just cracking up listening.

Surely that's a great case for not enforcing it at nursery?

Working
Because it reinforces stereotypes. What happens if a boy wants to wear pink or vica versa? Why is it only boys should wear blue? What nonsense. One colour would be fine for all the kids.

They dont get confused as to who is a boy or girl just because they are not wearing pink or blue clothes just now so why should they be segregated with uniform?

When will we ever get past the ridiculous 'pink for girls blue for boys' crap if we keep letting nurseries perpetuate It? It's not so long ago that it was completely the other way around anyway. They are just colours they dont signify anything.

There's so much fuss about colours that all the 3 year old I know (not that many to be fair) know that "pink is for girls"

What a shame their parents/educators are reinforcing such lazy stereotypes.

Pink isn't for girls. It's a colour. HTH