To buy my DD lots of pink things?

[BAMBOOO20]

After recent comments from family members, I’m hoping you can help me to figure out if I’m getting this massively wrong.

DD1 is 4. She is very obsessed with the colour pink. She loves dolls and she loves make up (glued herself to my side while I do mine every morning). If given a choice of products, she always wants pink.

When she was younger, I gave her very much a mixture of toys & games and certainly didn’t always choose the more stereotypically girly option although I possibly did buy more pink than blue. Her preferences were clear very early on in terms of toys & books etc.

It has just been her birthday, I don’t buy her much throughout the year so buy her quite few bits & bobs that she has asked for at her birthdays. As expected, these were all very much “pink & fluffy”.

The way I see it is if had a son and he liked these things (the things which my DD does), i wouldn’t force trucks, diggers & superheroes on him. I’d follow his lead, as I’ve done with DD.

Basically, I’ve had family members saying she should be given more gender neutral toys etc and having a bit of a dig at me. Have I got this whole thing wrong? Should I get her the gender neutral option rather than the pink one, if she likes the pink one best?

I think it's fine to go with whatever your daughter likes, but be sensible as with many girls you get the 'pink backlash' a bit later, where they hate it! So I'd keep pink stuff to cheap/changeable things. E.g. daughter wanted a 'pink' bike, I bought a white one and let her put stickers on it...which turned out to be a good move cos she later decided she hated everything pink, before she'd grown out of the bike.

I think everything pink is a bit much anyway, and suspect that many girls think that too. E.g. I took daughter clothes shopping at the height of her 'pink' phase and decided to encourage her to choose. I was surprised at the small amount of pink chosen, and that she requested some items from the boys section (sparkly green mesh skirt paired with black spider man top- why not ?) It might be that girls end up thinking pink=for me due to conditioning by society, rather than it being what they want all of the time.

If your child wishes to express herself via the colour pink, go for it.

Pink is my favourite colour. It's lovely and I absolutely wouldn't stop your daughter from having and enjoying pink things.

BUT I would be careful to make sure she doesn't only have pink things, or glittery things, or fluffy things or princess things. Partly so that those things are 'special' whereas most of life is 'ordinary' and partly because it limits the kinds of things she'll have. There are a lot of great toys, clothes, games which don't come in pink and it would be a shame if she never got to enjoy those too.

Morphene compares the colour pink with smoking and drugs. OMG! You are essentially saying that girlie things are as bad as drugs and smoking! That is a very wrong message. What next? Girls mustn't learn to cook or knit or sew? Buying take-away is the feminist option? Is that it? Jeeeez. Just FYI I am female and am good at and like to cook, knit, sew, play computer games, programming, maths and science and I read and draw comic books.

I hate the terms 'girly' and tomboy.

Both my girls have been through a pink phase. I think it's possibly a fitting in with peers thing. Mine enjoyed it and are now into a range of colours.. one is mainly into black.

Your job as a parent is to counteract the negative stereotyping messages coming from society and advertisers in particular. You should be steering her away from pink

Pink isn't the issue. Pink is girl is weak is the problem. If her daughter wants to be in a pink cape rescuing kittens as a superhero or what a pink jacket to play doctors or sit in the garden in a pink dress and make daisy chains its ok. Its perfectly acceptable. If her daughter sits there and says "I can ONLY" do daisy chains because I'm a girl and girls are weak THEN there is a problem.

It is actually ok for girls to do ""girl"" things as long as they have other options available.
You only get equality by everyone having the opportunity to do the same stuff so all kids should be encouraged to play with dolls and cars and daisy chains and doctors and dress in a way that makes them happy

What bollocks! I am nearly 42 and still adore pink! If I had a little girl I would choose pink for her especially if that was what she wanted. I have DS almost three. He has a wide choice of toys but lives Buzz Lightyear best!

Cutesbabas so it's a total coincidence that you love pink, the OP's daughter loves pink, and your son loves Buzz Lightyear, who is not pink? And these things are entirely the result of personal preference, not social conditioning?

Also my son loves the dolly dressed in pink, Skye, his dinosaurs and anything train. That ok but if he were a girl I'd be encouraged to get him off dolls and the pink pup because I might otherwise damage her?

I think it's interesting that traditionally girly things have come to be 'bad'

Part of the blame lies with that awful, holier than thou "Pink Stinks" bunch.

Oh I know if you look at the website there is all sorts of guff about pink is fine/ breaking down stereotypes blah, blah.

Funny that pink stinks but blue is perfectly OK.

So much of "gender neutral " is just about rubbishing anything traditionally feminine and bigging up anything its supporters think as traditionally masculine. The holy gospel of tree-climbing.

Your job as a parent is to counteract the negative stereotyping messages coming from society and advertisers in particular. You should be steering her away from pink

Tosh. As a parent you should be steering her away from the idea that there are things which are only for girls or only for boys - that there is nothing she can't do if she wants to.

Gosh did I say that encouraging pink was the same as encouraging drugs? I didn't mean to!

Also I absolutely didn't....but whatever.

What I said was that it is parents jobs to counteract negative and harmful messages arriving from outside into our childrens brains.

'Smoking is cool' is a damaging idea...but probably not actually as damaging as 'girls need to look cute' . After all there isn't a smoking pay gap (at least not one I'm aware of!)

'Drugs are fun' is probably a more damaging message.....about as damaging as 'boys don't cry'. After all depression is the number one killer of young adult males.

lass If I was the only influence on my DD, then it would be true that I should not steer her in any given direction.

As it is the whole world is screaming at her that pink is her colour, that she needs to look good, that her clothes matter., that being a good friend is more important than being good at maths (or anything else).

So society is forcing me into the role of putting the other side. Of telling her she can value her intelligence, her strength her bravery...that blue/green/yellow/brown are her colours ....that she doesn't need to care how she looks or what she wears or if its the same as her friends. That its good to help others but that doesn't have to define you. That she fucking ace at maths and science.

So that ON AVERAGE she gets a do whatever, be whatever message.

The way to create neutral is to yell A LOT about blue and dinosaurs and engineering and robots when you have a DD and to yell A LOT about pink and sparkles and being in touch with your emotions when you have a DS.

I'm not sure I totally agree with your perspective morphene. Food for thought though - my initial thought is what if your girl isn't great at emotional stuff or your boy is bad at maths? Surely treat them as individuals rather than working for or against stereotypes. So encourage both bits no matter their sex? I don't know. I do see what you mean though I think.

The way to create neutral is to yell A LOT about blue and dinosaurs and engineering and robots when you have a DD and to yell A LOT about pink and sparkles and being in touch with your emotions when you have a DS

You are just swapping over the stereotypes.

My dd is also 4 and obsessed with pink. We dressed her in lots of colours when she was little but like your dd she has expressed a preference from about 1 and would refuse to get dressed unless it was pink.

Tell your family to get stuffed and keep their opinions to themselves. If your dd is happy then frankly that is all that matters

If you had a boy and he was obsessed with everything in green, you'd indulge him, wouldn't you?

Nothing wrong with pink - you're only 4 once, so let her have what she likes.

I like pink. Pink has a place, as do all colours. Where pink has a problem is when its gender association is used to shut down choice. So if she wants a Paw Patrol book and freely chooses the pink Skye version over the blue Marshall version, that's different to imposing that she can only have the pink one because she's a girl.

I have DSs who tend to make cliche masculine choices, but we do have the dolls and a pram etc. DS2 will sometimes choose something like a My Little Pony comic, and paint his nails. I tend to keep his options open.

' Its not like she was told she cant be a mechanic or whatever when shes older!'

Its not the 'pink' that does this, but if the child only chooses 'fluffy' toys, and isn't provided with alternatives, they may be limiting their aspirations.

FWIW, my DD wore a lot of pink, some of it fluffy and sparkly, until she was about 7 - but she had lots of different playthings, and she got opportunity to do various activities. From about 3 she said she wanted to be a 'builder' ... meaning make things like planes or spaceships. At 5 she was told by her teacher that 'girls can't be builders'.... obviously, DD knew this was idiocy on the part of the teacher and was extremely pissed off. Fast forward ... just started her engineering degree and joined the space flight soc to build rockets .

I have a boy who loves red and will have everything in red if he can. I don't see a reason not to buy things in the colour he likes, although I always encourage other colours too, particularly for clothes.

So, I see no reason for you to do the same if your DD wants things in pink.

I suppose the main issue with pink and girls is to establish if it's a genuine preference or if there's a gender association that, ultimately, may not be particularly desirable.

Why does everything have to be gender neutral. Why shouldn't I have dressed my baby girl in a pink growsuit?? Why does it bother anybody that I painted my little girls room pink??? If your little girl wants pink and sparkles let her. She is only small. In spite of having a house full of pink and princesses both my girls play football, tennis and go to science club and dancing. Yet nobody bats an eye at my nephew in a superman t-shirt playing with cars.

I think my issue would be people telling you what they think is for the best!

I don’t agree with imposing any ‘set’ ideals upon a child, my DS is six and is very much a boisterous child whose main interest is building, woodwork, Lego nature now. However, that hasn’t always been the case - a couple of years ago I think it was kinder eggs who were doing my little pony eggs in pinky wrappers vs the blues and reds of the ‘transformer’ eggs. My son loved MLP then and obviously wanted the MLP kinder egg - When we went to pay the lady on checkout said ‘oh you’ve picked the girls kinder egg do you want to go and get the boys one’. That annoyed me - he wanted the MLP and that’s the one he got!

I’m sorry but this gender neutral faze is crazy. You go with what your child likes, why would you force anything a child doesn’t like on them just because it’s gender neutral ?. I have two boys, my eldest from the start loved tools, mud, sticks and yes guns. My youngest loved sparkling wands and hair accessories, babies and cute teddies. They both get what they want (within reason money wise) for birthdays regardless of what anyone else thinks as this is what makes them happy

Why does everything have to be gender neutral. Why shouldn't I have dressed my baby girl in a pink growsuit?

There's no problem with a pink growsuit. "Gender neutral" just means you can give pink growsuits to baby boys, too, if you want to. It doesn't mean everything has to be in white and yellow.

Honestly, all these "my girl CHOSE pink!!!!" posts - good god, there's nothing wrong with pink, but to pretend it's just a TOTAL COINCIDENCE that girls love pink ALL BY THEMSELVES is nonsense.

I was trying to find out what colour IPAD to get dd and asked her Granny what she thought - 'Oh she's surely past the pink stage now'. Asked dd what colour would she get if she was getting one (it was a surprise) 'Rose Gold' (aka pink) was the reply. She's getting more into black and white and stuff in her sports wear now, but still loves a bit of pink lol.

I'm an adult and still love pink. Not in clothes now, but in things.