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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

"Lorries are for boys"

83 replies

Ketayuzu · 10/04/2018 10:17

My 2.5yr old DD said that this morning while putting on her new top (covered in lorries, diggers and cranes). She'd only put it on when I pointed out the tractor (aparently tractors are different)
I don't know where it's come from- she loves lorries (we frequently are late for nursery when any lorry is loading or unloading near our house as she won't get in the car until its all finished. )
She loves dolls too and plays with them lots at nursery i know.
Apart from me and her dad she's only really left alone at nursery so it must have come from there. I don't want to be 'that mum' but should I mention it??

OP posts:
MrsJayy · 10/04/2018 10:21

I would say don't be silly girls can like lorries and casually mention it to her keyworker. I had the Thomas is for boys hoha in 1996 when Dd had her Thomas the Tank wellies it is a shame not much has changed

Sparklingbrook · 10/04/2018 10:23

Is this the first time she had seen the top?

BubblesAndSquarks · 10/04/2018 10:33

I wouldnt say anything she could have just picked it up from which children tend to play with which toys.
As much as some people like to insist there is no difference between boys and girls, usually a higher percentage of one gender will prefer playing with a certain type of toy.

My DD (5) plays 'mums and babies' and 'puppy school' all the time at school with a group of girls, she plays with the boys occasionally but says they only ever want to play superheros and transformers and she finds it boring.

There is no harm in there being a difference between girls and boys. Its probably doing more harm to try and force a child to like a certain thing just because you don't want them to be 'stereotypical'.

Ketayuzu · 10/04/2018 10:57

Thanks. MrsJayy thats more or less what I did say - and we move onto tractors so it wasn't a long chat. I just don't know how I would raise it with her keyworker. Any tips?

She chose the top.
She loves lorries and babies and cars and dolls so I'm trying very hard not to force her either way. I've bought her dolls because she's chosen them and I've bought her cars and lorries again because she's chosen them shes not spoilt honestly!
I'd honestly rather play with those with her though. I always found babies and dolls pretty boring as a child so I don't get why a lorry is for a boy anyway?

OP posts:
MrsJayy · 10/04/2018 11:01

Next time she is wearing the top and if you are chatting with her keyworker just say she has the silly notion that lorries are for boys just in case some little person is saying it to her and upsetting her.

MrsJayy · 10/04/2018 11:05

I don't think the op is forcing her toddler to like vehicles Bubbles to make some right on point the little girl likes Vehicles lorries in her case. My dd liked all things train and the character she liked was Thomas the tank just I had to buy her Thomas stuff in the boys section

user1483387154 · 10/04/2018 11:09

Show her some photos of female lorry drivers from the internet so she can see that girls and women can like lorries too

BarbarianMum · 10/04/2018 11:10

Yes and the key is in the word gender. Which is a socialised state brought on by parents/other children/society at large bombarding you with messages about liking stuff based on your genitals.

There is no reason that boys and girls should prefer/not prefer machinery based on their sex.

GandalfsWrinklyHat · 10/04/2018 11:11

What everybode else said. Just yesterday I saw a massive royal mail lorry being driven by a woman.

Bubbinsmakesthree · 10/04/2018 11:17

My 3yo has started saying this is for boys that is for girls since he started preschool. I do pick him up on it whenever he says it at home but I think it is fairly inevitable he'll get these ideas up from other children. I

Ketayuzu · 10/04/2018 12:16

So should I say something or just carry on at home with the message "everything is for everyone"?
(Apart from chocolate. That's just for grown-ups. Im hoping that one last at least until next Easter! Grin)

OP posts:
MrsJayy · 10/04/2018 12:19

Yes just carry on doing what you are doing don't limit her experiences (I am sure you don't) and she will develop her own personality.

Trinity66 · 10/04/2018 12:20

So should I say something or just carry on at home with the message "everything is for everyone"?

I wouldn't bother tbh, not unless it becomes a running theme. I think what you did say is enough

Morphene · 10/04/2018 12:29

ket

I think you should ask the nursery what they are doing to counteract gender stereotypes. I think its something they would benefit from thinking about and maybe even look into doing some training. You can make it entirely non-confrontational. An easy thing for them to do is simply to remind staff on a regular basis not to steer children towards certain types of toys and let them make their own choice. Another easy thing is to make sure they call all the children by the same endearments...not 'hero' for boys and 'sweetie' for girls type BS. Finally a neat thing to do is to go through the story books and weed out everything that reinforces gender stereotypes. Make sure the books contain as many female as male leads etc. When people do these things they soon see just how awful the environment tends to be regarding stereotyping.

The idea that gender stereotyping does no harm is utterly false, as any man trying to get a nursery worker role or any woman trying to get promoted in a STEM department of a university will be happy to tell you all about.

BubblesAndSquarks · 10/04/2018 12:31

@Barbarian use genetically male or female instead of gender of you want to be pedantic Hmm there are differences between boys and girls, and men and women that aren't just from society.

silvernutgoldenpear · 10/04/2018 12:35

It might not be from the nursery workers at all.

She'll be getting the ideas from her peers most likely, and they'll be getting them from their older siblings who are exposed to the full force of the sexist marketing machines driving children's advertising, toy sales, TV programming, branding tie ins with films etc etc.

Perfectly reasonable to ask the nursery what they are doing to counteract it.

Check out Let Toys Be Toys on twitter / Facebook

Morphene · 10/04/2018 12:40

bubbles There are differences between men and women. There is not much evidence if any that those difference exist in babies or toddlers.

Its almost impossible to separate out any actually genetic effects from the hugely more important societal stereotyping effects.

I have two favourite experiments that demonstrate this.

Firstly the experiment where a child is deliberately dressed as the opposite gender and left playing in a room of toys supervised by an adult that doesn't know them.

The adult interacts with the child and plays with them and the toys. Almost universally the toys used match the gender stereotype the adult sees and not the gender stereotype of the child.

So a male child will end up playing almost exclusively with dolls and teddies and a female child will end up playing almost exclusively with trains and robots.

So when you look at girls and see them mostly playing with dolls, you need to realise that this preference is almost entirely chosen by the adults supervising them in their formative years and not by the themselves children.

Secondly people watched young toddlers doing a climbing obstacle course. The actual physical abilities of the boys and girls were identical. The perceived ability of the children by their parents was very biased in that parents thought the male children were much better at climbing than the female children. They also observed many many cases in which adults prevented the female children from climbing something they could actually climb perfectly well, while allowing the male children to get on with it.

When the children are a little older you begin to see differences in actual ability which are almost certainly due to girls not being allowed to progress as rapidly as boys by their own parents.

All of this points towards the differences in the sexes being something that is in the majority imposed by adults expectations of children and not their own abilities or preferences at all.

Morphene · 10/04/2018 12:44

silver I dunno...at 2.5 years old I think its most likely coming from the staff.

Whenever they do a fly on the wall of a primary school it turns out the teacher is most responsible for enforcing gender stereotypes...

I was on a thread the other day where a head teacher was saying they didn't believe in unconscious bias and didn't think training in it was something existed outside of MN.

It was beyond depressing.

BubblesAndSquarks · 10/04/2018 13:01

@morphene if you think the differences in men and women are caused by upbringing and society rather than being inbuilt then how do you explain the differences in male and female animals behaviour?

HanutaQueen · 10/04/2018 13:20

Play her the video of 'Long Distance Clara' from Pigeon Street!

BarbarianMum · 10/04/2018 13:24

Bubbles the differences depend on the animal in question and even then do not necessarily appear in sexually immature individuals. Yes we are animals but the is no consistent difference in behaviour bw males and females in the Animal Kingdom (all males do x, all females do y). Behaviour is species specific and is evolved to suit environment and niche.

PellyBay · 10/04/2018 13:27

I used to drive buses and lorries for a living. A 5 year old on one of my school runs once informed me that "women are no good at driving" despite the fact that I offered him daily evidence to the contrary. Sooo depressing that plenty of adults are clearly still feeding this message to children.

Morphene · 10/04/2018 13:39

bubbles the same way I explain the difference between animal and plant behaviour.....

I mean the fact trees shag around should definitely mean that it should be more acceptable in human society right?

Some animals show huge sexual dimorphism. Others can change sex during their lifetime. What the fuck does any of that have to do with humans?

The evidence for human beings is that sex makes differences to body structure and hormone levels. There is no strong evidence for differences in intelligence, personality etc. that can't be better explained by peer pressure.

Even if there are small subtle difference in the brain function of males and females, it would still be the case that the overwhelming differences seen in human society at the moment are due to socialization and stereotyping. We are social animals...it is trivially easy to precondition our preferences using selective praise and peer pressure.

It is basically impossible for a parent NOT to imprint the majority of their value system on their children. If that includes girls should be caring and pretty and boys should be brave and strong then that is what your children will think too. Nobody is inventing this shit from scratch.

I mean everyone knows that boys hate pink right? Except that 100 years ago pink was the colour reserved for boys. So we have two data points, one in which all boys loved pink and wore it with glee and one where all boys hate pink and won't wear it for fear of being mistaken for the worst thing ever...a girl. If preference for colour was a genetic trait it wouldn't have changed in 100 years....and it has...so colour preference, at least, can be entirely ruled out as anything but stereotyping.

DixieFlatline · 10/04/2018 13:40

You could just go and do some reading, Bubbles, instead of making people waste their time explaining this to you on every thread you do this on.

Morphene · 10/04/2018 13:42

Ahh bubbles is one of those....apologies for getting drawn in.

Maybe bubbles thinks reading and the scientific method in general is something only for boys...

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