Nothing will change while parents are so sexist

[12Thorns]

Just in the last half hour on MN I’ve read posts from a pregnant mother wanting to know if her ‘gender scan’ is likely to be correct before she goes shopping for her newborn, and a mother arguing 7 boys should be allowed to play football at break times when they are excluding a boy with ADHD, and not half a thought for the girls being not only excluded from the game, but also from the space the game is played in, and we all know football takes up most of the playing space available

what hope is there for any sort of equality when such attitudes are so deeply ingrained and passed on to babies and children?

What! How is giving girls the opportunity and encouragement to play football ‘forcing trans’ onto people??

I think this is what you are referring to:

LOL. DD quit her football after school club in Y3 because she was the only girl and was actively excluded. No one passed the ball to her because “football is not for girls”. She went back in Y4 when the school started a girls’ team but has refused to play in mixed teams ever since. If the exclusion happens in formal settings, imagine what happens in the playground!

YANBU to think that sexist stereotypes continue to be pushed by parents (sometimes deliberately, often subconsciously).

YABU to assume that the boys were excluding the girls from playing football. It is more likely the girls have their own friendship groups, are doing other things at break time and have no desire to play football. That's almost certainly down to general social conditioning that football is a boy thing, not down to girls wanting to join in the football and boys excluding them.

My children played football 20 years ago, both girls, small primary, and the boys cooked and played with the dolls.
Just because a small child boy or girl plays with gender oppersite toys, patents are asking for treatments, instead of waiting to see how things happen.
I have never said only girls can wear pink, or boys blue. The same with sports.

But isn’t that the whole point? If more boys wore typically ‘girl’ things - if clothes weren’t separated by sex in the shop - then boys wearing ‘girls’ things wouldn’t be unusual and would hopefully stop being seen as ‘lesser’.

Also IMO I’m not keen on most brands’ boys clothes - predators - dinos, lions, ‘boys will be boys’, ‘little rascal’ etc. I don’t want either my boys or girls wearing those personally. Not ‘fine’ if you ask me.

When my ds was about 6 he had a boy from his class round to play in the paddling pool. When they got out I grabbed a couple of towels at random for them to get dry. They were pale pink towels. The other boy was horrified and wouldn't use it, he reacted like he was going to catch something from it!
When macho dad came to pick him up I could see why.

Looking through my boys’ clothes it’s mainly sports stuff, tie dye, plain t shirts or characters eg Zog. All will be handed down to little sister 🤷🏻‍♀️ My middle son has more sequins and rainbow stuff than big bro due to personal taste.

Clothing can affect behaviour; range of movement, privacy, keeping delicate/ pale clothes clean. DS forgot his PE day this week, but as he was wearing a polo shirt, shorts, and sturdy shoes with rubbery soles, there was little practical difference to his kit. For a girl in slip on shoes and a knee length skirt, it would be more inhibiting.

On little babies it makes little practical difference, but it can do when babies start crawling/ walking and clothing can reinforce sterotypical behaviour expectations.

I found it frustrating in the early years of school when my boys would have something they liked then instantly be put off for ever more by a stupid comment that it was "for girls".

I totally agree OP. So much of this is so insidious.

I think things will change. Parents do not drive change, visionaries and children do. Children now are much more socially aware than even the previous generation and many of them are teaching their parents ie. to use pronouns, to choose gender neutral clothing, to stand up to hate and so on.

@12Thorns i didn’t see the thread, but I played football with the boys at break time when growing up. I didn’t do it outside school so I wasn’t particularly good. But that was many years ago in a school that had lots of outdoor space. In my class the girls generally didn’t want to play football.

‘The girls didn’t want to play football’

really? They might have done if they had been encouraged.

when I get up, the boys played football and not the girls.

many of us have started as adults

Yes agree.
We're we're in a friends house - a friend who is actually a ball-breaking, bread-winning feminist in her own life. But the way she and her husband are raising these kids? Weirdly different.
I heard her say of her older boy: "It's so strange that he wants to play with his little sister's shopping trolley when he's got his own dinosaurs over there".
How are we going to get girls into STEM when this is how toys are allocated by gender.

I agree, OP. But it's society that needs to change. The pink frilly dress is one small element of a huge wedge of sexism and genderism leading inevitably to misogyny, glass ceilings, lack of strong female role models, particularly in STEM.

It's ingrained into society I'm afraid.

It's one of the reasons I don't agree with single sex schooling. So old fashioned and sexist.

Haven’t read either of those threads so won’t make assumptions about what was going on there, but as a general point I agree about the football. I was a primary teacher until recently and at every school I taught in, unless very carefully policed, football dominated the entire playground and girls and non-football playing boys didn’t get a look in. Lots of schools have now banned it entirely at break times, which is shame as then nobody gets to play.

DD (4) does weekend football classes, which she loves, but even in her preschool aged, very gentle basic skills classes some of the boys refuse point blank to play with her. They have little one-on-one/two-on-two ‘matches’, and the coach often has boys outright refusing to be her partner or play against her. Gets the usual ‘boys will be boys’ response from parents, from whom a lot of this behaviour has obviously originated.

Did you do anything to address the bullying with the after school club? Or did you just let your daughter quit thereby confirming the boys attitude that it's not for girls?

Just read your post @justasoul - similarly depressing experience I see! Also a highly organised setting. Luckily DD is little enough at this stage to be oblivious to much of the rejection, but I’m worried about her wanting to give up when she realises she’s a bit of a persona non grata among some of the boys. Lots of other girls have joined the class for a week or so but not returned, so she’s the lone pioneer at the moment! No girls’ football classes in our area unfortunately.

My dd had the same experience. After two years she left the ‘mixed’ (all boys and her) team with her confidence shattered, despite the best efforts of the coaches to prevent this behaviour. It was insidious, encouraged by parents, and all the boys but one.

She took two years to get enough confidence back to try again, with Wildcats (girls only) sessions, and then after a while started playing for a girls team.

When my ds was about 6 he had a boy from his class round to play in the paddling pool. When they got out I grabbed a couple of towels at random for them to get dry. They were pale pink towels. The other boy was horrified and wouldn't use it, he reacted like he was going to catch something from it

Had the same experience at a party with a four-year-old boy and a pink cup. Full-scale meltdown, and he wouldn’t calm down until it was switched (by his parents) for another colour.

Completely agree @12Thorns.

Many Parents push children into stereotypical roles. Its depressing and it means the status quo remains and men are treated as superior. Have a look at the stats for pay, rape, boardroom representation etc ad infinitum.
Female = weaker, male =stronger and better

Sounds like the Cultural Revolution or Winston Smith's neighbours in 1984. These same children have no grasp of how gender stereotyping has actually got worse in recent years.

There are certain choices that typically define girls from boys such as putting a baby in a dress. It's ok to do that the point is that the child has choices when they are old enough to be aware and that they are not limited by their sex. The football sounds like a generalisation but it's plausible the specific children involved were actually boys so the poster used the term 'boys '. What's more concerning to me about that post is yet again a disabled child is being blamed for something out of their control

You are contradicting yourself. You chose a pink baby gro for your son but then your saying people shouldn't choose dresses for girls? Why is it different? Parents should choose what they want and teach their children to be self governing. I'm happy for my son to wear whatever but I wouldn't judge my friend who's daughter is head to toe in pink. It's just more telling women what they should and shouldn't do. We get enough of that from men.