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?

You've made this into TAAT, OP. (football kids). Take up your issues there.

MN is the misandrist place I know online. Such blinkered perspectives and anecdotes here. I'd put that fact on as a giant health warning if anyone asked me about joining these fora. And the anxiety worshippers, of course.

@topgub - my sahm was able to do educational stuff with me and tutor me to a scholarship - at that age tutors are not really as effective as I still needed to learn how to revise. It helped me develop skills which I used later on. It takes more time to pump, store and sterilise milk than breastfeed - so there is the opportunity cost of formula feeding - as well as financial. Sometimes with difficult births both mum and baby have medical follow ups and it can help to have 1 parent who communicates with the medical team then teaches the other over time.

you can say that these things are generally outweighed by the benefits of equal parenting, but a bit extreme to say no benefits.

@Namenic

A working parent can also provide education and tutoring and attend media appts

I'm not sure what the relevance is to bf? I didnt mention bf, I only asked if ff mums had less of a bond

I think there are huge swathes of our society who like gender roles clearly defined, in the same way they want people married by about 30 (ideally with the dad bringing the bride down the aisle) and brand certain activities (manicures, spa days, golf, pints of beer etc etc etc) as for a specific gender. There is no sense of the long term damage. Society likes rules.

@Topgub - not as much - because in there is less time in the day and people have finite energy. I work and teach my kids, but due to work I am able to do so less than if I was sahm (which I have been on Mat leave).

didn’t you say there is no benefit in sahp? Or was that specifically related to breast feeding? I’m sure there are lots of ways of bonding - bf may be one way, but just spending time with the baby may be another way. I think bonding is highly likely to be a long process - if bf helps, why not try (if it doesn’t cause too many downsides), it it doesn’t I’m sure there are other ways too.

I don't have to backup anything. The research is there and absolutely doesn't back up your random insistence that it has no benefits. In reality like most things, it's a mixed picture and there are pros and cons that will have to be assessed as individuals.

You are the one that wants to limit people's choices and stop women from being SAHPs. I don't want to stop anyone doing anything.

I never said the decisions were entirely biologically driven, but biology plays an important part. I highlight this as people are very keen to blame socialisation for women's perceived 'inferior' choices. If only women could be socialised differently and then they would do the same things as men and stop getting sidetracked by all these pesky feminine pursuits and ideas. With that lens, women's choices are not of their own making and instead are all a result of the patriarchy trying to repress and subjugate them with women's work and child rearing What though if we listen to women and accept that actually they know their own mind and bodies and some of these choices are different because we think and feel differently to men and have a slightly different set of values as a class. These should be respected and valued otherwise we aren't working towards equality but away from it.

I'm old enough to remember when people didn't know the sex of a baby before it was born. Baby clothes were unisex because you would use them over and over again and didn't know what you were going to get. I think we actually buy more into sexist stereotypes nowadays than we did in the old days and a lot of it has to do with being able to buy more things. People weren't able to buy endless glittery princess tutus and hair accessories etc so they weren't marketed so aggressively.

@theworldhas that paper agrees with that poster- that for boys gendered toys preference grows with age. Not so much with girls.

Personally I think boys should be socialised differently. When I look at the status quo the world over, male violence is such a huge part of the problem.

Infants do benefit from being cared for by adults they are securely attached to. Personally I wish it was utterly normal for both men and women to be able to mix part time work with raising their own children. I honestly thought my family would be like that and my partner is much much better at all things domestic. But the reality was we live in a stupidly expensive city and his far more stable and better paid wage is needed.

I was dressed in pretty pink dresses and lace when I was little. I grew to became a military officer and a very formidable woman both personally and professionally.

I dressed my daughter in pink and frilly lace when she was little. Today she's a medical doctor and a very formidable woman both personally and professionally.

You are worried about the wrong things.

@Bingbangbongbash

I disagree

How is telling girls (and the boys) that attend mixed sex from age 11, or younger in some cases that they can't learn equally if in male company not being sexist to either party.

The way forward is treat ALL pupils in a mixed setting the same. With the same opportunities, That's what needs changing. It's a societal change.
But all we ever hear about girls schools is single sex = stem = not my daughter blah blah blah isn't helping change the system.

@Namenic

But its still possible. You dont need to be a sahm to educate and tutor your kids. It can be done. And most sahm don't do it so it's not a benefit of a sahp.

I did day there was no benefit to a sahp. I'm not sure what that has to with bf. A sahp can be a dad for a start.

@Bumpitybumper

There is no research that backs up having a sahp benefits children. If there was you could link to it.

I havent said anything about wanting to stop women being a sahm. If that's what they want to do, crack on.

It is (as things stand) an inherently sexist choice though.

Bleughhhhhh to the idea that women as a class have different values to men.

But I do respect traditonally female roles more than you it would seem. I respect them enough to see thar men should be doing them too.

This in a nutshell. On threads it’s all “discrimination would stop if men could share maternity leave”. It’s been at my organisation for three years, thousands of employees, 50% of whom are male, and fewer than 80 men have taken it. We have 17 women on mat leave in my department right now and none of them wanted to give up any mat leave.

The vast majority do not want to give stuff up in order for the sexes to be equal.

I remember watching that tv programme when the swapped the children's clothes around. Fascinating watching how the adults interacted with them, wasn't it?

I vaguely remember another study where they did analysis of how people described kicks in the womb. And for women who knew the sex of their babies there was a huge difference between boys and girls and kicks- boys kicks being much more frequent and stronger I think. For women who didn't know what they were having there was no pattern at all, no discernible difference between the babies who turned out boys or girls.

DS does ballet and we get all sorts of shit comments about that

@AffableApple

those bows are hideous

Mn is a total contradiction though: the sexes are very biologically different when it comes to men competing in women’s sports; but when boys and girls diverge (in this case specifically boys wanting to use their physicality more), that’s a nurture thing?

@topgub - that’s like saying it is possible to send your kid to private school or kids get scholarships without tutoring. Sure - both those things are true for some people. But all things being equal, a sahp would be able to devote more time and effort to tutoring. In my parents’ home country some parents take time off work to help their kids through exams.

the link to bf is that some work places do not have good breast pumping or storage facilities. So depending on what job you do, bf may factor into whether couple go for sahm setup (eg if couple prefer to bf for 2 years and also want another 2 children in quick succession and also prefer 1 parent to be at home rather than childcare). None of the reasons by themselves are necessarily insurmountable, but they may decide in their situation overall it is better.

Maybe she was concerned because he was her son!

@topgub - if you want to divide every task equally then that’s ok. The positive thing is that there is less risk if 1 partner become ill or leaves. But there is an opportunity cost - overall productivity would be less (as sometimes you would have the lower skilled person doing the job). I could sew up half the rips in my kids’ clothes - but I would take longer than DH and get less time to do other chores. Or we could play to our strengths and divide and conquer. I just see sahp/wohp setup as extreme extensions of this.

My grandfather died when my now elderly father was very young. He and his siblings grew up in the hungry 30's with a mother who needed to take work wherever she could find it.As a result he and his brothers were excellent housekeepers and the instinct was all about survival ,not about strong gender identity.My father's now in his 90's and raised 7 girls, with us all agreeing that we were brought up in a very gender neutral way. It's been a huge asset to all of us but, even as young children, we noticed the difference and struggled against stereotypes at school. Challenge and keep challenging is really all we can do.

I used to be very passionate about gender neutral clothes, toys, activities etc. I dressed my son in rainbow colours (including pink) until he wanted to choose his own clothes around age 3 and showed a strong preference for plain solid colours and dinosaur prints. Perhaps nursery conditioned him or perhaps he just gravitated towards traditional ‘boy’ toys and interests like cars, trains, planes, dinosaurs, workshop toy tools, playmobil knights and warriors (he was never interested in the fairies and princesses despite my best attempts!)

Now I have a baby girl I LOVE dressing her in pink, leggings and dresses and bloomers with frills, play suits with bows and ruffles! Dresses especially are so much easier to change nappies.

Maybe she’ll prefer joggers and T-shirts when she’s older and that’s fine. Maybe she’ll prefer her brother’s vehicles and construction toys to dolls, the play kitchen etc and that’s also fine.

Interesting how that shows how a DC is perfectly happy and showing no gendered preference, until exposed to it, when they then conform.

And then that the parental response is to gender the younger sibling/s even earlier

Nothing wrong with putting little boys in smocks when still in nappies - look at how the Royal family put little boys in dresses or very loose shorts. Those are the convenience clothes up until the post-war period. Unisex and capable of being handed on, and worn by both sexes until out of nappies (which of course was much earlier in the days before disposable nappies, when infants were trained to a conditioned response as early as possible)