AIBU to think there is definitely way less gender stereotyping now (for children) than in the 70s?

[threemiaowingfaces]

Just reading the 'I'm happy to be having a boy' thread and some of the responses made me think of the 70s!

Were my family weird or was this normal?

In those days, there was general Lego and also sets of 'Space Lego'. I wanted Space Lego for years but was told it was only for boys!

Same with Meccano.

I remember being in a bookshop, must have been about 9, and wanting a book about space, but parents flat refused and got me one about animals instead!

Does anyone remember the 70s bikes like Choppers, Grifters (?), Commandos etc. Really wanted one for about 5 years, but on my birthday, they gave me a folding shopping bike.

Same with BMXs when they came out - only for boys apparently.

I remember one year, they bought my cousin an 'Evil Kenival' toy that was like a bike with a man on it and you pulled a cord and it could do jumps over ramps and had flashing lights. The cousin gave it back because he already had two. I still wasn't allowed to play with it and they gave it away to another (male) cousin.

Were my family particularly mad or was this normal back then? What did they think would happen if I played with an Evil Kenival fgs?

I think it’s far worse now - I had brothers and we all shared toys and clothes. Nowadays the obsession with pink means that girls clothes and boys clothes are totally separate. You’d never have seen girls in the playgrounds in ridiculous unsafe skirts and dresses, they’d all have been in practical trousers. And don’t get me started on those fucking ridiculous bows that mums insist on putting on their girls’ heads from birth 🙄. It’s depressing how far backwards we’ve gone tbh 😢.

I’m so old we only had lego, Just the bricks. You didn’t get the sets and it was all in double rows.

I was born in the early 70s and had a sister - no brothers. We had Lego, and a whole huge box full of cars and lorries. I think it had been handed down to us from relatives of Dad's but we still had it, and played with it, along with the Sindy dolls.

There was less "stuff" available in general, there wasn't the option of a pink version for girls and a blue version for boys in toys or clothing.

Toys are no better, there was no pink Lego when I was a kid!

I loved the bright multicoloured Lego in the 1970s - you could have so much fun using your creativity and build anything!

I hate the ridiculous pink girls Lego that's been introduced!!

At least in the seventies there weren't pink zones! Even if some parents still adhered to stereotypes.
This.

There was Lego and it was for all children.

Now they're Lego and girl Lego, colouring books for boys and a pink version for girls, pens for girls and pens for boys, sticker books that are pink for girls and blue for boys, and multiple versions of items that are coded pink and blue.

I bought a second hand pram that was in a nice neutral colour (as in not pink or blue), but the person selling it was selling because they were having a boy for baby number 2 and the pram was too 'girly'.

Child of the 70s here.
I had meccano , lego, action man, a train set. I also had cindy and dolls etc.
I had short hair and wore jeansxand t shirts or shorts most of the time. And they were in primary colours rather than pink.

I think it was your family.

I remember this. Was always called a tom boy. I wasn't boyish just not girly or particularly interested in dolls. There were less toys about in general too.

I think toys were less gendered then. It was though harder to wear trousers, especially for school uniform.

In the 90s we had a box of general lego, then my brother had technic and I had the Paradise lego. I'm pretty sure my parents would have got me the technic if I asked... but I wanted the ponies and beach cafe. Plus barbies, and a pink bedroom... I grew up to study engineering at university.

I now have DDs whi over the years have chosen lego from pretty much every section in the shop. Except Technic...

There is a lot more choice of toys now. You can even get them personalised. There are parents obsessed with gender colours and roles and others who couldn't care less and get the stuff their children like.

I also agree that when my sister and I were small the only time we wore dresses was at a party - and those were dresses which had been handed down through the family. The "uniform" for kids in the late 70s/early 80s was jeans, cord trousers, shorts, t-shirts, jumpers. Male or female.

Also I was not allowed jeans or trousers at all as a young child. I think the first time I wore jeans was about 11! My mum would not let me have jeans as she said it would look like a 'yard dog.'

At birthday parties, we used to wear long 'party dresses' made out of flowery curtains. This was quite normal for all the girls in my class.

There was one girl in my class who was a 'tomboy.' Looking back, it was just because she refused to wear dresses. These days nobody would think anything of it.

I think it's worse now, I have two younger brothers and most of my clothes were so gender neutral they were passed down to my brothers. Lots of photos showing us in the same clothes (tracksuit bottoms and t.shirts mostly.)

Toys were just toys and we all played happily with dolls, Lego, cars, tea sets etc.

Now everything seems to be aimed at either boys or girls 😕 I've also had friends refuse to but their boys a doll or doll pram or insisted or painting their dds room pink when they clearly are not girly in the slightest.

It depresses me.

I was born late 70’s. We didn’t have a lot of money so didn’t have loads of toys. Family close with another family with boys so I had a chopper bike and a go-cart thing - I’m surprised I didn’t break any bones.

My parents didn’t really go with the pink and fluffy toys for any of us 3 girls. Clothes on the other hand we had matching dresses - awful things and I hated them - happier climbing trees and riding my bike which i couldn’t do in dresses.

My girls have a mix of train sets, cars, lego, & dolls. Free to choose what ever to play with. Eldest daughter loved her cars and youngest loved playing with the dolls - but all toys played with.

Goodness no. Despite everything we lived through in the 70s - racism, workplace sex discrimination, the general drabness of life until we joined the ‘Common Market’ - I thank all that’s holy for my carefree, largely non-gender politicised childhood.

Girls could dress as we liked - being a ‘tomboy’ was perfectly normal and acceptable and didn’t risk your school dragging you off to be re-assigned; just as many girls had short hair as long. (I couldn’t really comment on the childhood experience of boys.) I spent all day outside on my Chopper bike …

I recall there was a series of books ostensibly ‘For Girls’ or ‘For Boys’ - but there were absolutely no consequences for reading from the ‘wrong’ list. And Narnia was neutral.

I disagree. It’s clear that your individual family had very rigid stereotypes but in society generally toys and clothing have become more gender specific. Look at the purple and pink “ for girls “ toys and the camouflage colours “for boys “. In the 80s this was less obvious.

Much, much worse now. I think you had a rather unusual childhood @threemiaowingfaces. “Yard dog”? 😳 If you think party dresses in the 70s were bad you need to look at what’s on offer now.

I think there is far less overt sexism now than when I first started work in the late 80s/90s, but far more gender based expectations. I grew up in jeans, t shirt and had short hair. Can only ever remember wearing pink when I was a bridesmaid aged 5. No sequins and no unicorns either. I was a complete tomboy, and that was fine. The sexism in a way has moved from overt societal to the personal - to be a "girl/woman" now you need to dress and behave in a certain way. Long hair, fish lips, airbrushed make up etc. Clothes for girls now carry the "be kind" messaging with pink sparkles, and if you reject dressing like that, you have to effectively reject being a girl and are "non-binary".

I had a Chopper,Lego wore trousers and shorts.In fact I Still have the Chopper worth a fortune these days.

My kids now are all teens. I never bought all the logo clothes. One daughter was into all the pink stuff when she was little, but the other not bothered. Neither of them do the 'airbrushed' fake lashes / loads if make-up look at all.

There's a photo of late dh and his sister and brother one Christmas in the 70s. The boys are sitting in toy cars and the sister has a toy ironing board. 😀

There's lots of pics of me resplendent in brown cords and plain t-shirts & shortish bowl haircuts. I got to wear whatever hand-me-downs came from my brother, or whoever passed them to my mum. (For balance... there were also some terrible party dresses too - usually extremely floral)
I had Lego (which was just multicoloured blocks and wheels and could be made into anything not into specific models) and Meccano, and used to go out on my bike down to the local fields and streams.
In secondary, girls automatically did home economics and textiles - but one quick note from mum and I was allowed to do metalwork and woodwork instead.
I feel so sorry for young girls now with the relentless flow of pink sparkly shit.

The 70’s people were starting to realise the damage gender stereotypes do, and a lot of work was being done to address it.

parents were being told that they should encourage their boys to play with dolls, even if it was action men, and that girls should be bought cars, lego, bikes etc.

there wasn’t the ubiquitous pink everywhere. We all wore red, green, brown, blue.

girls were being told they could have careers, they could be astronauts, and many women were crossing boundaries into men’s worlds.

lots of girls were looking at what boys had and fighting against being repressed because of our sex. We were watching our brothers being allowed to do things we weren’t, and doing it anyway.

I think attitudes have regressed from the 70’s. So many people now seem to accept the stereotypes as innate and nothing they can do to change them. There’s less challenging, girls are buying in to the pink and pretty stuff, centring their lives around their looks.

so I think the 70’s were better in terms of realising the harms the stereotypes were doing and actively trying to break them.

I think it was in terms of future expectations. I expect play varied from family to family but my brother and I played with each others things if we liked them (and the owner wasn’t defending them with their life). We were probably bought gendered toys quite a lot but if we asked for something traditionally opposite, we might get it. I got a toy punchball and boxing glove.

There is no doubt it was much less gendered in terms of dress. Girls may have been stuffed into dresses for special occasions but if you see old photos of parks or city centres, boys and girls are almost identical with short haircuts, flares, dungarees and tops. In my class photo from my girls’ school in 1979 only one girl has long hair. The pink thing was for babies if that. Girls played out on their bikes and played the same playground games as boys but skipping was a girl thing where I grew up, - the boys loss, some of those old long jump rope songs and routines were brilliant.

Boys were constrained insofar as there was suspicion of interest in traditionally feminine things and fear that he’d turn out to be a “poof”, but girls were allowed to be tomboys without parents panicking they’d be lesbian. Working class boys were under particular pressure not to be a sissy I’d say, and in certain communities “nancy-boy” interests encompassed a sad range of pursuits: drama, playing a musical interest or singing in a choir, reading, drawing…

Homophobia was off the scale back then. Truly vile.

Your family sound particularly conservative.

The Chopper bikes were so cool. I never remember any girls having one though.

I grew up in late 60's/70's. OP's childhood sounds different; mine was a very traditional middle class upbringing (SAHM, who gave up her career after marrying) but girls and boys just did very similar things until about 10/11 through Junior school.

I had a very suburban childhood; i had a few dolls but bikes and toys were mostly shared/handed down. My mum made a lot of my clothes (I can't remember much pink). We swapped comics with the kids across the road.

I loved Meccano and friends and I spent a lot of time playing/making model farms when we weren't outside.

For me, all the pink and blue stuff started creeping in during the 80's after my toy shop days were over. I blame Toys R Us".

It was at about that time that huge supermarkets and retail parks started popping up.

I confess that I did buy my daughter pink Lego (I thought it was prettier) but she also had DUPLO fire engines and police cars and a much loved "Brio-style" train set.