That if your male child has shoulder length hair it's reasonable to expect other kids will pass comment?

[mrsfinch6]

Dropping DS5 and DS3 off at nursery this morning when the nursery manager took me aside and wanted to “discuss an incident that happened yesterday” I was a bit confused because when I had collected them both the day before everything was fine.

The “incident” was that there is a little boy at nursery with shoulder length, curly blonde hair, and DS3 has been calling him a girl.

The parent of this child went into nursery this morning to report to the staff that my DS was calling him a girl. The nursery manager wanted my assurances that I would be firm with DS at home and have “the conversation” regarding this.

AIBU to say that if you have a 4 year old male child with long blonde hair that it is realistic to expect that other children in that age group will pass comment?

DS3 is very much of the opinion that “pink is for girls, blue is for boys, girls wear dresses and boys wear trousers etc” he only likes typical boys toys, whereas DS5 is a bit less bothered, he picked a pink scooter and is partial to a unicorn, I don’t encourage or discourage either way, however I do believe in sex not gender and whilst I appreciate there are a multitude of reasons why this child has long hair, I don’t think it’s my 3 year olds issue tbh

They are very young kids and yes I have spoken to him and reiterated that we don’t tease other kids and that it’s not kind to pass comment on others appearance but honestly? Reporting it to the nursery? Talk about extreme.

There is the ancient test of children done whereby a set of trained nursery staff were asked to report on the characteristics of the children they were minding

And they reported that the girls really were caring and gentle and liked playing with dolls and the boys were rough and tumble

Then it was revealed that the "girls" were actually boys in girls clothes and vice versa

The children had picked up on approving / disapprove signals from the nursery staff and responded to them - so the boys played with the dolls because the nursery staff gave them enough reward for doing so and lack of approval for being boisterous

Our society is so sexist that trained professional child care people were assuming sex based on clothes and then expected certain behaviour based on sex and children are so good at responding to adults that they acted according to expectations ...

I think the nursey have handled it well. It doesn't sound like your son genuinely mistook this boy for a girl, it sounds like he's deliberately antagonised him. He's young, he's asserting himself and pushing boundaries. That's to be expected, but so is measured correction and discipline. I mean you don't want your son to grow up to be a bully right?
Oh and he better get used to accepting differences. Your attitude stinks of victim blaming. This lads crime was to have long hair?! Really? Remind him too that people have different skin colours, beliefs, bodies, families, lunches....

I agree. I can't believe OPs child has never encountered women or girls with short hair. Doesn't he watch TV at all, or have older family members with short hair? Or nursery staff . Surely it's very common. And three year olds do notice people at the park in the supermarket etc He must have seen women or girls with short hair.

I dont think @porridgeisbae has answered my question about whether she wears head coverings in church either

It's pretty daft to cherry pick a quote about men having short hair out of an entire passage which is dedicated to convincing women they have to cover their hair when they pray because they come from man whilst men come from God

Don't be one of those mums who thinks that your can can do no wrong....it won't do him any good.

There is zero empirical proof for this 'Social engineering'.
Of course, there'll be myriads of academic studies shoe horning personal is political theory on childhood behaviour.

So a man can have a CoCo Chanel bob or Michelle Mone bangs? Cool. Just sending DH off for a haircut now 😀

To re-quote the poster you quoted "It isn't illegal, it isn't physically impossible, it isn't even taboo or immoral."

Yes, if your DH moves in certain social circles it might make him stand out, but he can absolutely, 100% have any haircut that he fancies.

@Missamyp where is the empirical proof that boys and girls naturally play differently?

https://hairstylecamp.com/bob-haircuts-for-men/

Regarding toys. Even if girls and boys could be proved to play differently in a way that toys could be accurately categorised into girls toys and boys toys... so what? It would simply be an observation of a general trend and not something that would apply to every child all of the time.

Men are taller than women as a general trend. This does not mean that every individual man is taller than every individual women.

Toys are for anyone who fancies playing with them and gender stereotypes are harmful for everyone.

Can't believe this is still going on and 32 pages in about something so utterly minor.

Of course they can. What about the hair on men’s heads makes you think that it’s unsuitable for these cuts? Are the strands too thin? Too thick? Made of steel?!

He is a very young child who (quite rightly) thinks that boys have short hair and girls have long hair.

"Quite rightly". 🙄

Give yourself a shake, woman.

Michelle Mone doesn’t have a fringe, but yes - plenty of men’s haircuts have a fringe these days. Do you live in the dark ages?

Why post pictures of men when the op was about a 3-year-old boy making an objective toddler observation of a peer in a nursery setting?
Empirical proof is the observation of the world around you. Boys and girls play differently, these differences become increasingly gender-typed as both groups age.
Then obviously into adulthood men and women organise themselves differently too. The existence of Mumsnet is 'THE' objective factual social proof of gendered behavioural norms. There isn't a male equivalent.

The existence of Mumsnet is 'THE' objective factual social proof of gendered behavioural norms. There isn't a male equivalent.

There are no men's chat forums?

https://community.whattoexpect.com/forums/dads-corner.html

Guess you don’t know this section within the forum ?
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/dadsnet

also I believe

1. Dads can take part on the rest of the sections of mumsnet. They’re not forbidden to
2. Any woman can take part on the mumsnet. They don’t have to be a mum
3. my husband uses this forum https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/

Gendered toys are a relatively modern phenomenon. Up until the mid-70s when manufacturers realised, they could make more money if they had girl's clothes and boy's clothes, girl's toys and boy's toys, things were fairly neutral.

"Gendered behavioural norms" aren't a thing. Societal norms are and they vary from time period to time period and culture to culture because they are a social construct, not a gendered one.

Empirical proof is the observation of the world around you. Boys and girls play differently, these differences become increasingly gender-typed as both groups age. Then obviously into adulthood men and women organise themselves differently too.

Some boys and girls play differently. Some adult men and women organise themselves differently.

As with all proofs, we need to be careful of confirmation bias.

Empirical proof is the observation of the world around you. Boys and girls play differently, these differences become increasingly gender-typed as both groups age.

Correlation doesn't equal causation

@Missamyp

What you describe is subjective anecdote, not empirical proof.

There is. Even if gender is partly a social construct, those social constructs exist in the current world and hair styles are part of them.

I think it's partly a separate issue. Yes it goes on about women covering their head in church (which I do sometimes until I lost my veil lol.) But it's also related to Deuteronomy 22:5- it's wrong for a man to wear the clothing, jewellery etc of a woman and by extension the hair. It is wrong for a man to dress as a woman etc. https://rcg.org/youth/questions/0302-002.html

My DS has very long curly blonde hair - people mistake him for a girl all the time.

you would not believe the amount of times I’ve heard “you should cut his hair so it doesn’t confuse people”

fuxk off! I love his hair. He’s happy. It’s adorable.

the problem is with people expecting to be allowed to comment on something different