This is something that has struck me lately. I'm interested to know what people think.
I'm a first-time mum to a DD who is about 18 months old. She still has fairly short hair - thick but not long enough to put in even a mini pigtail. Whilst she has some dresses and overtly pink / glittery things, she also has a lot of leggings / trousers and tops in blues and greens - most of them donated to me by a friend with an older DS. Unsurprisingly, when she wears these, a combination of the hair and the clothes leads people to often mistake DD for a little boy. This doesn't upset or offend me - whilst I think it's a bit of a shame that people assume / stereotype so easily, I know everyone makes snap judgements based on the information they have available and don't mean any harm by it. If it bothered me, I suppose I could stick a pink bow in DD's hair or something, but it doesn't.
The other week I was with my DD at soft play and this little girl - I reckon about 4 - started following us around and referring to DD as 'him' and saying 'why does that boy have a pink top?' and laughing. As ever, I wasn't offended at all but just gently corrected. This girl laughed and said 'no, he's a boy!' She kept going on about it - how 'he' must be a boy, and then she even went and told her mum that there was a boy dressed as a girl. That slightly annoyed me for some reason, although I told myself I was being stupid.
Today I was with my DD at a toddler dance class. A little boy of maybe 6 who was there with his mum and younger sister, just sort of hanging out, asked his mum why a boy was dancing. I heard his mum explain that he was actually talking about a little girl. This boy protested and said 'it's a boy' again and again and kept laughing and going on about it. He had also, of course, assumed that dance is only for girls.
Now I think about it, I can think of loads of other examples where kids I know of all ages - various friends' kids and relatives - have casually expressed really stereotypical stuff about boys and girls should be or should do.
I know these are kids who mean no harm and I would never be irritable or harsh with a kid making this sort of innocent mistake. It's just what they've learned from the world around them. I do find it interesting though, and a bit sad, that young kids today still seem to be growing up with such strong stereotypes about what a boy or a girl looks like or what activities they should do. There was plenty of this when I was a kid in the 90s - my DM made me cut my hair short when I was about 9 (not unreasonably as it was a tangled mess that I refused to look after) and in combination with my leg hair coming in early, I was mercilessly bullied for being a 'boy-girl' and 'lady boy'. But I do at least remember there being some degree of social acceptance of tomboys at school, at least if they were sporty. I also assumed from more make-up wearing, highly groomed men in popular culture that kids would be more relaxed about policing gender boundaries than they used to be, but it seems I was wrong.
YABU - it's ridiculous to be sad about this / there's no problem with traditional gender roles for kids
YANBU - it's a bit of a shame that these things are still so rigid in the minds of lots of kids