AIBU to be a bit sad that kids still grow up with such rigid gender stereotypes?

[Greywarden]

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

No it's not the parents, in the ballet example, the mum told her kid it was a girl (although I would wonder given your strong views on this, why your baby daughter is enrolled in ballet) and he was having none of it. Humans are very adept at picking up patterns and formulating rules. I read that A 3 year old can identify a dog more reliably than the best AI

I'm fairly "woke" (god I hate that word!) particular by mn standards but do find this particular part of the discussion fascinating...

I worked with 2 people a few years ago, a man and a woman both in their late teens/early 20s - I was late 20s at the time. Anyway, both said they were "gender fluid" and sometimes identified as male, sometimes female. Both were adamantly against gender stereotyping and hated the "blue/pink" kinda things, which I totally understood. Where they lost me a bit was that both basically adhered to them though? Like when they were feeling "feminine" they'd wear dresses, paint nails etc. And when feeling "more male" it was jeans, baggy shirts, darker colours. And I don't know, I'm not arrogant enough to think just because I don't understand something that it means it's all bollocks or anything. I don't understand how planes stay in the air but I don't question that they do. But I used to say well if you hate the stereotypes so much why don't you just be a man who sometimes wears a dress or a woman who wants to wear jeans some days?? It's fine?!

To the original point @Greywarden I do think it's just hard to kind of undo years of what we've been used to. My son wears loads of bright colours and patterns. As a kid I'd always be in trousers and rocket shirts, I was always being called a "tom boy" - my parents weren't bothered they just let me get on with it. But even saying that if I see a kid with longer hair in pink leggings or whatever I'll probably still instinctively think "girl" - especially as when they're baby/toddler age it's genuinely hard to tell from faces or build etc!

However, we always tell DS that boys and girls can wear whatever and play with/be whatever they want.

I agree its true that gender roles are more rigidly enforced these days and in more areas (ie more random items are coded boy/girl which would have previously been neutral- so a boys bike/a girls bike a boys umbrella a girls umbrella etc etc )
BUT very young children when learning how to classify and name different classes of things usually go through a stage of misapplying labels. Eg they may call all birds ducks, or assume that all teachers are female or whatever. By learning that they are sometimes wrong they refine the categories and end up using the same words for the same things as the people around them. So an adult will say 'no, freddy, that bird isn't a duck its a pigeon. Ducks live in the water and pigeons don't'
so, I would say that some of the very young children discussed here are doing this- learning how to classify children into girls vs boys, which is a tricky thing to do when they are clothed! An adult needs to say to them, 'perhaps it a girl perhaps a boy, we can't tell really can we? because girls/boys can wear any colour/play with anything - why don't we ask them/their mum?'

I think that is probably the case nowadays but it certainly wasn't when I was young. When did it change ?

People aren’t accusing you of lying, Fencehedge. Just saying their own experiences were very different from yours.

Of course the recent gender ideology crusade has something to do with this. The Mermaids “gender spectrum” that was publicised a few years ago to show that if you had long hair and liked pink & barbies that you were a girl, but if you had short hair and liked soldiers that you were a boy.

https://www.transgendertrend.com/questions-school-mermaids-training-teachers/

Thank god my son who loved the colour pink and asked for (and got!) a doll & a pram for his 3rd birthday was not born in the past 10 years. We didn’t even have to tell him he was a boy - he knew that. But we also told him that he was free to like anything he wanted to and that girls and boys can have whatever interests they like and can wear any kind of clothes they like!

Things have certainly deteriorated with gender stereotypes in the past 30 years.

And me….but life was simple years ago🤷‍♀️🙄🙄🙄😂😂😂

I had a friend at school that had similar experiences to you.

Princess Di's hair was actually long compared to my friend.

Kids are just going on what they see in real life. IRL most kids who wear pink are girls as are most kids in a dance class. It doesn’t matter how feminist the family is, kids are expert pattern spotters and will apply the patterns they have observed quite rigidly.

When DS was a toddler he frequently got mistaken for a girl. He had shoulder length hair and I dressed him in bright rainbow colours. He wore lots of leggings. DS was also the only boy in toddler dance class. I must admit though, I never had children challenge me on it when I corrected them! Sometimes they asked why he had long hair, and I said that we liked it long and boys can have long hair too. It's very sad to hear other children being mean about it. It betrays attitudes of parents though, if it were my kid, I'd correct instantly.

Don't even get me started on the clothes!!! Mostly horrible army camouflage or scary animals like sharks or dinosaurs. The girl.clothes at least have the occasional rainbow or cute animal, instead of sheet undisguised socialising for violence.

I was a 'tomboy' but on reflection I think I just learned from a very young age that stereotypical feminine things were regarded as inferior. I hated skirts, dolls, andmade a show of rejecting 'girly' things. Didn't stop me being treated as a girl but helpeda bit. Puberty was really traumatic- i developed very young and very quickly and was unable to hide it. I never remember actively thinking I wanted to be a boy but I remember being dismissed, teased, laughed at, commented on more, and having such different expectations to my brother. I didn't want to be a boy, just didn't want to be treated as inferior or leered at, objectified and patronised.

I'm quite feminine conforming nowadays the minimum I can to be accepted- wish I had the confidence to be more authentic.

I attempted to bring up my dc to believe everything was for everyone but it was game over when they started school and they came home parroting this was for boys, this was for girls etc. They are a bit more critical going into the teens but socialisation perpetuates sexism.

My friend's husband had real issues with their son playing with dolls/ toy hoovers/ kitchen sets etc. The man had babies he cared for and cooked and cleaned- why on earth did he assume those toys copying him are 'for girls'?

My brother wouldn't hold his wife's handbag when she went to the toilet...not sure how holding your WIFE'S handbag is unmasculine or camp.

People who think feminism is no longer needed are unfortunately delusional or very sheltered and fortunate.

My son is also about 18mths and has longish hair (floppy on top, shoulder length at the back). He's dressed in what's been passed on to us from friends and family and what I've bought in charity shops. It's mostly "boys stuff" though - dark colours and dinosaurs (because I like dinosaurs).

Yet people assume he's a girl.

I've not had any laughing but I don't correct people as I don't care, I don't want my son to think that being a girl is a bad thing, and because I'm never going to see these people again any way.

I understand children applying patterns too rigidly. I find it sadder when adults see fluffy blonde hair and assume "girl" because they're the ones teaching the children (or not) how they should be applying patterns.

Yes there are rigid stereotypes in toys and books and activities, it annoys me a lot. Colouring books with either cars and rocket ships in, with a blue cover, or princess and unicorns, with a pink cover. Thin leggings for girls, lined trousers for boys. Cardigans with small sleeves and v-neck for girls, full sleeve and round neck jumpers for boys. Pink trainers for girls that lets in the rain, full foot-covering shoes for boys. Books and TV shows predominantly male characters, and the odd female one in pink. Party bags that are either for boys or girls.

I was a child in the 1960s and 1970s and I think this has got worse since then.

Agree that little changes. All the talk about needing more girls in stem, the need to give more opportunities to women, etc. Yet all my DD’s friends seemed encouraged to value themselves on their looks and girliness from toddlerhood onward. Not a maths champ in sight - except my DD. We taught her young to question what was all around her. I found huge gender confirmation crap going on at all stages of education, so how will things ever change? Women end up in worse careers, keep doing the housework and take a step back once they have DC. Same as it ever was.

I think it is also partly to do with capitalism/the commercialism of childhood.

When I was little, my brother had a Spiderman costume and we had He-man/She-ra toys. But not everything was branded - most clothes were just clothes, pack lunch boxes might have had Thomas the Tank Engine but could just as often have a rainbow etc

Now more and more kids stuff is branded. Boys stuff is Marvel and girls stuff is Disney Princess/Frozen/Peppa Pig/etc. It makes money and the more tied into a brand a child is, the more they will pester their parents for it. And it's everything - you can't buy a kids umbrella these days without it being either bloody Disney or Marvel!

I voted YABU because these are very young kids you're talking about. They buy into the gender stereotypes because it gives them a feeling of belonging to a tribe - I am a girl and not a boy, so I have girl toys and girl clothes and girl friends. Humans like to categorise and work out where they fit in.

But as they grow more mature, they're quite likely to reject this. My DCs are pre-teens/early teens, and their friend groups are all non-conforming, gender fluid, queer types who wear clothes from both sides. (If they'd grown up when I did, they would have been goths!)

I suspect they couldn't have got to that stage without having had the experience of conformity at a younger age. It gives them something to push back against.

When I was having mine 15 years ago the discussion was going the right way saying it shouldn't only be boys clothes saying 'strong' and girls 'beautiful' etc, but rather than fixing that and changing young clothes to be gender neutral or to say girls can be strong, boys kind etc, someone decided "oh you want to be strong? You must be a boy! Quickly, put on the blue t shirt and call yourself Brad!". And vice versa.

So fucked up.

I think this all the time, I would have happily been a boy between the ages of about 7-14, like if someone told me it was a possibility I would have snapped their hand off. I had short hair and wore boys clothes. But then puberty hit and I didn't feel like a boy at all, I was just a tom boy. I'm still not very "girly" but would hate to be a man!