AIBU to feel like I don’t fit in with ‘straight’ mums?

[ZiggyStardew]

I’m pregnant with my first baby and I’ve been trying to put myself out there by joining local pregnancy groups and booking antenatal classes because I don’t have any friends who are pregnant or parents.

The problem is I keep coming away feeling like I don’t really belong.

I don’t mean this as a criticism of anyone, and I know people are just excited about their babies, but most of them seem to revolve around very traditional ideas about gender and parenthood. Things like “show me your pink nurseries for your little girlies”, “does anyone have blue decorations for a boy baby shower?”, elaborate gender reveals, “boys are so much easier than girls”, or “your daughter will be fighting the boys off one day”.

None of those things are inherently wrong, but they just make me feel like I’m on a completely different wavelength. I’m bisexual and most of my friends are quite alternative, creative or queer, so I’m much more used to people who don’t think in those terms or make those kinds of assumptions. If I quip back with “or maybe my daughter will like girls when she’s older” I often get funny looks.

I’m starting to worry that I’m being judgmental because this seems to be the majority of people I’m meeting, and I don’t want to write people off unfairly. Equally, I also want to find friends I genuinely click with, especially as I’m about to become a parent.

AIBU for feeling a bit out of place? Or am I expecting too much from these groups and should just accept that pregnancy is one thing we have in common, rather than expecting shared values or outlooks? I just worry my baby won’t have any peers if I keep her away from all this.

I don't think that's 'mums' as a class, though. I think it's a certain kind of insular, comparatively uneducated mindset, characteristic of people who haven't had much exposure to different types of people, or moved away from a very small local subset in their minds.

How can you be sure nobody else in your current group is creative, alternative or queer? Have you got to know them well enough to know that?

I am with you OP.

I would find this type of nonsense/stereotypes incredibly irritating.

I'm not the OP, obviously, but regardless of how well she knows these people, it's not a massive stretch to think that saying “show me your pink nurseries for your little girlies”, “does anyone have blue decorations for a boy baby shower?”, elaborate gender reveals, “boys are so much easier than girls”, or “your daughter will be fighting the boys off one day” is highly unlikely be a sign those saying it are 'creative, alternative or queer'. Or have more than one functioning braincell.

I think that’s incredibly presumptuous and dismissive.

I'm surprised by this. When I had my DC 34 years ago, despite living in a small town full of ordinary people, we all skipped the pink/blue and painted our nurseries in bold primary colours as they were meant to be stimulating for the baby.
We earnestly dressed our baby DDs in denim dungarees (though not our DSs in dresses interestingly) and bought neutral educational toys from the early learning centre.
There was no doll in our house until I bougt one for DS (somewhat performatively, given he'd expressed zero interest) which he duly ignored, but DD loved.
Its surpring to me that this has been abandoned and we are back to the pink and blue.
Perhaps it's a generation of young women who'd have loved pink dresses and dolls, but were denied them by gen X gender warriors.

It’s hard to believe that every single person is saying things like that in a group.
I find with some people who label themselves queer they can sound quite conservative in how they speak about gender even though they’d be horrified to be labelled as such.

Someone told me up thread that things have gone backwards and it really sounds as though they have, I remember reading something ages ago about how parents used to pass small children's clothes down completely regardless of the sex of the first and subsequent baby/ toddler/ small children and that basically at some point in the '80s marketing by gender ramped up in order to push parents to buy more (i.e. to completely re-purchase everything if the next child was the opposite sex). So I just looked up sex segregated marketing for children's products:

https://www.retaildive.com/news/how-gender-targeted-marketing-is-hurting-toy-retail/416547/

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/12/22/why-should-toys-come-in-pink-and-blue/how-did-toys-get-stereotyped-by-sex

At least in terms of marketing children's toys it seems things have become far more segregated, increasingly so year on year since the 1980s, so it's depressingly likely that that's showing it's face in parents of young children and babies now having more "regressive" views than their parents.

I'd say that if this is true it's just down to the drip, drip of having pink/ blue marketing pushed more and more. No wonder some people really believe that real boys are born with blue brains and a love of superheroes and cars, and real girls are born with pink brains and a love of Disney princesses and glitter.

Actually swallowing that marketing whole explains a lot, well beyond this thread...

Have things really gone so wrong? "Gender reveal" parties didn't exist even 20 years ago did they? Perhaps they were brought on by the pink/ blue "gender" marketing - they must also be a marketing opportunity.

On the "GenX gender warrior" subject - it was actually in the 1970s that clothes and toys were least divided by sex in marketing - those were boomer warriors denying gen X princess sparkle surely?

Apparently the pink/ blue divide kicked in in the 1980s - when most of Gen X were too young to be having children (1965-1980? is gen x).

It's been widely noted that much of what modern leftists romanticise as "alternative" (anti-consumerism, communal living, rejecting liberal feminism's career focus for family-centric life) is actually longstanding conservative beliefs before liberalism/capitalism dissolved those older structures!

Queer is no longer a homophobic slur in most contexts, it’s been reclaimed and is a valid way to identify your sexuality.

Obviously someone using it as an insult is different but in modern vernacular just means a sexuality that isn’t straight or doesn’t fit with the main labels.

My own experience of being a gen X child of boomer parents, is that there absolutely were girls and boys toys.
I had tiny tears, Sindy, Barbie, a dolls house, a toy kitchen. My boy cousins had cars, guns (!), trains, action men.
There was very little princess sparkle in my life, its true. Im not sure sparkles existed until i got glitter face gel age about 13. And i dont recall a princess obsession. We had far less Disney access.
My clothes were bought for practicality rather than for prettiness, but for special occasions it was invariably a dress. So, no I wasn't denied the trapping of girlness, rather, they were compulsory and not even questioned.
If the divide didn't occur until the 80s my parents and the adults in my circle were ahead of the curve.

Sorry to keep quoting you - it's because your post is thought provoking, not because I'm arguing!

I agree it's interesting girls were dressed in dungarees but boys were not dressed in dresses - this was basically the wave that accidentally made traditional female stereotypes the object of contempt and without really understanding it pushed traditional "male"stereotypes as aspirational -all hail the unending holyness of a girl doing a STEM / MINT degree but the patronising, somewhat suspicious pat on the head for a male nurse.

Which is sometimes also accidentally leading to traditionally male careers like some areas of medicine such as general practice being socially and financially down graded as they become female dominated...

In the end, the misogyny shines through anyway, but it was always there in trying to extinguish female stereotypes and make everyone follow male ones, rather than trying to get rid of all of both.

Sorry - thought spiral.

I think those articles were just about marketing rather than the whole of culture.

Obviously adult and older children clothes have been different for millennia - I'm sure there are lots of studies on why - to reduce freedom for women and increase for men obviously. I think boys and girls both used to wear dresses as small children until a couple of hundred years ago, maybe for practical reasons relating to the lack of nappies!

In one of those articles it says home making was pushed in the 1950s but that both girls and boys were shown in the adverts - I didn't read anything specifically about how girls and boys were portrayed, but maybe role playing in stereotypical family roles - so expected to play different roles with the same toy?

I think the separate toy aisles and pink/ blue and only girls in adverts for "girls' " toys without any boys and vice versa was what came in in the 80s. Also princess and sparkles instead of domestic toys, Barbie instead of or as well as baby dolls.

I haven't looked into it enough - something has changed I think, maybe...

I think you're spot on.
When I dressed DD in dungarees and bought her construction toys and steered her away from dolls, i was not smashing stereotypes, because I wouldn't have dreamed of putting DS in a dress, even though we had several handed down (unworn) from DD.
I was rejecting on DDs behalf those things associated stereotypically with being female. Even when she wanted them.
I thought this was very progressive and feminist of me as a 20 something.
Now with more awareness, I can see the internalised sexism that led me to think anything nurturing or aesthetic was female coded and therefore inferior.

Well it’s a bit weird to say your baby might like girls when she’s older, she hasn’t even been born yet and you’re discussing her potential future sexuality…

Not for the same reasons as yours but I have never attended a pregnancy or baby group... I have 6dc.

I woukd just hang out with like minded people, irrespective of your pregnancy.

I totally agree having had a baby in 1980.

It shouldn't be about denying your daughter dolls etc it's about opportunity to experience all things. My daughter had dolls etc but also lego, cars trains and a tool kit. She played with all of those, its not either/or.

Yes indeed. 57 year old me understands this well. Unfortunately well meaning 20 something me wasn't quite there yet.

I am straight, but I remember 20 years ago being horrified at every toy, bag, frisbee you name it being either pink or blue. So much so I Aimer not to buy anything pink or blue and everything orange, red, green, yellow etc for mine, never found out the sex before they were born and they all had yellow for sunshine as clothes.

I never really clicked with parents at the groups, I had some ask me what car I drove / what road I lived down / my job as in a way of assessment for friendship. I earnt well but dressed awfully (for comfort). Never told them that though, I don’t need friends like that.

you will find like minded people.

For many of us who are older and grew up in the era of “queer bashing”, it remains a slur. People who didn’t grow up through that don’t have the right to “reclaim” it.

like some black people use the N word and some find it offensive .

You do fit in and do belong there; these classes are for all women who are pregnant.

You can bond with the other mums over your shared pregnancy experience, you don't all need to have the same world view.

"Very traditional ideas about gender and parenthood" is how most people think, even today.

Dont put pressure on yourself or feel out of place. Just try to relax, be open to others, focus on the pregnancy and you will be fine.

And I don't get why anyone would be defending the dimwit preoccupations of people who think that elaborate 'gender reveals' or elaborate ickle pink nurseries for their 'girlies' or whatever are a normal way to approach parenthood.

Do people have the right to put LIVE LAUGH LOVE decals on their kitchen walls? Absolutely they do! Do I have the right to think it indicates someone with a fundamental lack of intelligence and the remotest sense of irony? Absolutely I do.

"Very traditional ideas about gender and parenthood" is how most people think, even today.

It really isn't unless you inhabit the world of ads for cleaning or laundry products in which kerrazy, slobby dads and messy kids have to dash around cleaning up their filthy kitchen or disgusting clothes because Mummy has just been glimpsed on the Ring doorbell.