AIBU to be disheartened by unconscious sexist assumptions in our girls?

[onsabbatical]

I was clearing out the attic last week and had my old college matriculation photo temporarily propped up in the drawing room. A friend of DD1 was here. "Oh," she said to DD1 "I didn't know your Dad was at Oxford".

Sigh, I despair.

I would really hope for better and wonder if we are letting down our daughters through not raising their consciousnesses. Perhaps the fact I am currently on sabbatical doesn't help set a proper gender role model as being a SAHM is not accorded equal status with working outside the home.

You could be reading too many things into this. It may be that in her house, her dad went to university (poss Oxford too?) and her mum didn't ... so her own assumptions based on her norms lead her to jump to the conclusion it was your DH and not you that was at Oxford.

How old are they?

Do you look very like a man?
Otherwise I agree with wishing chair, it may be the norm in her family that dad went to Oxford and mum stayed at home and she guessed your family is the same.

You are right - her Dad went to Uni and her Mum didn't. She is 16 though - at that age, I would hope for some kind of awareness that women can have great educations too whatever career choices they later make..... A disappointing number of DD1's friends say that their preferred career option is to "marry a rich man". Sigh, I do find that sad. It seems to be a modern phenomenon. Perhaps in the circles in which I move, many well educated women ARE at home and appear to have just "married a rich man" when the reality is that they too were once lawyers/ bankers/ doctors.

no yanbu. I have sons and ended up having a chat to ds2 teacher (he's 4) about the fact that the girls in his class keep dressing him after pe. No it is not sweet which is the usual rl assumption, because he now thinks that girls are there to dress him, he does not have to help himself.

It then transpires that all the boys play with the lego and the girls play at colouring and dressing up.

So far at school ds has learned that the girls do the traditional caring roles and the boys do the exciting stuff. He didn't learn that at home. whats more the teachers are quite indulgent of this.

I despair. I really think we've gone backwards in the last decade in terms of equality.

DD2 (4) who is a tomboy with dinosaurs, lego and not a doll in sight had me in despair last week, her leaving nursery report had the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" She had said "marry someone"

She had previously said "be a girl builder and drive a digger!"

Yanbu but it's up to us to challenge this in schools, in our homes, in the little pink fairy slippers we ( well not me) put on our girl children's feet. Whoever buys Lelly Kellys can hold themselves responsible for our daughters continued suffering!

The last 3 posts are very depressing.

There does seem to be an increasing tendency for girls and boys to be treated differently - I agree nellie12, we are going backwards and I can only assume it's the giant marketing machine that wants all girls to be "Pink Princesses" and all boys to be "Blue Action Men".

Even here on mumsnet we get otherwise sensible women saying that they simply must dress their son in blue, daughter in pink etc. I don't think my parents' generation would have thought anything so daft.

didn't mean to refer to wahwah's post of course but the 3 before that.

Oh no, I'm depressed too. My 2 year old tries to
steal jewellery and loves anything floral. Drives me nuts, but at least she's more interested in robots than baby dolls for now.

wahwah that is nonsense, why cant a girl like pink and sparkly? I have 3 daughters who have trains and cars and planes and tools but who also have buggys and dolls and pink things. my eldest is 5 and knows there is no shame in any chosen career sometimes she wants to be a dr, sometimes a nurse, sometimes a dancer, sometimes a SAHM.

OP YANBU did you tell her it was you? I want my girls to aspire to a life in their own right however I cannot see being a SAHM as some sort of subserviant role not as valid as going out to gainful employment, it certainly isnt in my household! then again i find it is generally other women who knock down the status of SAHM, I dont think women can ever gain true equality till we stop knocking each other down.

Here here Matumble.

why should she be more interested in robots than dolls? why is that a point of pride? give children free play and see what happens, I honestly think trying to push children so far out of these silly gender boxes we have at the moment is as bad as trying to push them into them. Sorry wahwah i dont mean to pick on you I just dont understand your POV

But what do you do when your daughter LIKES the 'traditional' stuff?? My dd is 15 months younger than my ds. Because of this, we didn't buy any new toys for her when she was a baby, and most of our toys were fairly gender neutral, anyway. Now, however, she's 2.9, and she LOVES pink dresses, nail varnish, dollies, and wants to be a fairy princess when she grows up. I can assure you, she did not get this from me...I am not a girly, high maintenance type at all!

So, though we never intended to raise our son or daughter to conform to any kind of gender stereotypes, we seem to have had no influence at all...

I have nothing to say about your role at home, but pink and sparkly is an increasing issue for me on terms of the messages it gives our daughters. Ornamental, frivolous and completely impractical. If you think it's harmless then dress a boy up in it. For good measure give him a little pair of ballet pumps and send him off to play football.

YANBU.

Gender stereotyping damages children.

At 16 your DDs friend ought to know better... I despair if not.

Sorry, that sounded as if I was aiming that comment - and it was more into tje ether. I have control of pink sparkly for now, but I do see problems ahead in the next year.

Matumble, Eve, I think the issue is that there is SO much pressure to be pink and princessy/blue and sporty coming from the outside world, that we can't say for sure that that is their "natural" preference.

For example, my (male) cousin's favourite colour was bright pink. Until he went to school and was told (by the other kids) that "pink is for girls". He immediately wanted loads of blue stuff.

That was a while ago - these days the marketing/peer pressure starts even earlier.

I do think parents have some sort of responsibility not to buy into the stereotype.

Do not despair,all of you fighting the pink and sparkly tide - myy DD was very pink and sparkly and she has grown out of it.
Yay!

but not buying into stereotype should also mean not pushing them too far away from stereotype, my eldest is 5 and constantly comes home with ridiculous comments about pink/dance/ etc etc (sorry not feeling well at all so struggling to pull my thoughts together) i fight the arguments she presents and try to balance her but i dont think that pushing her away from pink etc is and more healthy than pushing her into it.

My dd got into pink and sparkly at about 4yo. I just decided to go along with it. She ditched pink and sparkly about 6 months later. She has Barbies, she doesn't like them. Here in Germany they need a particular school bag when they start school - we were really hard pressed to find one that wasn't pink, sparkly, fairies, horses, princesses, Disney crap. Yes I do despair, but take hope from the fact that in the face of all this stereotyping pressure, dd hasn't crumbled.

I sometimes worry about the message I'm sending to dd by being a sahm. But then surely it depends how you conduct yourself as a sahm. I'm not a drudge, chained to the kitchen sink and I very visibly pursue other interests outside sahmdom. And it won't be forever anyway....

My dd is 10 and very feminine but does not to get married as she doesn't feel that it's necessary to have a man in her life. She wants a career. My ds is 7 and wants to be a woman when he grows up because he sees having a baby as the most wonderful thing a person can do..

See...this is good to hear. I am not sure where she's getting the pink and sparkly message...her family and I aren't 'into' that, so certainly haven't pushed her to it. Also, I am not trying to steer her away...I'm just letting her like what she likes, with the hope that she'll outgrow it to some degree.
FWIW...my DS wants and gets his nails painted when DD has hers done, and he loves it!!

matumble, your remark above was one of the most important things ever said about sexism, and far too rarely said imo.

"I dont think women can ever gain true equality till we stop knocking each other down." It is human nature to be competitive. However, you'll find that men & boys in general compete on achievements, where women's competition is about relative value of the self.

Even if traditional roles were suddenly reversed, you wouldn't find men behaving like this. Two blokes might compete over whose washing was whiter and cookies more chocolatey - but their competition would be limited to the actual facts, not viewed as a subtle measure of worth.

I believe it's entirely deliberate conditioning. (In fact I know it is, having studied the history of consumer marketing.) We are fools to fall for it, and even bigger fools to perpetuate it without thinking.

I'm gruesomely interested to see how quickly the current spate of male toiletries advertising - which suggests you won't get the girl and/or have a nice life without the right look/feel/smell - will succeed in reducing male consumers to the pathetically self-limiting wimps we women have become.

Oooh, I ranted!
As you were, now ...

sigh.

OP posts about 16 year olds and their assumptions about men/women and which might to Oxford ...

... and everyone responds by talking about pink clothes for 4yr olds.

no not everyone does talk about pink clothes for 4yo.

but if you want to know why 16yo have that attitude then the ones they are inculcated into at 4 have a large influence.