Raising children with Feminism in mind

[ClimberChick]

Not sure if this thread has been done before, but feel free to point me in the right direction.

Have recently started thinking about feminists issues in detail (now that I've found to place to talk and read about it, other than just my own head) and probably more to do with the fact that I have a 6 month DD.

Starting reading to her at bedtime as part of our new routine and it struck me how gender defined the characters are. Even been switching the sexes of the characters, not that DD appreciates my efforts.

This has made me realise that without effort, it will be very easy to reinforce gender expectations etc.

So general tips/areas or behaviours to look out for which we might commonly fall into if not looking (not sure if this makes sense). e.g. when she's older how to avoid all clothes having pink on them/ toys being male or female

[Xenia]

When our first three chidlren were little we did read some books which were deliberately reversing stereotypes - I remember the stay at home father with GP mother, the female plumber. Not sure if they had any impact but they certainly would have done no harm.

best example though is how people behave around them eg successful full time working mother who loves her work etc.

[Gay40]

Not unexpectedly, we did the whole neutral toys, blue and pink and neutral colours, reversing of gender stereotypes thing (echo everyone else so far.)

It has made not a haporth of difference.

[Pogleswood]

I have DD (16),and DS (10)

DD was a very pink and sparkly girl,and I let her play with and wear what she wanted(DSis and I played with everything - dolls,farm,Action Men,soldiers,cars, cowboys,but I remembered the pressure to be "prettier/girlier" than I wanted to be,and I didn't want to subject DD to that pressure in the other direction.)
But I did get her all sorts of toys which I thought she'd enjoy but wouldn't choose - I bought her a little spaceship toy when she was 3 and DH actually said "she won't want to play with that,it's a boy thing" or words to that effect.He has since had to eat his words! She is not pink and sparkly now,and she knows her own mind.

It was harder with Ds because I like lego,action figures,and swords better - but he had DD doing his hair and playing with him etc,and we have a lovely picture of him(at about 3) dressed from head to toe in pink,in a twirly skirt,with a hairband on!
I do talk a lot about it all,and with DS I challenge the "boys are best","boys can do X,girls can't" statements.We don't get so much about what boys can't do,but we talk about that too! I encourage them both to try whatever activities they want to,and DS has always been keen to help me - he has all the makings of a great SAHD!
I agree with Xenia that how people behave around them is a big part - my DH did the childcare etc for part of my work time right from the start,so they knew that on some days Daddy did housework and childcare,and on some days Mummy did.

[SolidGoldBrass]

I have a DS who I am trying to raise without falling into too much of a gender trap - he had a baby doll and pushchair for Xmas when he was 2 and really enjoyed playing with it for a while. These days his obsession is public transport, particularly trains, which he loves but doesn't seem to see particularly as a boy thing (fortunately, I have a female friend who is a former tube train driver) - DS likes to play with girls at least as much, if not more than with boys and is very into having nail varnish on. And I do explain to him about advertising and whenever anyone says in his hearing that 'girls are... boys are... girls can't' or whatever I tell him that some grown ups are a bit silly about things like this and it simply isn't true.

[Tortington]

the pink clothes and pretend princess stuff doesn't bother me in the slightest becuse there is a difference between a princess and reality.

however when it came to my dd being given a nurses outfit and her saying - mummy i;m a nurse' i told her she was a doctor.


now my mum was a nurse, they work bloody hard and i love them, this isn't a dig at nurses, but a dig at career stereotyping aged 3

[ISNT]

pogles the "boys can do x, girls can't" stuff, where do they get it from? Peers? Where do the children get it from ? Paretns, advertising, what do you think?

[Pogleswood]

In our case,ISNT,this is what DS says himself,so I think it comes from his peers and playground culture.I suppose,yes,parents and TV etc originally,I wonder if in a group you are mixing quite a lot of small messages to produce a stronger result than anything they are hearing individually,IYSWIM?
But he is at school with some very intelligent capable girls,so how genuinely they think this and how much is just talk,I don't know - I talk about it anyway!

The nurse/girl,doctor/boy thing seems so common,I can remember having a bizarre conversation with DS aged about 3,about how we were going to see the Dr - he was adamant it would be a man,despite the fact that it was a woman and he'd seen quite a few doctors in different places in the recent past,and they'd all been women.But no,they were nurses...v.odd.

[ISNT]

It is all v peculiar pogles.

My bet is on the parents - I was recently told that I'd better buy some barbies for my DD "before it's too late". She was nearly 3 at the time. I mean some people are just bonkers. Honestly this was said to me by a woman I barely know while waiting to drop the children off, she said it with a straight face.

I literally looked like this and had to swiftly rearrange myself into something more normal while I desperately thought what possible response I could give.

[vesela]

DD (3) currently says girls do and boys do totally random things. E.g. boys don't eat toast (or do they? I can't remember). So she's seems to be picking up "boys do this, girls do this" messages, but not the standard content.

ISNT, was it just one of those "they grow up so fast" type comments? But yes. I'm kind of amazed at how willing some parents are to shoehorn their children in a way that they themselves weren't.

[ISNT]

If only, vesela, if only. Her DD has millions of barbies, apparently, and when i said i didn't think DD had "had a go" with one yet I was handed the dire warning.

[ISNT]

Mine DD is girly too, swc, and she certainly doesn't get it from me!

I have noticed a quite few times the difference in the reaction of people to DD when she is in a pretty dress as opposed to trousers and a t-shirt. Whe she's in a dress people will stop and smile and comment and the grandparents compliment her and so on. Say how pretty her hair is, her shoes are, what a pretty dress and so on and so on. So when i remember that, it isn't maybe that much of a surprise that from quite a young age she was aware of "pretty" and that it was a desirable thing to be. And that dresses = pretty as well. Even if people don;t say anything, I'm sure children pick up on approving looks. And why is it dresses that are a big deal? Whenever I put a skirt on she gasps in a really theatrical manner and says "mummy you look boooooootiful".

Having remembered all that I have put myself firmly back in the camp that it's all learned!

[tabouleh]

DS has rarely seen me in a dress. I dressed up for a formal dinner and when he saw me he was wide eyed and stuttering in amazement:

"Mummeeeeeeee, mummeeee yoo yoo you're a PRINCESS mummy!"

I can safely say that this must have come from stories at nursery!

[ISNT]

@ princess

@ dame edna

My friends son at playgroup once approached his dad with a book for him to read - it was something like "glitter fairies like sparkles and pretty dancing dresses" and was the pinkest sparkliest thing I'd ever seen. His dad was but gamely took it from him and read it "and then the pretty sparkly bunnies flapped their pretty sparkle wings and everyone was pretty and sparkly" and I LMAO.

I mean it's all well and good trying to clamp down on the stereotypes but it's best to keep a sense of humour about all this stuff as well.

Plus I have realised that for little girls, this is the society that we live in, and their peers will judge them mercilessly. So if DD wants to wear a dress and a sparkly hairband, then what the hell. She gets the attention and the compiments and so on and it makes her feel that she is valued and fits in. And of course that is a pretty tragic message to give, when I write it like that. But we have to work with what we've got and I'm not going to risk my DDs self-esteem to make a political point.

Balance is the thing, isn't it. She is an excellent climber and very brave in the playground, she's normally in clothes appropriate for "messing around", she gets good role models at home I hope, fingers crossed it will all be good in the end.

[vesela]

Oh well - DD (3.5) has never had a go with a Barbie either...

I think it's fine to tell girls they look nice - that, for me, falls into the category of things that it's nice to tell boys, too :) Same with dresses - they're comfortable, there's no point not wearing them just because boys don't. And sparkle is fun.

The problem IMO is that too many little girls don't actually look nice. OK, so they're lovely in themselves, but then they're dressed in really sickly-looking mismatched bubblegum pink and purple and corny T-shirts and sparkle and dots etc. etc. all at once, and it makes them look kind of weak and undignified.

In the 1920s, little girls wore pink and white shift dress a la Milly Molly Mandy, and looked nice. Almost a century later, and they look - weak.

I think what I'm trying to say is that it's not the pink, or the sparkle, or the princesses in themselves. It's the attitude that people seem to have when they go about dressing girls that's the matter.

[ISNT]

It is sad that a younger child would need to look out for an older one in that way - as a mother I mean. But from their POV what a fantastic relationship, one that they will both gain immeasurably from.

Children, they often don't have the same views about these things that us parents have. They just get on with it

vesela I think I know what you mean, have to have a think...

[SolidGoldBrass]

I think the main things are: to tell DC that boys or girls can do whatever they want, and if anyone grown up says they shouldn't because that's only for girls/boys then the grown up is being silly (and it's OK to say so) - and to let (but not force) DC to play with/do what they want whether that's conforming to gender stereotypes or ignoring them. So let DDs play with trucks and meccano give them these things but don't forbid them Barbies and ballerinas and pink if they ask for such things. And give your DSs dolls and bunnies and dresses if they want but don't try to steer them away from trains and footballs either.

[ClimberChick]

Just wanted to say that I'm not ignoring everyone, obviously just don't have much to contribute (yet)

Thanks for all the responses, just gotta try and let it sink in

I imagine it's a lot harder to not fall into the gender trap with boys in terms of explaining females can be just as good.

[tadjennyp]

My dd and ds are 19 months apart and ds obviously adores his big sister. As she instigates lots of the games they play together they often both put on sparkly dresses to 'dance in a show', they both like to push their babies around and cuddle them.

It is so easy to send out the wrong messages though. Last year dd said that Mummies stay at home and Daddies go to work. I'm a SAHM because I didn't have a work permit last year and I teach German for which there is not much demand here in the US. I'd also put on a lot of weight and had started going to WW. Sometimes I'd have to take the dcs along to the meetings to get weighed and they both became obsessed with getting weighed too. I really felt like I'd let them down because I was trying to get healthy again but they (at the age of 3 and 2) just thought about the weight.

[CakeandRoses]

SGB - yy re 'other grown ups' that's the thing I'm realising that I have to guard against.

My mother immediately started talking about making my new daughter a doll's house, literally within a week of her being born but I have a doll's houseless son who is nearly 2. When I said Cake'sDS would love it and probably play with it more (given he is capable of actually playing whereas Cake'snewborn is not), she looked embarrassed and muttered that she had been thinking about making him one too - hoping that won't be a garage themed one

On the same visit, she also said had I noticed any differences between boys and girls - like for instance the fact the he bangs things (he was banging the table at the time - actually, the first thing he'd banged in 2 days) and I didn't as a child even tho he's v similar to how I was.

It makes me so sad that society appears to have a need to create all these differences between boys and girls where they don't exist. Obviously there are some differences but not many at 2 yo!

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

Do you have to teach him though SWC? My DB is (family strongly suspect although never diagnosed) on the autistic spectrum, and he is totally unsexist but has a tendency to pick up erroneous ideas, that then need to be contradicted by someone he trusts. Somehow he seems to lack the ability to critically assess the value of information he's picked up, so he might hear Jonathan Ross being a twunt about women, and take it as the gospel truth, without using other information he knows from experience etc to contradict what he's heard. Is your DS anything like this? With my DB I think it's mainly a matter of talking him through why it's not important to go along with what other people say, particularly authority figures (celebs, teachers etc). So maybe with your DS you just need to be on hand with the reality check when he comes out with "girls can't" stuff etc?