First baby for a feminist, expecting a boy: where do I start??

[dizzy77]

So pleased to find this space on MN! Presumably I am not the first expectant feminist mum to ask this, but I've had little experience of small boys as I grew up with sisters and went to girls schools.

Grappling to articulate this properly, but would love some kind of primer in bringing up a boy to respect women and avoid reinforcing stereotypes so far as I can... and this talk topic feels like the right place to ask for what I have in mind. Any advice and/or recommended reading?

Congratulations! I am a feminist and have 2 boys, The best thing you can show them is, that by example, girls are as good and adept as boys. Mind you when DS1 wants help with his DS (nintendo btw) I do say that that is a daddy thing.........!

My experience has been (as others have said) that whatever DS sees DH doing, he wants to do as well (whilst he is small anyway). So my DH does washing up, with DS aged 2 standing on big chair beside him at sink, washing up alongside him and they also do sweeping and tidying up (this wasn't a result of a deliberate feminist thing as such :) - just that DS saw DH doing it, wanted to do it too and cried if he wasn't allowed to!). But they also have teddy fights where they chuck teddies at each other and they go on trips to the DIY shop in the car (this counts as man stuff in my book - I never chuck teddies or do any DIY!).

So in the small stage they imitate the main male carer. If you have DH get him a pair of Marigolds!

There's a lot here about getting the Dad to do domestic stuff around your son, but no one seems to have mentioned you doing traditionally male stuff with him.

Have a kick-about with him. Mow the lawn. Do some car maintenance. That's got to be a good influence too.

I'm just marking my place as I have a son and am interested.

Aaaagh see I am the video games expert in my house, DP plays abbit of Wii that's it, I set up his DS, help him with levels, get him games etc. Glad me loafing about playing DS is part of my feminist agenda, hadn't thought about it like that!

Noblegiraffe - aw, do I have to?!? I mean it's hard to fake this stuff if you are not good at it or genuinely interested. If you are by all means go for it, but otherwise it seems a bit forced.

I do the IT wrangling and construction toys, but wHenever I show my football 'skills' can only go to reinforce the sterotype that women are rubbish at football

Congratulations, I'd just treat your DS as an individual and you and your partner try to be good role models.
They all have different interests DS1 (2.11) loves the play kitchen, mops and hoovers at playgroup so we've bought him a selection of these but he will invariably head for the cars and trains so we have quite a few of those too. DS1 was given a baby doll before DS2 was born and he totally ignored it until we bought a (pink) buggy to go with it - as soon as it had wheels it became an interesting toy for him! You can't force them to play with things they don't want to but sometimes you can nudge them in the right direction.

elliott and anyone else who fancies joining us, the Feminist Parenting of Boys bookclub is on that link, if I haven't fluffed it. We're throwing around some ideas about possible book options, and the more, the merrier!

My general recommendation on having a baby is do not read parenting books. I think in general most of them present fairly questionable opinion as fact and raise anxiety completely unnecessarily. I'm a complete bookworm too and love pondering the 'whys' of how things are.

I find with books about parenting boys vs girls the best thing to do is see if they have a section on "mums and boys/girls" and judge for yourself how sexist that feels. I've picked up a few in bookshops and managed to up my blood pressure considerably in no time at all as I see stuff on the 'unique bond a mother has with her dd/ds" followed by totally anecdotal twaddle as to why women are biologically primed to behave in totally stereotyped ways. One I looked at the other day was going on about 'womanism' (WTF) after attempting to debunk a totally unrecognisable description of feminism.

My children have at times been very very close to a number of stereotypes, which has worried me somewhat, but parenting is a long haul game and I think that so long as you raise your children to ask why (and answer them as honestly as you can) then as they grow up you start to have really thought provoking conversations with your children all about how they feel and think and behave.

I was told I was having a boy, the penis of the boy was pointed out to me in 3 seperate scans by 3 different Drs. I could never see it myself and consequently gave birth to a perfectly formed girl. Who has an interest in Dinosaurs.

LOL Bibiane I do have some anxiety here: the good news is the nursery is yellow and all clothes so far purchased white/neutral. So still not completely sure what is going to come out!

Nooka - in a bookwormy sort of way I am with you: reading as much as I can, picking what I think sounds sensible and well researched, and discarding the rest. I'm not good at throwing down a book once I've started it but am able to read it with increasing fury.