Raising feminist children

[YuleingFanjo]

Hi there...

Sorry if this has been done before - if so can you direct me to any threads?

I am basically wanting to find out about blogs and articles and so on about raising children (in particular sons) in a feminist way.

Basically I am just finding myself getting angrier and angrier about the way women are persuaded to cut themselves up, inject themselves and so on in the name of beauty. A friend of mine rather depressingly told me that she slept with a 50 year old man who had never slept with a woman with pubic hair! That she has slept with men who have shaved all theirs off! I am just open-mouthed that we live in a society where this is now the norm, that women will accept the gift of a boob job as a birthday present!

I don't want my son to grow up thinking all this is normal, I want him to have the right kind of influences so that when he is older he doesn't become one of those who think this is all normal.

do I make any sense? I just feel really angry about it and think I have a responsibility towards him to educate him the right way.

No, I wish I had, but DD didn't really want me to make a fuss. She knew we agreed with her the teacher was being silly. She'd already realised that teachers aren't always right, having observed in reception that some of them actually seemed to believe in God, which she thought quite a strange thing for a grownup (she did get the 'some people believe different things' speil from me for that, of course. )

DD knows she can retaliate and hopefully she knows that she must retaliate in different way to her teacher and to the horrid little person in her class who tells her that boys are best (he doesn't say that to DD any more after she pointed out that she was in all the higher groups for maths and literacy and well...he wasn't - neither could he run faster than her). But DD is hugely bossy and massively confident and tends to speak her mind, so in her case she needs the reminder to be kind in discussions about things like religion, who is the best Jedi (Adi Gallia, Aayla Secura or Luminara Unduli of course) and pretty much every time she opens her mouth.

Thank you so much for all the replies. I wonder if it's easier with a boy with regards to self-esteem and so on. I want my son to not buy into all the boys are better stuff. Thankfully DH is quite a sensitive guy, doesn't do sport etc. so he won't be doing a whole load of macho guy stuff (I don't think) and he is at a nursery with lots of girls as well as boys.

I'll have a read of the blogs and links

As the mother of a girl, I rather suspect nowadays the 'self esteem' circle has turned - girls are expected, on the whole, to be at least as able as boys academically and aren't under so much pressure to be good at kicking a ball.

I just feel that as a child I was raised in a way which helped me not crumble under the pressure of bullying about my looks (Think NHS glasses, jumble sale clothes) and so as an adult I didn't turn into one of those fake-tan/extensions kind of women. Now a days I think there is so much pressure on girls to start changing their bodies and wearing make up etc. and I think low self-esteem is one reason why women think they have to look this way. I want my son to see the value in being yourself, in respecting all women and not preying on the vunerable or expecting his female friends to look and act a certain way.

Maybe i am over-thinking. He's only 1 but I see the way that different genders are targeted and separated and it does make me angry. He is in nursery 4 days a week and I wonder if he will be effected early by the whole 'that's a boy's toy' thing :(

YuleingFanjo-you might be interested in this website www.achilleseffect.com/ - I think she has written a book as well by the same name here.

With DS I am trying to ensure that I treat both children the same, they both have the same responsibilities and will both be expected to do the same number of household tasks. I would love it if he turned out to be a 'gentle' man like my husband and brother who have nothing but the highest respect for women and treat everyone equally.

DS has a lot of dolls, pushchairs, kitchens, washing machines etc as well as Duplo/cars and has a couple of generic barbie type dolls that he fell in love with in a shop. At the moment he is sleeping under the duvet cover of his choice-Care Bears. A lot of it was his sisters (and as such was pretty much pristine!) but I think I would have made a point of getting him some of these things anyway to make sure a potential interest wasn't stifled by lack of opportunity.

In my experience - as a one time girl, and a mother of boys - the fiercest issues of self esteem comes from comparison and fitting in with your peers of the same sex.

For most of the time the live issue is not 'girls are better than boys' or vice versa, but 'why aren't I as good as the other girls/boys at xyz'.

The sexual stereotyping issue bites by defining what xyz is for girls and boys -- which may not be that child's natural area of strength or enjoyment.

Just stumbled across this really interesting blog from Shaping Youth which includes some fantastic links and resources that might be useful.

Thanks for the link TBE