Parenting a boy is a feminist minefield!

[MadameBoolala]

I am a feminist.

I have one child, a 4 year old boy, and mainly post in conception as we have been ttc number 2 for 2 years without success now. However I am venturing onto these boards as I feel negatively judged today by someone, and my parenting is being called into question.

I won't have time to post again until I come back from work tonight- but I'm wondering aloud today if it's easier to be a feminist and a parent of a girl...

ooh yes, we have 'who are you?' which is full of genderless animals and ends with a happy smiling genderless toddler holding a teddy and a ball ... big hit in our house! I must look for more Barefoot Books.

For me I sometimes think raising a considerate, gentle and kind boy means he too will get walked over by lesser men.

I think the whole boys' toys/girls' toys dichotomy is fascinating.

A poster upthread pointed out that girls' interests are seen as having "lower value" than boys' interests, which is why it's far more common for pre-school/primary-age girls to make occasional forays into activities characterised as male than it is the other way round.

I also think there's a homophobic horror going on in the way many adults react when boys show an interest in more stereotypically feminine pursuits and toys. And linked to that is the desire for boys to be "tough" and suppress their sensitive, needy sides, which is why there's a sharp reaction against a boy being "cissy" (which, I was horrified to learn, is actually used as a technical term in the study of young boys' behaviour).

And, of course there's the entirely cynical approach by manufacturers who know the more gender delineated they can make their toys, the more parents etc. will feel compelled to buy (because DD's old pink scooter won't be deemed acceptable to pass down to DS....etc.).

I think the gender stereotyping of young boys is often even more powerful in our society than it is of young girls and it's so repressive and limiting.

I think encouraging boys not to look down on "feminine" interests and activities is a good thing to do - they don't have to want to dress up a doll themselves, but it would be nice if their care-givers work against the impression that it is somehow a less valid activity than pushing a toy car along the floor.

Meh at those nursery workers and their gender policing of the toys.

I think you're on to something there, Immaculada. I remember DS wearing a fair few pink and purple and beflowered babygros and pajamas when he was little, but now he's a big toddler almost all his clothes are visibly gendered male. I mean, his trousers are pretty neutral but his shirts often have dinosaurs or transportation themes. I buy lots of red and yellow and green but the critical thing to code "Boy" appears to be the absence of pink or purple.
His dad happens to look dreamy in a pale purple shirt under his suit, however, so I hope I can find some nice purples for DS at some point soon. Ditto pinks. He's got the right colouring for a salmon pink I think... Ooh, watch out Gok...

Sorry, that's a tangent!

I suppose what I'm saying is that once he grew past the gender-neutral 'baby' look and grew into the 'toddler' look, I found not just external but internal pressures made me dress him to look 'masculine' even though I have no idea if he will eventually want to present as masculine/feel macho/be straight - or be butch as all hell but gay as a daisy. Frankly, if he asks for pink clothes, he will have them - and we have sparkly things and tutus in the dressing up chest I'm building - but right now, he's very 'boy'y, and I'm not sure how that happened...

We got him a nice soft doll from Ikea and dressed it in green. His pushchair is blue, though I wanted red - blue was the cheapest! When someone said "oh, look at his stroller!" DH leapt in with "yes, he's pushing a stroller just like his Dad!" which made me grin. We have gay friends and DS has a gay godfather/uncle figure in his life, so frankly any homophobia we encounter from other caregivers will be SQUASHED WITH FIRE AND RAGE. DS can love whoever he wants.
Though I do worry about encountering it. New Jersey is not all gay friendly, not by a long way.

I just wanted to share something, to show all the parents of boys who are worrying out there, that it's not all doom and gloom, with this anecdote:

I am a supply teacher, and recently I had the pleasure of teaching a mixed year 5/6 class over a period of two weeks, and every afternoon I had to teach them PSHE and the topic they were studying was 'stereotypes and identity'.

I followed the PSHE strategy for covering this, so basically tought the lessons exactly like they are meant to be taught all over the country, and it was really really good.

The children had an in depth look at gender stereotyping, and when I gave them a number of typical stereotypes for us to discuss they were outraged by all of them.

Statements like "boys are better at sport" were met with cries of outrage and horror, not just by girls but by the football mad sporty boys too, the whole class, collectively were outraged.

Other statements that caused outrage included:

"boys don't cry"

"girls are better at drawing"

"boys don't like hugs as much as girls"

"girls are weaker than boys"

I can honestly say this class of 30 9, 10 and 11 year olds did not hold these views and were outraged and shocked by these views and we had long discussions every afternoon about gender stereotyping, other stereotyping, and identity and it was very insightful and fascinating and I came away very pleased, believing that each generation of children will bring with it less and less stereotyping of this nature until we really will live in an equal society.

We debated a lot, and the children shared their views, and the best comment I had came from a 10 year old rugby playing, tough, boyish boy with two older brothers, who said "some people actually think men can't be feminists, but they're wrong". This led onto a discussion about feminism and the whole class, once they understood what feminism meant, agreed that they too were feminists.

It was very inspiring. We as parents, are not battling this entirely by ourselves, good schools will also help this.

The class I was teaching, have a male teacher who also happily declared himself a feminist.

aww that is a lovely story. Hurrah for progress, however small!

I remember DH being on a 'gender invisibility in history studies' lecture class as past of his history degree, back in the day, and being amused/horrified/encouraged by how some of the students had literally no clue that women didn't get the vote till the 20th century. The downside is that people take it for granted that 'we're all equal now' and so don't take modern feminism seriously but the upside is definitely that they can't believe that such terrible discrimination could ever have happened, and they think such mistreatment of women is shocking.

Ds2 enjoyed himself this morning playing on the lego duplo website, building pink and purple castles for different princesses! A bit of a victory there, I felt!

overmydeadbody thanks for posting that. Kids rock.

blackcurrants thanks so much for looking up those links. I've a very full Amazon basket now!

I also really like the Barefoot Books site and have noted the Studio Ghibli films too.

My son is currently adoring Cars 2. It's quite sexist, though it took a while to convince my husband of this (he does not chat about male/white/hetero privilege! Though this is more to do with his class & education than any conviction it doesn't exist). "But the female character's the only one that can fly!" He got it in the end, but we still bought the dvd, because our child loves it and because we had gift vouchers and not a lot else to choose from. I bet my husband's typical of many non-sexist but uneducated (in feminism/sociology/gender politics/anthropology) men - and some women - in that he doesn't automatically see that in most of the stories/films etc we show our son, the males are the 'do'-ers and the females the 'watch'-ers - from The Cat in the Hat on. It's so endemic in our culture. He just wants our son to have films and books to enjoy. It shouldn't be so frigging hard to find good non-sexist ones.

Woo hoo! DS had a small accident in his pants today at my friend's house. She has a daughter and he was very happy to put her purple pants with Hello Kitty on, with absolutely no comment other than 'I like pink'.

Surely that shows I am doing something right so far...

LOL at being happy at an accident in pants! but yes good he would wear them happily, some 4 yr olds wouldnt.

the barefoot books are lovely, we have a few, i love their illustrations :)

interestingly my ds1 is doing a bit about feminsism in his RE classes at the moment and finds it all intersting and ds2 (9yrs) was just telling me that we should all be equal and how wrong it was that women didnt have the vote years ago, so even he knew that women didnt have the vote. i suspect watching mary poppins a few times has given him a bit of info about suffragetes!

ds1 is 12 and is quite horridified by some countries laws and the way women are treated ie the stoning of women who have been raped etc. so so far i think we are doing ok!

incidentally my dp has always been very hands on with all of our children from birth (everything except bfeeding) and he does the most of the cooking in our house (when home) so they dont see household stuff as just a female domain and they all help out around the house, they are learning to cook, do the laundry etc, i dont want to raise boys who turn into men that expect their mother/wife to run around after them all the time! my mil thinks i am a bit mean/harsh in this respect but she DID do this to dp and to his father, she would get up at 5am so that his bfast was all laid out ready for him when he got up to go to work! she was aghast that not only does dp make his own packed lunch if he needs one, but he also makes the childrens pack ups for school

out of interest ladies what do you call little girls privates, the boys have willies, balls and know the correct names as well, do dd will be told the correct name for her privates, but as she is 15mths i need something simple and other than 'girly bits' we dont have a name. plus i want the boys to know the correct names etc but feel we need some sort of generic shorthand?

Great to hear these promising stories, especially yours overmydeadbody!

Interestingly (can you tell I've done a lot of reading on all this lately??!!) studies looking at this area suggest that the strongest gender-identity enforcement happens among children in the age 3/4 - 7/8 age group and after that, many of them will start to broaden their perceptions about gender identity. That class of 9-10 year-olds suggests this is what is happening (thank goodness!!) - although some attitudes can harden again in secondary school. Of course, it also depends on the ethos the children encounter from their education/parenting/socialising/media consumption too.

4mad it hasn't come up much yet, but I tend to call DD's vulva a vulva as the least complicated anatomical description. That said, I quite like the MN favourite "fanjo" so I might employ that if I feel the need for a slangier term..!!

well i asked the boys what they thought it was called, as we do tend to refer to it as a girly bit ds2 said its a vagina (he is 9) so i thought that was ok, ds1 also said vagina and also said there are rude slang words for it as well but that he wouldnt use them :) ds3 who is 7 wasnt sure and just said its 'merryns bits' dd is called merryn, so we explained it is a vagina or part of it is, i think i need to give them a bit more detail about the vulva etc, we have soem books about the body, puberty and babies etc so think we will have a look at them at some point. i want them to know the correct terms etc but i dont want to overload them with info before they are ready iyswim? we have been very open with how babies are made etc when they have asked and they know about sex, the basics and the elder two know girls have periods etc but we just do it at a basic level from when they first start asking and build on it, they havent shown much interest in what girls privates are or what they are called, which makes sense as until dd there was only me! and yes fanjo is maybe ok or i have heard of 'foof' which is maybe ok?

We call girls bits minnie and he has a willie and balls. We are open too, and he knows I have a period as I use a mooncup and he saw some blood in the toilet once which I had to explain, he is fine with it.

This thread has been really brilliant, I've also bookmarked some sites - be great if we could keep it going and keep adding new discoveries.

I have one of each, and IME boys and girls do have a drive to play differently, even with the same toys! Eg wooden track, DS will spend hours building the track and working out the junctions, DD makes up railway adventures and saves the engines from mild peril. The feminist opportunity is to encourage DCs to be all they can be, regardless of gender.
In my work at a day nursery I have been finding ways to engage the whole class in stories and fairytales. Several of the children wanted to take on opposite gender roles in the fairytales, which was fine with me, I did get a few and faces from parents when I discussed our day though.

When my two were very little ds liked to make long brio tracks (dh and I did too). dd enjoyed wrecking them!

They are 11 and 12 now and I think doing OK on having positive views of both girls and boys, and being proud to be themselves although they are in many ways quite stereotypical. Parenting is a long haul with many opportunities to influence/brainwash along the way

I think that might be personality rather than gender,inmysparetime.In our family both DD and DS are like me and my DSis,in that they play/played imaginative made up story type games with anything available.
This bemuses DH,who did spend his childhood spending hours building track,points,etc - in fact he still does now!He didn't do the "made up adventures" thing at all - V weird (from my perspective )

I do think parenting a boy maybe gives you more opportunity to callenge gender stereotypes. I have a DD. When I look around for toys for her, there's usually a pink/purple option and a primary colours option. I pick the primary colours option as until she gets to the age where she can ask for the pink one, I buy the thing I like the best. No-one bats an eye lid, I am not able to express my feminism. Even buying her a train set, or a digger wouldn't spark a debate between friends.

If I were parenting a boy, I am imediatley able to exercise my desire to expose him to a world free from gender stereotypes buy buying the pink/purple option and sparking up a debate with friends and family as to why I have chosen that colour.

Also, if I didn't ever buy him anything pink, purely as I do not like the colour and when he can ask for pink, then I will buy it, I am then conforming to the gender stereotypes by not 'permitting' my son to own anything pink.

Bloody minefield.

I have only my DCs as a close study, but I have found that theory follows with friends' DCs and those at nursery. I often see boys pushing buggies full of blocks and tipping them out, saying "beep, beep", it is rare to see a girl do so.
I am actually not sure where the digger fascination comes from though.

i think part of it is that with a girl your objectives are clear and positive - you want them to be strong, independent, assertive etc etc. actually every child should have that you know? with a boy your objectives are less clear and all out positive. you feel you are meant to curb things in them and that's not nice actually. you have to balance wanting them to be strong, independent, confident etc with concerns that you should temper that somehow.

with a girl you know what the enemy is and have no qualms about fighting it. with a boy, well they're a boy you know? what is the enemy? what is it 'in them' that you are meant to curb, is there physical confidence to be admired or should you fear it slightly for what it could portend? is your encouraging them to be confident and assertive going to be misinterpreted as encouragement to be aggressive and entitled.

not very clear this morning i'm afraid. will give this some thought on the school run and dog walk. totally agree about the school thing btw - starting school and gender segregation/stereotypes etc seem to go hand in hand

I spoke to my son's nursery and they have agreed to gently discuss with the staff member involved. They promote children playing with any toy, regardless of gender.
(In all fairness I have been to pick up my son and he has a dress on, or his nails painted)
They agreed that children should be able to play with any toy they want and it's good for them to understand this. So a bit happier now :o

There's nothing 'in them' that's the enemy (imo) swallowed - it's misogynist culture that's 'the enemy'. It hurts men too. Even straight white ones.

i'm not saying the enemy is in them but that some grow up to be the enemy you know? so you are trying to prevent whatever characteristics there are that make someone likely to revel in the patriarchy and abuse their privilege.

for example privileged plus assertive is a different potential cocktail to oppressed plus assertive.

can't seem to explain what i mean well today sorry.

I have a boy and a girl and it is not 'easier' to parent one or the other. Feeling a bit sorry for yourself, OP?

try again.

i want my son to be assertive, assertive is a good quality. however assertive in the hands of men in a male privileged culture that gives more power and influence to men anyway and encourages assertion to the point of agressiveness and prioritises it over a hell of a lot of other characteristics is potentially very easily morphed into something destructive. so i want to teach him to be assertive but to hold himself back the ways that that quality can be encouraged into destructive channels that oppress others by the society we live in.

i want my son to be strong and brave (as i would want my daughter to be) but again when it comes to boys society takes that quality and runs away with it into negative outlets and expressions in a way that i want to curb him from.

with a girl you don't have to worry so much about the 'but' as in assertive but kind, respectful, considerate, not too pushy, not oppressive etc because society is doing it's best to temper her assertiveness into non existence anyway and she needs a lot of it just to break even iyswim. so it's more positive in the sense of adding something rather than worrying about the taking away or all of the 'buts' that the quality needs to be conditional upon.

we want to boost our children up, that's natural, but with a boy that natural urge to boost up is accompanied by an awareness of what boosted up maleness looks like in our society which we don't want them to be a part of so we have an uneasy line to tread.

hope some of this makes sense.