Unhappy dad seeking feminist advice

[UnimaginitiveDadThemedUsername]

"We're princesses. We like dressing up and shopping."

Had a friend's daughter stay over this Saturday with our DD (both 3 1/2), and this is what we heard for most of the day from the two of them. This is pretty much the straw that is breaking the camel's back (even more so than the pink toy washing machine given to us by my mother-in-law when I wasn't there).

My question is this - how hard am I going to have to fight so DD grows up to realise that she is a person in her own right and not someone else's chattel or arm candy? I'm wondering if it's a lost cause.
Ironically, I feel that my efforts are and will continue to be sabotaged by women who know nothing else (see washing machine incident above). I mention stuff in a non-confrontational way to female members of the family and feel like they don't take me seriously.

Any practical suggestions? Or should I stop worrying?

There are also some 'non-stereotypical' disney movies - Pocahontas being probably the best one. She was totally in control, and said no when the 'hero' wanted to take her back with him. She was rather kick-ass.

It can work both ways with boys being 'forced' to like 'boy' toys In our house dh and I swop roles so dcs see no gender roles dunno what ds2 got told at nurtsery but dh got the mothers day card which is fine as for dh fulfils the trad mother role for him as he cooks looks after them etc.He also rides motorbikes and can be macho Teachinhg and showing your dd the equality of either role will help her become a rounded dd who has the confidence to be and do what is best for her

I'm not a big fan of pinkification, but my way of countering is to offer alternative toys, too. My In-laws can buy her pink crap till the cows come home, there will always be gender neutral stuff it can be combined with. I let my daughters pick and choose what they want to play with, and don't make an issue out of it in front of them (even though I hate the pink pretty girly crap) - if I didn't let them have the pink things, I would kind of be no better as if I only let them have it.

We bought bookos for the girls about women who were plumbers and doctors (and both my girls are now pretty successful in a profession) so it did pay off. They are brilliant at sport. One ran the marathon last year and were tom boys on and off of horses as teenagers, show jumping, sking, sailing. You make girls like this. You don't get girls like this if you buy them pink clothes and let them watch lots of awful television programmes.

Also our girls' model at home was mummy makes a fortune and daddy works full time too. Girls with a housewife at home are bound to want to become homemakers so never present them with that role model. Make sure they see that men cook and all the rest.

Where is the OP I wonder?

Look, could it just be that this is what your dd wants and you don't? You cannot force her to be a tomboy if she wants to be a princess. So what if her granny gets her a pink washing machine? You are there to provide the balance. Her playing with a pink washing machine and dressing up as a princess at the age of 3 does not mean that she will grow up to be someone's arm candy at the age of 23. You are reading far too much into things and making a lot of presumptions yourself about how your dd will grow up to be.

As her father you can take her to watch football matches. Get her some power tools to play with (not real ones obv!). Read to her and get her interested in books and reading (which fire the imagination, just steer clear of Pink Princess books), dress her in old clothes and make mud pies in the garden, encourage her to grow a plant from a seed. There is so much you can do to show your dd another side.

But no matter what your dd is exposed to, you cannot change her personality inside and if she is a feminine girly girl then there's not much you can do or should do to change that. But as her father you have more influence than you think. As she gets older you can get her books all about heroines, women who have taken on challenges. My dd is especially interested in Helen Skelton, the Blue Peter presenter who truly is amazing. She is a great example of how women can rise to the challenge and often achieve where men have failed.

And for what it's worth, Helen Skelton is a qualified tap dancer and really quite girly. You CAN embrace both you know.

I like Otterface's answer.

I think it's great to do dad things, or non-princessy things with your dd, too - make it clear that you enjoy doing those things with her as a girl, not as a substitute boy.

I would be unimpressed with the washing machine - but then I loved my toy washing machine when I was a kid (you put real water in and turned a handle) and I have definitley not turned out oppressed by my own addiction ot pink. But I did resent the fact that I got a toy ironing board and my brother got a gun that shot foam balls round corners from some visiting rellies.

My mother was a stay at home housewife. I'm not.
Most women in the 70s and 80s were stay at home mums compared to women today - so what does that tell you? More women are going out to work now and having fulfilling careers and those are women whose mothers stayed at home to bring them up. So that statement is, quite frankly, rubbish.

I had toy guns. My girls had toy guns. Make sure you buy girls things. I adored my pen knife. So guess what I was doing in November? I was camping on my own island which I bought with my own money with a new pen knife and being shown how to fire a real gun and making fires. Girls are what we make them and too many parenst are setting their girls up to earn very little as the housewives and kept women of tomorrow.

Time and again you see families where the boy is choosing a suitable career and the girl is going into some dross low paid career where she will never make any money and suits so many sexist parents down to the ground.

I loved pink when I was a little girl. I had a pink party frock, pink walls and a pink chest of drawers (it was harder to buy much more pink than that at the time). I also like fairies, princesses and pretty much all girly stuff.

I'm a radical feminist now.

Pink isn't your problem or your daughter's problem. If you are non-misogynist, actively work against sexism in your life, not just your daughter's, respect women as other human beings e.g. not blaming the women in your family for the global problem of sexism, and don't do misogynistic things e.g. using pornography, you'll probably be working in the right direction.

Well I know a middle aged woman who describes herself as a middle class princess (without irony)

I hate to say this but by 3 children have a fair idea of gender roles in society. It's as insidious as religion in shaping the future for our children.

However, despite my catholic upbringing, I no longer think myself a catholic and am firmly a radical feminist and proud of it. There is hope for change.

@Therhubarb

My mum worked throughout her life despite having eight, yes 8 children. She is now in her 80s and rose to the rank of vice principal of a primary school.

She did most of the cooking, got her daughters involved with the cleaning of the house, despite having a housekeeper.

I believe that most working women today may have financial security but when it comes to the nitty gritty of housekeeping, the women do the lion's share (including those who get a women in to do the cleaning, ironing, childcare).

I love pink. I have it everywhere in the house and in my car, on the dog, in the garden...
I am also a feminist and raised my daughter to know that to be use her intelligence was more important than using her beauty. She knew that she could do anything and she wanted to be a lawyer.

She loved pink too. When she was a baby I dressed her in unisex clothes and she had unisex toys (it was easier 20 years ago ironically).
By the time she died she was a pink 'princess' but she was still the clever, thoughful and wonderful human being she had always been.

I am very much against gender sterotyping and gender specific toys. I have been shouted down many times by women younger than me saying 'it doesnt matter'

It does matter but pink isnt the problem. The problem is making girls think that they have to like,dress and play with pink.

You have made a good start by being aware of it.

I banned, sneakily hid or banished to Granny's house any toys I deemed too damaging. Dd has always had a mix of toys. Ds plays with all of dd's toys. Both seem to like haing access to a wide range of toys. Wide range is the key.

We have taken dd to many different types of sport. She is now 6 and plays for the Under 9's girls football team. I think she likes it as she looks up to the older girls in the team.

I refer to Doctors, lawyers, judges, politicians etc as 'she or he'. We discuss lots of current issues and I make sure she knows woman are in the professions we talk about. I am not afraid to correct people who automatically refer to someone in a profession as 'he'.

It's constant but it need to be as there are so many other influences out there - the media, peers, films, toys to combat.

Hello again.

I've seen a few really useful tips that we've not already put in place - particularly about augmenting the dressing-up box. DD is interested in the moon, and by extension space, so I think that's a really good gender-neutral area (along with the emphasis on science). I just hope there's some astronaut stuff around for little 'uns.

With regards to the comments about forcing her one way or the other, we are doing no such thing. Toys include Lego as well as shopping basket stuff and a till. And one of the reasons I was asking for advice is that I know well that there can be unintended consequences of forcing one direction or another.

Not sure about the stats, but I guess if a mother stays at home because she believes that's the only valid choice for a woman who wants children is to SAHM, and lets her children know that that is the reason, then she heaps a load of expectations onto them.

FWIW, my mum worked first part time, then SAHM and has a very 50ies housewife style life, but she always encouraged me to seek out a career (and always insisted I should establish myself in a proper job first before having children).

I don't think it's the SAHM'ing that's the issue but the message parents teach alongside it.

I have boys and whenever they say that something was for girls, not boys, I always say: Toys/colours/pink are for everyone.

It's VERY important not to give the implicit message that supposedly girly stuff is only for girls, or even, not good enough for girls, while at the same time signalling that supposedly boy stuff IS good enough for both genders.

So my 6yo DS went to school in pig tails the other day

Op - my has always loved outer space. My dh made a rocket with her from old kitchen and toilet roll tubes. They used maths to get the dimensions right. They also painted it purple and pink. Anyway, apparently it's good to work on a project together and act produce something. Good for self esteem, problem solving abilities and enjoyable. It still hangs from her ceiling, along with all her glow in the dark planets.

My dd that is.

actually produce something.

Do you act in a non-sexist, non-misogynist way though Unimaginative Dad?

I was quite disturbed that you started stereotyping your little girl as someone who would grow into a woman who was "someone else's chattel or arm candy" just because she was playing at princesses and shopping. Maybe you need to examine some of your own prejudices, because they'll have a lot more harmful effect on your daughter than pink.

I would offer a bit of everything.

My DD was total pink princess when she was your DD's age.

She is now almost 10 years old, hates pink and is interested in many things. She likes painting her nails, but isn't worried if they get messed up when she paints or digs in the garden.

I never stopped her having any pink toys, but ensured that there was no mention of "pink is for girls".

More important, I think, is the way you demonstrate gender differences to her. All the gender neutral toys in the world will not make any difference if you do not show her that there is no "women's work" and "men's work".

I noticed when we lived in Germany/Switzerland that it was much less a topic of conversation. I never heard my son say, "that is for girls" until a boy moved over from UK and joined his class.

Oh - I made a rocket out of a big box, it's so big that she has to stand on a step stool to be able to look out of the window. We made some controls and buttons out of holographic paper and she loves it. Cost was pretty close to zero (box was from a parcel, so would have gone into recycling otherwise) and it was a lovely afternoon of crafting together)

It also goes well with her globe - or "my earf" as she likes to call it. She got it for her 3rd birthday, as she was intrigued by the sun going up and down at the time, and we used it to explain to her. Now we always have to show her on the globe where we're going when we go anywhere. Great for illustrating going to the grandparents in Germany, less useful for demonstrating the three km trip to Tesco.

I think if you treat the women in your lives with respect, show that women's lives, concerns and feelings are as important as those of men and don't expect your partner to pick your dirty socks up or do more housework than you, you'll be fine. In other words, walk the walk - do 50% of childcare and housework, do the boring bits as well as the fun bits, do the planning and thinking bit as well as the doing and show that you own the running of the household and the parenting as much as your partner and you will be showing your DD what to expect of a man and to be incredulous that other people out there aren't doing this.

Most little girls go through a pink phase. My DD did for years and she cheerfully yelled along with all the feminist slogans at Million Women Rise this year. If your DD sees you acting as though women really are full human beings, all the pink tiaras in the world aren't going to damage her - your behaviour will innoculate her from all that shit.

WidowWadman - an afternoon's crafting? Well done you guys. It took dh and dd weeks to make their rocket. Weeks of the pair of them disappearing through to the dining room table in the evenings. Bloody perfectionists.

The globe is a good idea too. I loved mine growing up. Also, a world map on the wall. Dd is pretty interested in wars and will put a pin in the countries where there are currently wars going on. Oh, and natural disasters.