Why do I always lean for 'boys stuff' when trying to be gender neutral??

[FusionChefGeoff]

I'm sure it's not rocket science and is about conditioning, but I'm trying so hard to be as gender neutral as I can (DS5, DD2) and yet it is 99% me going down the boys route for DD (she does football, rugby, gets dirty, wears boys clothes, I call her 'buddy'!) - which inherently gives the message that boys are better???

She likes pink so often would choose 'girl's clothes but I can't stand most of it so usually buy for her and go for bright colours and mix of stuff.

BUT! I'm never tempted to get DS into 'girls' clothes to even the balance - as mentioned above, I can't stand most of it so find it hard to see when that would be an option.

PLUS - all the 'girls' stuff is so gendered ie. jeans with embroidery, T shirts with funny sleeves / much shorter and more fitted than boys stuff, I think it is much more likely that people (family and his friends) would comment very negatively. However, it is much more acceptable for DD to be wearing boys stuff...

On holiday, DS decided he wanted to buy some nail varnish so I embraced that and he got a lurid neon yellow and enjoyed painting / wearing it. But DH got very caveman about it - 'no son of mine is wearing nail varnish, he'll get teased' and so I put the view that this gives a message that girls and girl stuff is 2nd class - but then have realised I do this all the time with DD!

Can anyone help me articulate / understand this?

"Why do you need to push the child to be gender anything?
Can't you just leave him/her to choose the clothes and activities that it naturally likes, and be its own person as it grows up?"
That would be fantastic- but unfortunately society doesn't work like that. Children's choices are influenced from an incredibly early age by societal pressures and norms.

I honestly think that we spend far too much time worrying about fixing the pink clothing thing and far too little time worrying about the gender issues around women in the workplace, expensive childcare, why it always seems 'sensible' for the man's job to be prioritized, why men in the UK, clever nice men still often seem to marry or settle down with equivalently clever women and then not move/promote/support with their whole hearts their careers and so on. Why maths/science/engineering are seen as man things in our culture but not in others.

Yes, I don't like either the pinkification of young girls clothes or the more dramatic gender divide. My mum was fighting against it back in the 70's with my lovely brown dungarees and short hair, I felt as plain as a plain thing and envied the girls who were allowed Barbies and wore things with sparkles on, and as soon as I was old enough I feminized my appearance and stayed that way ever since.

You are just spending heaps of time fighting the inevitable, OP, I'd look more at gender roles in your household and how you are truly valued at a very deep level, my girls have gone through the pink phase and out the other side (as pink is deeply uncool to pre/teen or teen girls precisely because it's associated with young girls) and now wear black/green/denim. Is this a victory? I'm more interested in if they are dominated by boys in class discussions and why there's so much street harassment in the UK when there isn't in my husband's culture so my dd feels safer there (and it's not because of what people wear, they wear tight revealing slightly 'trashy' looking stuff in his country!)

It's very important to let your child choose and express themselves. Yes I totally agree to give them equal exposure to all types of toys , clothes etc but let them choose their interests and form opinions from everything you have exposed them too.
I feel choosing for them and forcing your style or clothes choice on them is no different from parents forcing their girl to wear pink and frilly or a boy into blue and red stripy clothes.
It's also wrong to dress your children identically as psychologically you are sending them a message they are not individual but an object.

When I had my daughter I tended to have bright, fun clothing for her because I really don't like pink as a colour but as she got older I thought it was important for her to choose and I'm not going to limit that just the same as I don't limit my son's choices.

They have toys, they do activities and they have clothes, none of these things are gender specific as far as I'm aware so it's no big deal they do/wear what they like as long as they're happy with it.

Fast forward to my now pink loving 4yo daughter and 11yo son are learning a bit more about what is "expected" of them from people around them but I just keep reminding them that people have different views but they will always have choices and it's okay to go against the grain.

It's all you can do, they have the right to make their own choices and express themselves when it comes to insignificant things like clothing!

Absolutely agree @Summerswallow

I've just googled girls' lego.

The first set that came up was an amusement park, including a ferris wheel and a roller coaster. Both of these are stereotypical examples of how we teach young children about engineering and physics. The second was a female super heroes set. It included vehicles. I'd suggest both of these when your DD is in the appropriate age range.

If gender neutral ends up being mostly stereotypical boys' things, how are your kids going to learn to dance, sew or cook? How are they going to learn to be tender, to care for animals, young children? How are they going to learn about aesthetics? How are they going to learn to listen, to co-operate? These are all stereotypically in the female domain.

A large part of it anyway is bringing kids up in an environment where women and girls matter. With both famous women and people you know, always be talking about them- how great they are, stuff they've said, what they're doing. Listen to women's music, read women's books, watch films about women and girls, talk about female scientists, actresses, characters. And if you're a feminist, you'll already be doing all this stuff anyway!

What's the deal with stripes on clothing? Isn't that fairly gender neutral?

I've noticed I do this too with DS and DD. So I bought DS girls pyjamas - grey with pink cats on which he loves (he's 2 and loves our cat). But that's pyjamas, nothing he wears out of the house is pink. I need to let him pick his stuff next time he needs bigger clothes and just see what he likes.

DD I'm happy to dress in all sorts, boy and girl stuff, it seems more acceptable somehow which is silly and I know buys into the masculine = good, feminine = lesser.

What's the deal with stripes on clothing? Isn't that fairly gender neutral?

Are you referring to ALittleBitOfButter's post? If so, no idea. I assumed her posts were parodying the "gender neutral" idea given the comment her children wear fitted plain wool spencers and the fact a Spencer dated from the 1790s and was originally a woolen outertail-coatwith the tails omitted, but possibly not.

It's OK for girls to like boys stuff - boys stuff is cool, who wouldn't like boys stuff?

It's not OK for boys to like girls stuff. Yuck girly girly rubbish.

It's the same with names. No body ever suggests how cute Sara or Iris c would be for a boy........

Haven't read the whole thread but wanted to say to op being gender neutral isn't doing the opposite of what's expected. If your daughter feels happy wearing pink then let her. I don't think clothing is as harmful as other things, e.g. Not letting girls play with certain toys like lego because they are useful in developing certain skills. I don't think there's anything wrong with being feminine... I myself don't want to dress like a man, so I don't expect my daughters to unless they ask otherwise.

Little bird clothing range is lovely, it's nice bright colours if you want a change from pink.

I don't think being gender neutral is so much about girls/boys things it's about choice, my son has a pram and doll, toy kitchen, Barbie hairdressing kit etc, but he also has hot wheels, trucks and cars. Sometimes he plays with his doll others his trucks, it's up to him. If your daughter likes pink let her wear pink but she needs a Choice... I wouldn't worry too much kids know what they like and dislike it's our job as parents to ensure they turn out well rounded adults, not to condition them.

When a friend of mine had boy girl twins I bought some lovely bright clothing for them as a present. I think it was a sleepsuit for one child and T-shirt for the other, both in the same style. She opened the first parcel and said - 'oh Tom will look lovely in that'. When she opened the second she couldn't hide her surprise that I'd bought boys clothing for her daughter!
I think its interesting that your daughter wears some of her db's hand me downs. My ds2 has hardly had any new clothes as he's just had ds1's clothing.

The whole "likes pink" is hugely peer influenced though isn't it? DS likes pink so will choose the pink straw, pink cake, pink bucket & spade etc, but isn't clamouring for head to toe pink everything, because the encouragement for him is "love superheros! Like Spiderman! Like Batman! Like Ironman!". I know those come from school as he doesn't watch them at home.

The boys stereotype is so so much broader than the girls though. And at a young age "boy" toys teach very useful spatial learning.
Colour wise boys get every colour except pink and purple. They get every sport except some bits of gymnastics or netball.
Only dance and crafts for boys are the same level of "alternative" as girls are labelled for sport, computers, maths/science interests.

According to that BBC programme the biggest issue for girls is self confidence and for boys is empathy and expressing emotions other than anger, so that's where I will concentrate my efforts - along with encouraging art, crafts and dancing where ds expresses interest. The rest of the world will "sell" football and computer games to him.

Someone summed it up well to me like this:
'Gender neutral is not about pushing the opposite sex things, nor is it about making everytgung beige. Expose kids to lots of stuff, take their lead and give them loads of opportunities'.

I think some gender neutral parents have it in their head that they've failed if their little girl likes pink or dresses.

Sorry I'm Australian. We frequently have different terms for clothing. Spencer is a long sleeve undergarment but i use it as an outer or under a jumper (jersey...)

Stripes are very much a boy baby thing here. No girl baby clothes have stripes.

museumum and horse riding is for girls too. Ds1 has enjoyed it recently and DP says I shouldn't encourage it as he will get bullied about it at high school.

This was interesting: lettoysbetoys.org.uk/whats-wrong-with-pink-and-blue/

Re: bullying, my parents knew they couldn't change what we would be bullied for (mixed race). What they could do was to build us up in confidence, teach us that bullying is bad and nobody should try to shame you for what you are or what you like, and try to teach us strategies for dealing with it.

I'd rather teach DS to say "you're silly!" than teach him that "girly stuff" is something to avoid.

museumum and horse riding is for girls too. Ds1 has enjoyed it recently and DP says I shouldn't encourage it as he will get bullied about it at high school

Your partner is an idiot then. Attending any race meeting , horse trials or even 10 minutes of watching the Olympic equestrian events on television would show what a profoundly stupid comment "horse riding is for girls" is.

Yes I know that but ds1 has already had some stupid comments when he mentioned that he was going horse-riding. Unfortunately ds1 already doesn't 'conform' in lots of ways (longish hair, no interest in football) so I'm worried he will get bullied at secondary. He doesn't necessarily have the common sense to keep quiet about it and even if he did, I'm sure he'd bump into some girls from his school sooner or later. It's logistically difficult at the moment anyway.

It's a bit o a class issue, too, I've recently found:

The other day I went gift-shopping for a co-worker who's had a baby just recently. We're all in a very well-paid profession and it was a shared gift from the team, so we had a very decent budget and decided to go to the very nice indeed shop that easily charges a 50 for a lousy onesie.

There was hardly any horribly gendered stuff there - the most glaring examples I could find was a navy blue knitted baby cardigan with a hint of a ruffle at the bottom (but nothing that would raise brows on a boy) and a few items in a very dusty pink. And that was literally it in terms of gendered clothing. Pretty much exactly the same thing could be said for all of the toys on display.

Obviously, you're paying through your nose for that kind of stuff. Seems that (where I live at least) not gendering kids may be a bit of an educated upper middle-class thing. Obviously, all the places that sell at normal prices are oceans of pink glitter and blue lorry-appliques.

My inner cynical Marxist was quite honestly wondering if 'we' are now keeping the great unwashed down by making them appear as backward as possible and 'tacky' for their outdated gender presentation. Not saying that's a thing but it sure did cross my mind.

BertrandRussell there's a quote from a (v odd) film that Madonna lifted for one of her singles, that stays with me through discussions like this:

"Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short, wear shirts and boots, because it's OK to be a boy, but for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, because you think that being a girl is degrading."

Museumum that's a great tactic - thank you. To actively 'fill in the gaps' rather than worry so much about being neutral.

This is a great response everyone, it's really helped me to line up my thoughts and hopefully keep BOTH my DC on a strong, equal path!