Raising children

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So feminism is seeking new to me! Thank you MN for contributing to my awareness.

What I'm struggling with is how as a Mum/parent we raise our children best? I have DS who is 2. DH & I both work, share childcare & housework etc. I think we both give good examples of equality. However I constantly find people saying that "he's so active because he's a boy/he talks less because he's a boy". We let him pick toys he likes yet he's gifted cars/trucks etc.

How do I raise him to remove the gender stereotypes/influences when the world around us is so keen to pigeon hole? Also as much as we show equality DH always opens doors for me & carries heavier bags.

Sorry if this doesn't make much sense however it does concern me incase we don't set him the best examples

Following as what an interesting subject & I'm also after tips. OP you sound like you are doing a grand job.

As other commenters have mentioned it does seem harder these days. As a child I remember we had toys, they weren't gender specific in our household. Family can be the trickier one.

Certain relatives used to buy me dolls (fine, not sure I played with them the way they expected ). I adored my uncle who got me a train set one year, it was an awesome Holby set - just hours and hours of fun.

Keep all toys neutral and let them play and dress as they wish. As others have said school start is the hard part. I have found myself repeating the mantra - there are no such things as boys & girl toys, only toys. Same with clothes. Mine also benefited from an awesome teacher at school, who also reinforced the "all toys" and that toys are gender neutral mantra. All kids could play with whatever they wanted.

Orlaith great points. Sorry for being unclear as both DH & I work FT, different industries however. We share housework etc and both our families know we share sick days with DS rather that it being "my" job.

What I meant was how many women and men I work with that "expected" me to go PT now I was a Mum., asked me if I didn't feel guilty with him being in nursery etc. DH was never asked that! It's not our families or friends that expect women to take a backseat but wider people we speak to have that view. Love the hard stare!

Thanks everyone some great tips here.

I've been speaking to DH today about some of these things, it's great he's on the same page about this being a part of the parenting landscape we need to consciously manage!

He's also been shocked by some of the wider topics I've picked up here. He also considered himself socially aware but was shocked when I explained women's spaces to him around the threat to refuges and prisons. Made for some interesting education at the park while DS played "like a toddler"

Oh i thought of something else - when referring to animals use she half the time - it is shocking how we use he as the default. The same for if you see a motorbike rider or a fire engine when you can't see who is driving - use she half the time. It's harder than it sounds! It's a small thing but makes females more visible. And read stories about girls to boys.

I personally wouldn't worry. If he doesn't enjoy playing with a certain toy or wearing certain clothes, I am sure he will let you know.

The things I've found hardest to address are clothes- boys' clothes tend toward boring, and all slogans tend to be innately sexist.

Also, implicit bias which people have mentioned already. Don't point out 'lady doctors' unless you also point out 'man doctors'. Perhaps better to say 'I wonder if the firefighter (doctor, police officer, teacher) is going to be a man or a woman?'

It is hard, and it's immensely frustrating that there is only so much you can do. We aren't raising them in isolation and the effect of the wider society around us becomes more and more important as they grow, especially with nursery and then school. And when they hit 3-ish they are intense about putting things into categories, 'girl' and 'boy' included.

I do what I can to counter stereotypes, challenge them directly when appropriate. I think it helps when you have real-life examples to point to in those cases - "boys don't like pink!" "but your uncle so-and-so was wearing a pink shirt when we saw him on Saturday, isn't he a boy?" etc.

It's an ongoing battle though. You can't free them from the effects of pervasive sexism entirely, the best you can do is help them build up a good toolbox of tools to challenge it.

when referring to animals use she half the time

If you're in the countryside, 'she' should be the default for grownup sheep - it's pretty obvious if it's a ram. and easy to tell the sex of cattle. Pretty easy with many dogs too.

Make sure you teach him housework skills! And acknowledge any slip-ups you make - one of Ds teachers is a dr and when I was talking to ds I assumed the teacher was male When he corrected me I was really clear why I'd made that assumption and that it was a good reminder to me to not do that in the future.

I've got a 3yo DD and 18mo DS and they soooo fall into the gender stereotypes. I had this idea that DD was going to be a little tomboy, she'd never wear dresses or pink. Similar to myself when I was a child. Wow, how wrong was I!! She is so girly! Then DS just has his little car he plays with constantly.

My thoughts on it is that it's ok for kids/adults/anyone to be stereotypical. I do think girls are more likely to be interested in dolls and boys more likely to like their trucks. That's fine. Equally fine vice versa.

What I do find sad is that traditional female stereotypes are viewed in a negative manner.

I've got a late primary age DS. You're already a lot of the way there just being aware of the issues and potential problems!

Toys - there aren't "boys' toys" and "girls' toys", just fun, interesting toys and dull ones. (Get him thinking about plastic tat toys and TV tie-ins, versus stuff you actually get a lot of mileage out of playing with.

Challenging stereotypes: Google is your friend. If he comes home from school saying "girls can't do X", a quick google will throw up a wealth of women doing just that! (I think with us it was "girls can't be generals..." - you'd be surprised how many there are in how varied a set of countries!)

TV, especially ads: how are they different for girls and boys? Is it fair? Why are they pushing some messages and not others?

Sports: Unlike a PP, I let my son play rugby and football (he loves both). If your son wants to go in that direction, my advice would be "pick your teams carefully". Find coaches that stress fair play, teamwork and inclusion and bringing everyone up to a decent standard, rather than favouring prima-donnas and strategic diving in the penalty box!

I'm now entering what I consider to be the scariest stage - pre-teens and teens. I know that at some point, no matter how much I supervise his internet use and keep tabs on the parental controls, he is going to see porn etc. on friends' smartphones. So I have to prepare him. Some of this has been an ongoing task from really early. Teach about compassion and mutual enjoyment and consent in a non-sexual context right from the earliest years, and the groundwork is there for later.

So: "It's only a game if everyone's smiling...", "Your friend doesn't want to be bear-hugged/play-wrestled/whatever, right now...", "You don't have to kiss a grown up if you don't want to...", "You can say 'no' to anyone touching you if you're not comfortable...," "You have to listen to other people saying 'no' and stop, immediately..."

Now he's done the facts of life (from me first, then in school) I'm stressing that sex is fun with someone you like and respect, something you do because you both want to, that 'no' means 'no'. That people will show you pictures/movies of people having sex, and sometimes this will be mixed with horrible nasty stuff, because some people are horrible. That nice sex is not like that, and that if anyone shows him stuff that is upsetting, he can come and talk to me about it - that I won't be shocked because someone else has shown him stuff, that I'm here to talk it through and help him to learn a healthy attitude to sex.

Thank you everyone! As always with MN I'm so glad I posted.

Great to hear we are doing some things correctly and lots of things e can incorporate/do more of and begin as he gets older.

For those of you with older kids you sound amazing, I feel so saddened by the normality of porn/sex etc in culture. I was discussing this recently with DH and it seems things were more innocent until recently

The thing I read that stuck with me, was that people engage with boys and girls differently when out and about.

The example was something like seeing rabbits in a field:
To a girl) look at the bunny rabbits, aren't they cute?
v
To a boy) look at the bunny rabbits, how many are there?

Reinforcing girls are into cuteness, boys are into maths & science.

YY Teentimestwo - and it starts scarily early. Neuroscientist Lise Elliot has written a great book called Pink Brain, Blue Brain (which is about debunking supposed sex-differences in cognition) where she mentions various experiments. There were two in particular which stuck in my mind.

In one, very small babies were dressed (at random) in pink and blue babygrows, and volunteers interacted with them - and psychologists monitored how the adults behaved. The pink clad babies were picked up facing inwards and told they were beautiful, the blue clad babies were picked up facing outwards and taken to "explore" the world.

The other one involved slightly older, crawling babies, and ramps of different steepnesses. All were in neutral baby grows, and when supervised by nursery workers, both girls and boys tackled ramps of the same steepness. When supervised by their own mothers, however, the mothers of boys correctly estimated the steepest ramp their sons could manage without intervention, while the mothers of girls tended to underestimate what their daughters were capable of and lift them off ramps they deemed to be "too steep."

Theorem thank you. Great examples.

I can't remember the source but I remember reading a study where most adults interacting with babies in neutral babygrows as the parents did not share the name or other sex identifying data. Whereas where give the opportunity to interact with what had been identified as baby girls they were gentle and tender. While with what they were told was baby boys they would be more playful and bounce the babies about etc.

Another thing I am looking out for in myself is a tendency to compliment girls on their appearance. I now comment on boys clothes as well as girls, and on girls physicality/independence etc.

60 years ago my mother told me that girls don't climb trees.
I pointed out that made no sense as I was up a tree at the time.
She said, "Well, they shouldn't!" and made me get down.
My children and grandchildren climbed trees if they wanted to.
When I see a girl peeping through the leaves, high in a tree, my heart sings.

when referring to animals use she half the time

If you're in the countryside, 'she' should be the default for grownup sheep - it's pretty obvious if it's a ram. and easy to tell the sex of cattle. Pretty easy with many dogs too

Yes- this has to be done sensibly. I was boggled by an MN poster once takling about "male cows"

Lambs and calves are not obvious but adult sheep and cows are- you can pretty much assume that all adult sheep and cows in a field will be female apart from the occasional single obvious male.

Great advice above.,

Teach them household stuff too - they need to leave the nest able to cook, wash, clean, repair a button, rewrite a plug, change a fuse etc. And with the attitude that these are things one does as an independent adult.

Far too many men expect women to facilitate their entire lives - work to bring money in plus raise the kids plus do all the household stuff. Raising boys to do these things as a matter of course because it’s what competent adults do is a big deal (just look at the relationship board.)

Above all - keep talking about it in an age appropriate way. Point out daft sexism where you see it.

Basically: make them think. And model the behaviour you want to see.