Gendered baby clothes

[TeiTetua]

I saw an article about how difficult it actually is to find clothes for babies that aren't printed with stereotyped designs for girls or boys, or made with excess decorations (I suppose that's just for girls). The author raises the question of why people seem to want this kind of thing, and suggests that it has something to do with modern testing that lets parents know the sex (shouldn't be "gender", of course) of their babies before birth. Maybe that's it, I don't know.

www.vox.com/the-highlight/2020/2/12/21078915/gender-neutral-clothing-baby-clothes-target-gap

For anyone interested, this is a good campaign:
Let Clothes Be Clothes

I saw a really interesting bit of research once on the animals depicted on baby clothes. Basically boys clothing tends to feature predators, and girls clothing tends to feature prey animals. There are some exceptions (cats are almost exclusively a "girl's" animal, but are depicted in pinks or with tiaras etc rather than with their teeth showing). I'll try and find it and post a link.

I don't think that on its own it's the biggest issue facing women and girls, but it's definitely part of the whole culture that teaches girls to be pretty and meek and submissive and boys to be loud and fierce and dominant.

Here - "Animals, aggression and entitlement - Boys clothing on the high street"

I didn't find out the sex of either of my babies btw and chose to dress them in clothing that didn't make it immediately obvious, after reading articles about how people will interact differently with a baby if they believe it's a boy/girl. My personal preference is to avoid as much of that gender bullshit as possible for my DC

I bought mostly white and what I thought was neutral for my DS2. But others bought very gender specific clothes for him. I didn't realise until a neighbour recently asked if I had any pre-loved clothes for her newborn DD. A lot of what I had had 'mummy's little boy, 'little bro, etc etc on them, even if they were white!!

"I don't think that on its own it's the biggest issue facing women and girls, but it's definitely part of the whole culture that teaches girls to be pretty and meek and submissive and boys to be loud and fierce and dominant."

Indeed

My DDs both wore dungarees as toddlers - it helped protect their knees if they fell over. I made them out of my DH’s old cord trousers, in black and brown!
Their babygros were all white or yellow. I’ve always loathed pink, and it wouldn’t have suited their colouring. DD1 looks great in vivid red or black, as she has jet black hair and pale Celtic skin. DD2 suits turquoise and wears it quite a bit.
You really don’t have to buy sexist stereotyped shit - there is other stuff out there or you can make your own.

Ps I loathe writing on kids clothing with the fire of 1000 suns. For the under 4s, they can’t read it anyway so wtaf is the point?! Before you even get to the gendered point.

I bought a big box of hand me down baby clothes on Ebay before my son was born. And the only thing in the box I didn't like was a vest that said 'future heartbreaker' on it. Maybe it's silly but I don't like that kind of thing. I saw it in shops too, and tried to avoid stuff that kind of assumed that my son would have a certain kind of personality, if that makes sense.

He has a lot of dinosaur stuff, but he would have that if he was a girl too, because I always loved dinosaurs when I was a kid and I think it's cute. We mostly went with dinosaurs and animals.
I do think in some shops the 'gender divide' in the clothing aisle is massive, but in others it's a little more neutral.
I get why some people want to clearly mark out the sex of their baby by gendered clothes, I put DS in a onesie that I consider neutral (a little fox onesie) and I had several people ask me how old 'she' was. Which doesn't bother me because it's easily corrected but I can see that it might bother some people.

It's impossible to buy boys' clothes WITHOUT dinosaurs on. They are cute but it's annoying. I hate this idea that all boys are supposed to be obsessed with dinosaurs, tractors, cars etc.

@AnotherEmma
I will admit in certain shops we had to make a choice between Dinosaurs, Trucks and Football, because it seemed like those were the only options. Seeing as me and his dad have no interest in the last two, dinosaurs won every time.

I find that Zara is a bit better, I managed to find a couple of neutral things in there for my son including a non-girly t shirt with a cat on it!

My granddaughter has a sleepsuit with dinosaurs on. From the (untitled) girls section in Tesco.

Serially, it seems as though pale are posting on this thread based on their recent memories rather than the situation this year.
There was so much in the media about gendered clothing last year, but this year the stores really do seem to have taken it on board. For girl babies anyway (I've not looked at boys clothes much)

Motherhood was a massive change for commuting to office professional me. It’s a huge change in social status. I loved the little person in my life and it was really easy to obsess about the little person. Shops were one of the few places that seemed really welcoming and it was tempting to obsess about dressing new person in a way that expressed my place in society, my aspirations for that person & etc.
My previous life didn’t give me the basis for home making excellence (no craft skills), so excellence has to be expressed through capitalism. The choice of blue vs pink, cars vs unicorns is just a part of that.
My feminism and my interest in the environment were protective influences. And in my birth family, secondhand and regifting are valued. That isn’t universal.

As the mother of a toddler boy it is definitely still an issue. Despite the fact that there is basically no difference in girls and boys in terms of size at this age, the fit is diffeeent.

...oops posted too soon! I got 2 neutral tops from m&s but the one from the “girls” section was shorter and tighter than the other. Even neutral coloured girls’ clothes have added frills, ruffles, peplums, collars. In most shops you have 3 aisles of girls clothes vs 1 for boys. And for boys flipping trucks and dinosaurs are everywhere, and most things are blue, grey or green. It’s actually quite hard to get red, orange, yellow, purple clothes for boys even though those aren’t really gendered colours. The shops that get it right tend to be much more expensive than the ones that don’t.

I was sad about the demise of a company called, I think, Kids Stuff, which put every one of its prints on every style of its clothing. So all dresses and nighties came in sheep, sharks, flowers, dinosaurs etc, and so did their trousers, sweatshirts and

I suspect they went out of business because everything was so damn sturdy and handdownable that it lasted several children.

I have 4yo and a 6mo boys and have noticed a big difference in the baby clothes on those 4 years. I loved leggings and jeggings for my 4 year old, easy to run and crawl in, easy fit nappy changes and comfy to sleep in when they are still having naps. None of the high street and supermarket brands sold 'boys' leggings so it was a case of trying to find non-girly ones or buying from Blade and Rose etc. Now I've even seen leggings in the boys section in ASDA! I was amazed. It seems easier to buy more neutral and brightly coloured things on the high street that you would have to previously buy from a scandi brand. That said often the boys leggings come with bloody cars or diggers on though so whether it's a win or not I don't know.