Do you think being brought up neutrally makes female friendships harder ?

[hustturnitoff]

I've always found it hard to connect with other women, I work in a male dominated industry too. I just wondered if having background of common girl interests growing up are a bonding thing and I missed out there ?

My mum was an accidental child 15 years younger than her brothers. She was left to her own devices and was very bookish and clever. She would describes her childhood as tomboy-ish.

When I was born ( I'm the oldest) my Mum said she brought me up the same as she had been, rather than a particularly conscious decision. So I didn't do ballet or gymnastics or brownies. I certainly didn't read books on princesses or to be honest I don't know what might be considered girls toys. She dressed me simply in whatever hand me downs she could get. Generally boys stuff as her good friend had a boy a few months older. I cycled and I mooched about, stared out of the window a lot, grew things. I had one doll a neighbour gave me as a gift.

My brother was born 3 years later and did all the usual boys hobbies football, cricket, rugby. I used to go into his room and look at all his toys, robots, vehicles, building stuff like Lego, whilst I had very little. My parents said I never really wanted anything not quite true, but my mum wouldn't buy me stuffed animals or dolls. Now this could of been favouritism or just my mum not having much either. We weren't particularly wealthy growing up in the 80's.

I have a son myself and a younger daughter and I am conscious not to push unhelpful stereotypes into my daughter. We have lots of toys already, but I wondered if I am replaying history again by not subscribing to getting her girls toys? This thread was inspired by a friend with similar age Dc again older boy, younger girl selling loads of her boys toys as her daughter won't want them, she'll want girl stuff.

Pre Covid my DS attended a princess birthday party, with I was so surprised by. All the girls dressed up and two adult princesses running it. I can't imagine me doing this, am I going to be isolating my daughter. Can you princess and be a feminist?

What are girls toys anyway ? I hope it's ok to post here??

Just buy both your children whatever toys they like to play with, assuming they're not pushing any negative stereotypes or environmentally disastrous.

Getting rid of one child's toys if they have outgrown them and their younger siblings don't want them is fine. Making the assumption that the younger siblings won't want them based on sex is wrong in my opinion.

How old is your daughter? Old enough to ask for toys on her birthday? Or make a Christmas list? If she wants certain types of toys can't she let you know then?

Of course being brought up without exposure to popular things can make it tricky to engage in certain topics - e.g. if there is no tv in the house, the children can't talk about popular shows with their friends. But
that in itself shouldn't prevent children from making friends or cause lifelong problems.

Your post seems to talk about several topics and issues and it's not clear what the real problem is here. Female friendship? Toys and stereotypes? Or parental favouritism?

Of course you can be a princess and a feminist. It’s about choice isn’t it, girls shouldn’t be forced to play with dolls or whatever if they’d rather not, but equally they shouldn’t be forced not to either.
Same goes for boys.

It's totally fine to post here. While a huge amount of posts deal with structural problems and threats to feminism, I think it's also important to post about feminist parenting.

Your childhood sounds a lot like mine. I think it's quite hard for women who were very young in the 70s/80s to reconcile what was often a very gender neutral upbringing with the piles and piles of pink that young girls are faced with now. I might be over-estimating your age come to think of it, but what I'm trying to say is that it's not that our mums actively went against the social mores of the times, it's more that those mores weren't really an option.

TL; DR - I'm 50 and attended my first princess party aged 45 on the occasion of my niece's birthday. So you do you, parent the way you want to parent. But just do it consciously - if you feel that loads of pink unicorns and being rescued isn't helpful in your particular family set up, then just don't do it.

i swore i wouldn't buy pink princess crap for my DD. No dolls, no ridiculous princess books.... And what happened??? I have the most feminine daughter you can image! loves everything girlie, from clothes, to books and ballet etc and my son is full on BOY.....

I hope I’m not speaking out of turn, but it sounds like your parents were fine with your brother having all “typical boy stuff” but you didn’t have as much either “boy” stuff, yet neither did you have “girl” stuff? Like, they knew what they didn’t want you to have, but weren’t sure what to replace it with?

I think the crucial thing to remember is that “girl” stuff is just as valid as “boy” stuff. For both sexes. I’m making heavy use of inverted commas because I think all of it is really just “stuff”. Dolls and stuffed animals are a great way of playing make believe and caring. No reason both sexes shouldn’t like those? My younger son has more soft toys than there are grains of sand on the beach, and he is outrageously soppy with them. My older son went through a knitting phase. I hugely encourage all this, and make sure they read loads of books with female and male leads etc. I’ve also made plenty of space for “boy” activities that I know they can bond with their boy friends over, and not worried too much about excessive Star Wars and nerf guns. This comes back to your actual question - I always felt “not very good at being girly” as a child, though I had plenty of dolls and soft toys as well as Lego and cars and all that. I’ve always been a feminist as were my parents. I wish I’d been a bit less awkward or embarrassed about my total lack of knowledge and understanding around makeup, clothes etc - I think it would have been good to know just enough to get by. I suppose I’m saying it’s worth bringing things into the house to help her have common experiences with her peers. Doesn’t mean you have to go all out - I’m sure she will be brilliantly well rounded. I looked with horror at the nerf guns etc when my boys were little, and I just ended up accepting them along with all the other things we brought in, as it gave them plenty of joy and fun. All these things are phases as well.

I’d add that the atavistic princess phase appears to be an intense but relatively short lived thing in lots of the girls I know from my family and kids friends. It wasn’t really a thing in the early 80s when I was little - I remember how we all laughed when one girl got a sparkly handbag as a present, we all thought it was hilarious - but it totally is now. But so many little girls just enjoy it and move out the other side - I’d say don’t make anything off limits like that. Keep her aware of the rest of the world and keep up with other interests. Go into toy shops and say “isn’t it silly how this whole aisle is pink, why does the shop not choose lots more colours for everyone to pick from? And why is this whole aisle black and grey? Isn’t that silly!”

I wouldn't say you were brought up "neutrally" - your brother was given preferential treatment (toys) and you didn't. Was your mother distant at all? Both of these things will have shaped your feelings towards women and these messages we receive as children become deeply embedded in our psyche.

I may be projecting a bit, as my relationship with my own mother causes me to sometimes feel uneasy around women (well, people in general really )

I was one of 3 daughters. I was the tomboy. The other two more traditionally girly. My DM was one of the eldest of 9, she's been heavily involved in bringing up children from a young age. We were all raised fairly neutrally but ended up where we fell essentially. I have an older DD who is quite tomboyish but more girly than I was, and a DS who loved her so called girls toys when young but now is quite boyish. Let kids be kids and they'll find themselves.

Go into toy shops and say “isn’t it silly how this whole aisle is pink, why does the shop not choose lots more colours for everyone to pick from? And why is this whole aisle black and grey? Isn’t that silly!”

Which toy shops do this?

I sometimes think posters on here are fixated on the idea, rather than the reality,
that toys are divided into toys for girls and toys for boys so that they can show what good feminists they are by pointing out how much they disagree.

She'll find her people, she'll probably sometimes go along with what everyone else is doing too. And there's a difference between assuming a girl wants 'girly' toys and letting her have the choice if she's interested.

I think buy your kids a range of toys, and if they want dolls etc buy them dolls!
There is nothing intrinsically wrong or unfeminist about stereotypical "girls" toys, as long as girls are not limited to just those toys. Boys shouldn't be limited to narrow definitions of "boys toys" either. The problem is with the stereotype not the toys themselves.
I think it can be easy to fall into a trap where we look down on things traditionally associated with females. Where a girl who acts like a boy is sort of aspirational, iyswim? This is because stereotypically female things are seen as inferior to stereotypically male things. It's a trap I used to fall into and came from internalised misogyny I think.

It does sound like perhaps you did miss out on hobbies and activities in your childhood and that is a shame. I think to some extent it doesn't matter what the hobby or activity is, as long as the child enjoys it and as long as they are not absorbing sexist messages.
There can be a benefit, though, to groups like Brownies etc and I don't think that all female or all male groups are necessarily sexist (the problem comes if, for eg, the girls group learn only housework and cooking because "that's what females do" and the boys learn only macho stuff and sport "because that's what males do". Actually everyone should learn at some point how to do housework, cook and wire a plug etc because these are lifeskills. Being active is important whether its football, ballet, or simply running around with friends.)

My dd is much more girly than I was at her age (I was a bit of a tomboy) but she enjoys a range of activities, so on a typical rainy Saturday morning we might do makeovers together, and then build Lego. I enjoy the lego far more than the makeover, but my dd loves both and it's all good.

Just let your kids play with a variety of toys and read a variety of books. Bake together, draw together, play together and encourage their interests.

Princesses these days get rescued far less than they did in classic Disney films.

I strongly recommend DisneyPixar's "Brave" if you haven't seen it already.
Adventurous but moving princess film, featuring a loving (but turbulent) mother-daughter relationship and not a love interest in sight.

Don't worry, I can promise you that simply by being a woman you have been subject to more than enough sexist, misogynistic influences throughout your life to have built a solid base of femininity to share a base of commonality with other women.

It’s not ‘gender neutral’ to be fine with stereotypically boys’ toys, but outlaw all stereotypically girls’ toys.

That’s really insidious - and is not sending some ‘gender neutral’ message at all. It’s implicitly saying that girls things (whatever they may be) are not OK or acceptable.

This isn’t about forcing boys things on boys, or girls (pink, princess-y) stuff on girls.

It’s about letting kids play with whatever they want to play with - toys - and not deciding they’re OK / not OK on the basis of who they’re stereotypically aimed at. Just let kids play with what they want!

You would think the gender neutral brigade would get this, above anyone...

It's fairly common for parents who want to reject stereotyping to reveal, instead, that actually they are ok with male coded things but think there is some kind of problem with girl coded things. The message kids get from this is often, things associated with traditionally feminine pursuits are lesser.

You will also find some parents who are ok with the "girl" things so long as it is boys playing with them, and they may tend to disparage "boy" things for their sons as encouraging toxic masculinity. Interestingly these ones are very often sucked in various forms of gender ideology.

Really, it mostly is not a bg deal whatever kids want to play with. Nor it is it a big deal if they go through phases of particularly wanting to adhere to feminine or masculine cultural norms, that's a normal developmental stage, and they grow out of it in so far as they realise that these things are generally pretty fluid in reality.

In hindsight I would say one of my boys might have found it easier with other boys at school if we had encouraged more ' boyish' interests and let more boisterous behaviour slide at home. I think we often talk about the pressure on our girls but not so much on the boys to conform and find their way through male relationships as they grow.

@MissBarbary

Go into toy shops and say “isn’t it silly how this whole aisle is pink, why does the shop not choose lots more colours for everyone to pick from? And why is this whole aisle black and grey? Isn’t that silly!”

Which toy shops do this?

I sometimes think posters on here are fixated on the idea, rather than the reality,
that toys are divided into toys for girls and toys for boys so that they can show what good feminists they are by pointing out how much they disagree.

Before it closed down, our local toys r us was exactly like this, and the bigger stores like smyths toys etc have entire pink aisles as well. Even in the entertainer, you round the corner and it’s pink all the way, or you get to the “craft kit” section and it’s practically impossible to find one with a boy on the front of the box - unless it’s a science kit. Smaller “nice wooden toy” shops don’t tend to have this as much. But bigger shops definitely do! It was only about 8 years ago I remember being in the Boots toy section, and they literally had half the section labelled “boys” and the other half labelled “girls” and ALL the science kits were on the boys side, and the girls side was all little boxes of tiny fairies and clippy fairy accessories, and a perfume kit. I spent 5 mins swapping it all over.

I agree with previous posters that your upbringing was not neutral. It sounds as if traditional girls' toys / games / clothing / crafts were not valued by your family. I'm no therapist but I imagine that's bound to have left its mark and this is absolutely the right place to talk about it.

Don't get wound up about this. That's a sure way to cause problems. I was a tom-boy, my daughter was considered unusual because she preferred and was very interested in 'boy's' toys. We both have lots of friends but we are also both quite strong minded. Relax, that's the solution.

Best to develop minds rather than dress sense and toy choices

@whattodo2019

i swore i wouldn't buy pink princess crap for my DD. No dolls, no ridiculous princess books.... And what happened??? I have the most feminine daughter you can image! loves everything girlie, from clothes, to books and ballet etc and my son is full on BOY.....

This. I am very neutral and my children are the boysiest boy and the girliest girl.

Also, I hate that the things that girls want to to are somehow seen as inferior? My boysy boy also loves to dance and will play imaginative games with his sister, plus I just read him all the little house books. She is a holy terror in a fluffy frozen dress. She loves Elsa and Anna. She also is the youngest child of her generation and the only girl, so incredibly tough and resilient, almost thuggish to be quite honest. A thug with a wand.

Take her into home bargains and see what she WANTS to get.

Also, reading reading reading. The ability to project yourself into other people’s scenarios is vital.

I think it’s almost more boys who get let down these days, I was in hamleys with my son and something happens from the age of 7, apparently all colouring, crafting, creating, drawing etc are only for girls? Wreathed in pink that boys have been taught is not for them.

I was born in the 1950’s, OP. A more sex stereotyped, anti feminist decade would be hard to imagine! At school, the boys did woodwork and metalwork, we girls did cooking and sewing.
Virtually all the girls in my form internalised the misogyny. They were careful not to appear studious, they deferred to the boys and seemed to be interested in nothing beyond make up, clothes, crushes on pop stars, and who had the best looking boyfriend.
I had absolutely no point of contact to establish a friendship with them. I was autistic and a feminist, studying science subjects, top of the class in all subjects (except cookery, lol!) had no interest whatever in fashion or make up, and my only crush was on Mr Spock of Star Trek, whom I worshipped for his logic and intellect.
I had a very lonely adolescence, with no kindred spirit, either male or female. I sat and read books during break times.
I am sorry if your DD risks the same, but I don’t see how one can feign interest in sexist crap to make friends with girls who will never reciprocate with interest in one’s own hobbies.
My salvation was university, where I found my tribe. And in later life, the bridge club, where I think over 90% of us are autistic, and none of the women are into pink unicorns!
My only suggestion is to give DD a feminist upbringing but encourage lots of hobbies, crafts and sports etc, where kids of either sex can bond over the shared activity. That way, she won’t have to perform stereotypes to make friends.

I think you're overthinking this OP. I don't think the way you were brought up was unusual at all.

I grew up in the late 70's, early 80's. I wore 'Tom boy' hand me downs because, like you, lots of people had no money and that's what we did.

I played with Dinosaurs, trainsets, Rubik's cubes, footballs, bikes, scooters as well as a few dolls and a Girls World that I turned into a Punk. I had an older sister who did the same.

I've grown up loving the company of women, and find it easy to get on with men too.

I have a dd and a ds. As a child my dd never did the 'Princess Pink' thing. To be honest I briefly worried that she would stick out among her peers. While she was never the 'popular' girl, she always had good friends, including boys. Now she's 16. She's got strong female friendships (which to be honest a lot of other girls are shaky on). She still stands out a bit in that she hardly wears make-up and never a skirt. However nothing has held her back in friendships etc.

I sometimes hear some mothers say things like "ohhh I don't know what do with a girl because I don't like pink and princesses myself etc". It's just crap (sorry). There's sooooo many girls who don't go in for that, and so what if they do. It's just playing. It's not 'who they are'

I think it would be more helpful to get rid of this whole ‘boys/girls toys’ altogether. How is Lego a boy’s toy, it’s famously unisex! As with vehicles, women drive don’t they? Dolls for boys - men have children don’t they? My brother and I had a range of toys and both played with Lego, cars, robots, dolls, mini-kitchen etc. We both used to dress up in traditionally ‘boys/girls’ costumes as well. I feel very relieved that I wasn’t expected to play with one or the other. In fact, I may have questioned whether I was a girl if I was expected to only play with dolls etc as I didn’t find it as interesting as Lego. It’s not helpful, let them play with what they want, but make sure they have an option. I have great friendships with both men and women women and work in a very male dominated industry (engineering - probably all that Lego!!). I don’t feel any less feminine!

I think my parents were genuinely nearly neutral (OK, my sisters and I had skirts sometimes, and my brothers didn't). All of us learned canoeing and had pets rather than dolls-and-football.

All of us are about equally odd as a result.