When Hannah was a baby I didn’t buy her pink clothes. It was an effort on my part to avoid the stereotype, to try not pigeon-hole my daughter or make her feel that I expected her to fulfill a certain role. (Keep in mind that she’s my first child, so I may have been overthinking things when I believed that the colour of my 10-month-old’s clothes would affect the course of her life.) I tried to be as gender neutral as possible. I wanted my daughter to feel free to be herself, to value herself for who she was, instead of trying to live up to someone else’s expectations.
Hannah loves fancy shoes.
But then, one day, my opinion ceased to matter. Hannah found her voice, and refused to wear the clothes I picked for her. She now loves all thinks pink and frilly and sparkly. The more girly it is, the more she wants it. Her favourite pair of shoes are Disney princess flip flops, which are pink and sparkly and light up when she walks. They are not even remotely comfortable, but she would wear them every day if I let her.
I can try to avoid communicating gender stereotypes all I want, but my kid lives in the world and she soaks them all up. She is doing her very best to live up to every little girl ideal of what it means to be female. At this point I pretty much just go along with it. I remember being 4 and loving Cinderella and Barbie and dressing up in tutus. Today I work in a non-traditional field, and I wear very practical footwear. I realize that mostly this is just a big experiment, trying on different roles and figuring out what works and what doesn’t.
Jacob and his not-so-manly hairdo
And now I have a son. And he comes with a whole other set of gender stereotypes and societal expectations. Once again I find myself navigating the waters of what it means to be a boy or a girl and how to communicate that to a very small person. Jacob is far too young to understand this. He’s far too young to express any preferences that he might have. But he also lives in the world, and is also subject to its forces, and I struggle with how to balance it all.
Ironically, it turns out that I have far fewer problems with dressing Jacob in clothes that are characteristically male than I have dressing Hannah in clothes that are characteristically female. I will dress Jacob in clothes that are sports-themed, or pirate-themed, or covered in cars without a second thought. I don’t worry that he may never actually like baseball, or that I am communicating some unspoken expectation. It doesn’t cross my mind. I guess that being a woman I have far more baggage about ‘girl’ stuff than ‘boy’ stuff, and my parenting reflects that.
What about you? Do you struggle with issues of kids and gender identity? Do you love the Disney princesses, or do they make you cringe? I could use all the help that I can get!
And on a slightly lighter note, check out my recent snapshots on my Flickr photostream.
If my daughter wants to wear frilly, pink clothes and act girly I’m okay with it. If she wants to wear heavy boots and jeans and act rough and tumble I’m okay with that, too.
She’s her own person. My job as a parent is to give her guidance as she grows, not mold her to what I (or stereotypes) think she should be.
I can remember loving it when you watched Wonder Woman or any other show where the female was the hero. I didn’t want you to grow up believing only men were strong & wise & good problem solvers. So, maybe I influenced your decision to ensure Hannah was not raised with expectations of what ‘girls like’ or ‘girls do’. Don’t know if we can avoid that as parents; however, letting the children express themselves, with a bit of common sense guidance, is still letting them be who they are.
I think I may have felt the same as you if I had had a girl first. I had a boy, though, and I didn’t overthink what to dress him in (although I found it amusing when he tried to pull lavender frilly dresses off the hangers as I wheeled him in his stroller through Gymboree). I didn’t know what I was having either time, but with my second I was determined that even if it was a girl I wouldn’t dress her in pink. Then she was a girl, and the avalanche of magenta and sequins descended and I totally caved in to it all (she was bald until she was one and a half, so that played a part also). The D.P.’s kinda make me cringe, but I don’t bar them from the house (I figure that would just make them even more attractive), and Eve loves a good tea party in a ball gown but is also into batting practice with Daddy, in which she tries to nail him with the whiffle ball and laughs uproariously when she does. I think if they’re strong-willed enough to express their preferences, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and we’re better off to pick our battles elsewhere (they’re not allowed to judge anyone on the basis of skin colour or like Barney
).
Not a mom yet, but NO character shirts on either gender. It hurts my stomach to see little kids I love dressed in cartoons.
I don’t mind feminine clothes, should I be so lucky to have a little girl, even bright fun pink clothes. But sparkly, neon or really bright clothes are a no-go.
For my son I tend to avoid sporty stuff as we are not sporty people…when he was wee we dressed him in bright cheery coloured stuff..try to stay away from logos.
Same with caity..SHE is the one who has picked the pink the older she gets.
Adam now pretty much picks his own stuff and dresses himself..and still picks by colour more than logo or style…he does pretty good.
I don’t cringe at the disney stuff..my obsession was never as great as caity’s but she also loves zombies so I figure she is pretty balanced in a trampy freaky bratz way!
This is such an interesting topic, because I find that with my two, they’re simply drawn to their gender stereotypes.
I’m not overly girly myself, and yet my daughter loves all things sparkley and frilly (“Oh, it’s so cute, Mommy!”).
My son, on the other hand, in spite of being at home with Mom and older sister while Dad is at work, is a total BOY, loves clothes with cars on them, and his favourite colour is “BYOO!!” (blue).
Go figure.
Amber of TheAmberShow – I used to feel that way too, about characters, but once I had my own kids, I was so endeared by their “character worship” that I gave in and let them wear stuff featuring their faves (i.e. Dora, Thomas the Tank Engine, etc.) My daughter has kind of outgrown it and now wears “kid sized adult clothes”, but my son still loves his Thomas and Lightning McQueen stuff.
My daughter (almost 4) is not super-girly. She has some interest in sparkly shoes, clip on earrings, necklaces and jewelry, but sometimes days will pass before she shows an interest in those things again. She plays with cars and trucks as well as dolls but is not obsessive about them. She happily wears jeans, overalls or boots somedays, and dresses and tights on other days.
She doesn’t seem to ‘get’ that our culture has gender stereotypes. We were shopping for a birthday gift for a boy the other day and she kept suggesting things like flower shaped sponges, butterfly tattoos and sparkles. I tried to explain we couldn’t get those things for a boy because we don’t know his parents well enough to know whether they would be offended by such gifts or not.
She is beginning to understand that boys don’t wear pink, however.
She doesn’t really know who the Disney princesses are, having never seen the movie (I’m assuming there’s a movie?), but I’m not put off if someone gives her Disney princess things.
In summary, it’s a non-issue for us. She seems to be heading down the same path of androgyny as her parents.
My parents did a good job of showing me I could succeed in roles that are not traditionally female (engineering, for example), and I used to wonder how to best do that for my children. Now I have two boys, and I guess I won’t have to worry about them being told that they can’t do math or computers! However, Q-ster loves dancing and cooking right now, and while everything passes in phases (Star Wars is hot too), I strive to make sure that those more traditionally female hobbies are open to him too.
Your kids are amazingly cute! I sometimes struggle with this too. I think about some of the things that I wanted to wear (and did) and I survived…