Gender roles in the nursery.

[rivka]

In any setting in which the topic of children and gender roles arises, a number of people will immediately jump in and tell the following story. This story is always invariant. It goes like this:

"Before my child was born, I was a really big feminist. I took all these Women's Studies classes in college, and I was determined to raise a completely gender-neutral child. Then [my daughter wrapped her truck in a blanket and rocked it to sleep/my son made his doll's bottle into a gun]. Now I realize that gender roles are innate. I don't choose gender-appropriate things for my child, they're just what my child naturally prefers. How naive and foolish I was!"

There's a long list of reasons why I don't believe this story.

(1) I've read the famous "Baby X" studies, which demonstrated that people vary their treatment of young infants according to their beliefs about the child's gender, even while they insist that they believe in gender-neutral treatment of children. Gender-typed appraisals of infants' behavior and gender-typed adult-child interactions begin at birth, and are not at all limited to people who know that's what they're doing.

(2) The Women's Studies classes these people have supposedly taken apparently failed to provide any information about larger cultural forces (television, relatives, caregivers, peers, toy manufacturers, etc.) which might affect children's gender role presentation, instead giving the impression that parents who buy both trucks and dolls will automagically have androgynous children. That seems like a mighty strange kind of Women's Studies class to me.

(3) I've been around a lot of parents of infants and toddlers. I can count the ones who genuinely provide a gender-neutral environment on one hand, and it's the hand with fewer fingers. If there were really a huge army of feminist parents who provided a strictly neutral environment until their kids' natural inclinations emerged, wouldn't I be meeting more of them?

(4) I've always figured that if something is really innate, then you don't need lots of rules and social pressure to enforce it. Contrariwise, the existence of a lot of rules and social pressures to prop up a given state of affairs makes me suspect that the state of affairs in question is not innate at all.

(5) People telling this story never sound worried, the way you would normally be if your deeply-held philosophical beliefs were rocked to their core. Instead, they sound relieved. And smug.

(I will say that I think there is sometimes a phenomenon in which feminist parents (usually mothers) have a strong preference that their child express anti-typical gender roles. They'll refuse to buy their daughter anything pink, or really push their son to play with a doll. Under these conditions, I think it's unsurprising that kids pick up on these heavy expectations and rebel against them. But that's very different from providing an environment that is gender-neutral.)

I think that the parents who deliver the little speech above sort of believe in gender equality, but also believe, more deeply and strongly, in gender essentialism - i.e., that the genders are naturally and irreducibly different. I think they are parents who would "allow" their boys to play with a doll, but who subconsciously prefer and reinforce traditional role behavior. I think they are relieved to discover evidence that validates their assumptions, so that they can give up the discomfort of their previously-assumed lip service to gender-role flexibility. And I think they are deeply, deeply oblivious to societal pressures toward gender conformity, even as they give these little speeches to other parents that reinforce inflexible gender roles.

How all of this applies to us:
Michael and I are both feminists who are fairly gender-typical in our personal interests. (For example, I enjoy cooking, needlework, small children, tiny fancy tea sandwiches, talking about people's feelings, and Georgette Heyer novels, although of course I also enjoy science, history, politics, hiking, arguing, and being in charge.) As a child, I loved my baby dolls, sewing kit, toy kitchen, and dollhouse. I don't have, at all, a stereotypically feminine interest in appearance, and I purely can't stand the pervasive cultural objectification and sexualization of girls (i.e., the hyperfocus on girls' appearance; "beauty" products and routines marketed to very young girls; clothes which encourage girls to be passive and looked-at rather than active and doing; and the encouragement of imitation romantic and seductive behavior at young ages). But I'm not at all uncomfortable dressing Alex in pastels (including pink) and comfortable-for-play dresses, or giving her dolls and homemaking toys. It won't bother me if she winds up preferring dolls to trucks (I certainly did, and look how I turned out); it also won't bother me if she winds up preferring trucks to dolls. We've provided her with a wide range of toys and books, and as far as I can tell we're both equally willing to rough-and-tumble with her or snuggle her baby doll.

Whether it's because of our parenting practices or because of some kind of natural tendency, Alex has turned out to be a fairly androgynous kid. Her favorite color is yellow. She enjoys nurturing her dolls and building with blocks and cooking in her toy kitchen and playing with trains. She sets up lots of imaginary games about family life, and she eagerly requests books about dinosaurs and space and human anatomy. And books about mermaids. Sometimes she wants to wear a dress to nursery school, but it doesn't deter her from attempting the rock-climbing wall. This weekend she pretended to be an insect, and she pretended to be Cinderella. I enjoy the breadth of her interests - it seems as though she sees limitless possibilities for herself. That's what I wanted for her.

All of this is a long and fancy lead-in to the following confession: Yesterday, in the middle of playing with her train set, Alex took the engine off the train and climbed up into my seat at the table. She held the engine in her hands, talking to it in a quiet voice.

"What are you doing?" I asked her.

"I'm changing the engine's diaper." Then she called out to the other train cars: "I'll be right back! I'm just changing the engine's diaper."

When she came back, she put the engine down, picked up another car, reassured the remaining cars that she would be right back, and went off for another change. She didn't continue driving the train until each car had a clean, dry diaper.

That was about eighteen hours ago, and so far I'm still a feminist. I haven't yet drawn deep conclusions about the innate nature of males and females based on this incident. But stand by!

Comments

[tavella.livejournal.com]

I haven't drawn any conclusions either, except that the story made me giggle like a mad thing.

[geminigirl]

I think I need to file this for my own future reference when I get frustrated. I also would like (if it's okay) to share it with zedrikcayne.

I'm still firmly in the "don't wanna know before the birth" camp.

Oh, and my favorite color has always been green. I am an unwavering pink-hater.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

I sort of gave up trying to enforce gender neutrality, in the face of beloved caregivers (15 month old Christmas: Casper got a doll, male playmate got a motorcycle), family (grandparents were shocked by the idea that we would not tell them what sex showed up on the ultrasound - exact quote, "How will we know what color clothes to buy?"), and, in my opinion worst of all, peers. Alex is a bit young for the peer group issue I suspect - we didn't see it until about 3 - and depending on your preschool environment, other parents may also be gender-neutral-promoters, so it will be less in effect until later. I am fairly certain peers are the reason my daughter's favorite color is pink and she likes princesses - I am just glad she *also* likes Peter Pan and Darth Vader and cowboys. I do regret that I don't live in a community with more gender neutral values like mine, so I could see more of my daughter's real preferences and less of the complex mix of societally-imposed preferences and her ownself.

My parenting-work as far as gender stereotyping goes is to encourage her to question - when she pointed out a "boy" (adult man) who had a ponytail and earrings I initiated discussion of how everyone can decorate themselves if they want to, and many boys don't, but why shouldn't they?

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

That's a really adorable story about Alex and the engine. I don't see how it could be a challenge to feminism, or even to the ideal of trying to resist gender-essentialism in raising small children, unless it were *only* little girls who changed the diapers of toy trains. I just don't see it. I confess, I have not personally witnessed a little boy changing a train's diaper...however, I once saw a little boy (I think he was close to 3) who had tucked Thomas The Tank Engine inside his shirt and said he was feeding it.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the long and lucid listing of why that argument fails.

Thank you, or something, for making me laugh and cough pathetically at the end. :)

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

I did this as a kid, too--I had a whole bunch of little toy cars, but they all got names and personalities. Eventually, some of them got married to each other. :-)

[malibrarian.livejournal.com]

Sarah came home from school the other day and was switching things from her prized Spiderman backpack to her Dora backpack. I asked her why and she said that someone in school told her that girls couldn't like Spiderman. I then sat her down and told her she could like anything she wanted to and she was happier. And we purchased Spiderman boots for winter last weekend.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Remember that your goddaughter in (kindergarten) was invited to a birthday party by a child whose mother thought that said goddaughter was a boy. At the birthday party, your goddaughter's mother learned that the birthday child was himself a boy, though she'd thought he was a girl.

Since both mothers were gender-neutral in their buying decisions, no embarrassing moments for the children followed these mildly embarrassing moments for the moms. I never heard whether the kids knew or cared about each other's genders; I suspect that they knew, but didn't care.

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

*gigglefit*

You are teh kewl.

[tracicle.livejournal.com]

My daughter told me the other day that Superman was naughty and pooed in his nappy, and when she's feeling cheeky she'll tell us we've got poos. I think it's more indicative of a toddler's obsession with bodily functions and control over them. That and they are understanding daily routines that they see around them, for example at daycare. Alex's routine with the trains is exactly how it goes at Amy's preschool.

We have a similar sort of environment to you (except that Mike cooks and I mow the lawns) with the same hope, that our children (one boy, one girl) see unlimited possibility.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Inquiring minds want to know if all the train marriages were male/female.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

Not trains, CARS! Of the "matchbox" variety.

And I'm actually not sure what gender they were, to be honest. I never looked under the hood. ;-)

-J

[tchemgrrl.livejournal.com]

Another thing that bothers me about those stories is that they make it sound as if *one* child engaging in *one* stereotypical behavior means that the kid's gendered path has been set for life. When a 2-year-old boy turns a doll into a gun, it doesn't make any sense to me that an actual feminist parent (or any other parent) would say "Oh, well, the die is cast", and only treat him in a masculine way after that. What happens the next day when he decides his toy soldier needs to take a nap? I enjoyed giving my dolls math tests. What on earth does *that* mean?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Of course! Share it with anyone you like.

I wouldn't have had an ultrasound solely to determine gender, but given that we had a Level II ultrasound in order to look for birth defects, I wanted to know everything the scan revealed. It seemed odd to me to have some random sonographer know more about my baby than I did. (Not that I'm critical of your choice. That was just for me.)

[therealocelot.livejournal.com]

This strikes me as being different from the typical story you described, though whether the actions or interpretations are different is another question. She is antropomorphosizing the trains, but not using them as something other than a train.

It also seems to me that those "feminists" take any evidence of gender-stereotypical behavior as evidence of that these stereotypes are innate, while an alternative explanation might be that the behavior is innate, and not inherently gender-specific (at least not from the child's point of view, eg. my son breastfeeding his doll). A gender-neutral child would be expected to display behaviors stereotypical of both genders, not just those stereotypical of the opposite gender.

(I apologize if this post was simply a lead-up to an amusing story, but it did make me think).

[rivka.livejournal.com]

in my opinion worst of all, peers. Alex is a bit young for the peer group issue I suspect - we didn't see it until about 3 - and depending on your preschool environment, other parents may also be gender-neutral-promoters, so it will be less in effect until later.

Excellent point. I'm actually bracing myself for this to hit next year. I think it's partly to do with the increasing importance of peers as kids hit three, and partly that, developmentally, three is a very big age for applying rules and categories. Three-year-olds can be very rigid about divisions and assignments, where two-year-olds may be largely oblivious and older kids may be more tuned in to subtleties.

My parents are pretty flexible about gender roles, and Michael's birthmother is a big ol' feminist. His father and stepmother are very invested in traditional roles, and his stepmother in particular tries to enforce gender-typed play. I wish I'd gotten a picture of their last visit, when Alex was totally focused on building an elaborate block structure and Betty was sitting behind her with a doll, fruitlessly trying to get Alex to turn around and play with it. (As I said above, it's not that she objects to dolls - she was just very busy.)

I haven't asked how the nursery school handles gender-typed play. They don't have many plastic toys, which seems to do away with a lot of the worst pink-and-blue divisions. The three-year-old room does have a big gorgeous "princess castle (http://www.amazon.com/Melissa-Doug-Deluxe-Folding-Princess/dp/B000NKH0E6)," which they've outfitted with knights and horses and dragons as well as princesses. I've noticed that both boys and girls play with it.

[thette.livejournal.com]

Except for the gender neutral (and "boy") clothes to balance the grandmotherly pink*, the one thing we do with Hulda is that we play very physically. I know that unless one actually thinks about it, it's easier and socially approved to talk to girls and play roughly with boys from the earliest diaper changes. (And I think talking would be easier for us anyway.) We've gotten an absolutely fearless little wild one for that, and I hope she can keep it up even when she starts daycare.

*I don't mind it from my mother-in-law. Hulda is the first baby girl in the family; KJ has three brothers. She can go crazy with the pink and cute if she wants to.

[naomikritzer]

(I will say that I think there is sometimes a phenomenon in which feminist parents (usually mothers) have a strong preference that their child express anti-typical gender roles. They'll refuse to buy their daughter anything pink, or really push their son to play with a doll. Under these conditions, I think it's unsurprising that kids pick up on these heavy expectations and rebel against them. But that's very different from providing an environment that is gender-neutral.)

The version of the story I heard from my own (feminist) mother was more like this. My mother knew a really, really feminist woman who was anti- any clothing, toy, or behavior that would be stereotypically feminine, and wouldn't buy them for her daughter. Her daughter's heart's desire was a pink bedroom, and a bride doll. My mother's moral to this story: If you try too hard to impose your politics on your children, they will dedicate their energy to making you regret it.

I was thinking about this recently after reading Kids by Meredith Small. She noted that girls are believed in our society to be less active and energetic than boys, but actual observation shows that girls will play with equal energy and vigor -- when outside. My older daughter, who's seven, can be very calm and focused -- she enjoys reading, art, and board games, all fairly sedate activities. But at the playground last week, she immediately headed towards the group of boys her age and started trying to get them to roughhouse with her. (They did. I told her to dial it back when their caregiver told them to settle down, but the boys looked like they were having fun too, she's a tough cookie, and I was pretty sure no bones would be broken, so I mostly just let them have at.) I remember trying to get my female friends to wrestle with me when I was about this age, so I understand her frustration. If she were a little older, I'd consider signing her up for rugby or something, but I'm not aware of any rugby teams for girls her age. It's kind of a funny dilemma.

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

Gender essentialism makes me nuts, and it is a running battle I am having with Baz, who is almost-5. "Boys don't...." he says. I ask him "Why not? It might be fun." I don't think he's getting it much at home, as his father is primary care-giver, dinner-cooker, and boo-boo kisser. I do think he's getting it from his peers. All I can do right now is point out that sometimes, it's more complex than what boys do, or girls do. He asked to learn to knit this weekend.

I worry less about just-three Kay. Sure, she preferentially dresses in magenta and a toy tutu, but she does not have any inhibitions about roughhousing, talking, or asserting her desires. In fact, sil and I just about DIED OF PROUD this weekend. Given a choice of all the posters in a store, including sparkly unicorns, she picked Rosie the Riveter. She said Rosie looked like a good person.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Have you given any thought to ice hockey (http://www.minnesotahockey.org/players/age_classifications.asp)? It looks as though there are both girls-only and co-ed teams for Molly's age.

Alex likes to roughhouse with us, and she likes to climb. She is a lot more conscious of her personal space with other kids. Our playgroup friends, one boy and one girl, are both much more likely to grab and climb on each other. So I've always thought of Alex's disinclination for that kind of play as temperamental, not as gender-related.

She noted that girls are believed in our society to be less active and energetic than boys, but actual observation shows that girls will play with equal energy and vigor -- when outside.

...Especially if they're dressed for it. A lot of girls are sent to school in slides, flimsy sandals, or clogs, which make running games rather difficult. I've rarely seen a dress stop a little girl from running around, but the wrong shoes certainly can.

We wound up having to buy Alex's sandals from the boys' department last summer, because the girls' sandals seemed more oriented towards looking pretty than active play.

[fairoriana.livejournal.com]

I'm struggling with Christmas presents for Baz and Kay. It's almost easier with boys because the "nuetral" toys are more boy oriented, or easier. But trying to buy Kay a toy, knowing that she's delighting in femme right now but not being able to stomach Disney Princess or Bratz or Barbie... ugh.

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

She said Rosie looked like a good person.

That is totally adorable. A fantastic reason to put Rosie on your wall.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

She is antropomorphosizing the trains, but not using them as something other than a train.

The idea, I think, would be that by engaging in nurturing behavior with a "boy's toy" she is showing that girls have an overpowering biological urge to nurture. Or something.

I completely agree that a predisposition toward nurturing is species-typical, and will tend to appear in both boys and girls in the presence of appropriate modeling.

(I apologize if this post was simply a lead-up to an amusing story, but it did make me think).

No, no, it was meant to be a whole big feminist thing. ;-) The story is just what made it irresistible to post about this right now.

[therealocelot.livejournal.com]

Good luck. My experience is that this simply encourages people to wait until after the baby is born to buy presents :)

Also, Astrid has a strong preference for pink, which I have done nothing to encourage.

[therealocelot.livejournal.com]

Which isn't to say that I think waiting is a bad idea. I certainly don't regret not finding out in advance, though I'm not sure what I'll choose should the situation arise in the future.