One thing that I expected upon finding out I was pregnant was the onslaught of 'advice', solicited and otherwise. I have no qualms with advice for which I've asked, of course. But the unsolicited opinions are starting to get rather tiresome. Frustrating...infuriating, even.
Sure, I've long learned how to just smile and nod and tune out the birthing horror stories (I don't really need to know that you were torn five ways from Friday without any medication...shall I give you a medal?). I've made peace with the women who insist on going over and over and over how I should be eating and how much I should be gaining. I can even handle the misinformation about pregnancy from people who have never experienced it.
What's officially pissed me off is the parenting advice. No...not even advice. The demands. Yes, demands! Made by strangers!
One of the most prevalent is that we should raise our daughter gender neutral. Now, in its simplest form, the plan that Corey and I have pretty much fits the bill. Raine will be allowed to play with what brings her joy, whether it be Barbie or Batman. That seems fairly gender neutral to me. And it's not something that we're planning with that purpose. We just want her to be happy, whatever that may be.
But apparently that's not right, you see. No. According to a few people (again, complete strangers), Corey and I MUST ensure that Raine does not see a glimmer of pink. No doll shall grace her room at a fancy tea party. We don't want her to grow up to simply fall into a stereotype. Don't want to raise her to think that it's okay to embrace her femininity. She is capable of so much more.
Fine, Batman it is! Surely that'll keep the people happy. To hell with dollies and dresses. If my little girl is to be looked down upon for being, well...a little girl, then we'll just go the other way, right? That's what these strangers seem to be demanding.
Nope! Keep her away from the action figures and Tonka Trucks! Banish lego from this artist's home! Don't want her to turn into a little lesbian, now, do we? We can't have her growing up thinking that it's alright to be tough and masculine. She's a little girl after all!
Well, now. What the hell are we supposed to do? Give her dolls, and we're setting her up to be the little missus making babies all her own. Give her Hot Wheels and we'll have a drum circling, unkempt, hippy, lesbian with no social purpose.
Screw it! She'll play with what she wants to play with. If she's happy, then I'm happy. If that means she asks her Daddy to join her for tea, and asks her Mum to build an epic lego fortress, then that's totally awesome by us. Because, at the end of the day, my child is MY child. And I will not raise her to be some stranger's poster child for some diluted societal 'cause'.
Talk about a first world problem. Seriously, to those who insist on making such demands on new parents, take your opinions and shove them! If we were in need of guidance, we would ask.
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Comments (33)
I don't think people should give parenting advice unless it's asked for. Everyone raises their kids differently and people have different ways of doing things.
Unsolicited advice can get tiresome, whether it's about pregnancy, parenting, or something else entirely. While you're right, and it's best to just smile and nod, sometimes people just say things that are too ridiculous.
As for your kid, I think you've got the right idea - being gender-neutral doesn't have to be some major cause you're championing. At the end of the day, it's as simple as letting your kid do what they enjoy without pressuring them one way or the other because of their gender. When I was a kid, I played with Barbies and dinosaurs. I had tea parties, and dug in the backyard for bugs. My parents never told me that one was for boys and one was for girls, or told me that I couldn't do something because it was just for boys. I don't see why this isn't the standard, though.
When I was a kid, I was allowed to play with whatever I felt like. I had baby dolls and barbies, but I also had a hess truck and hot wheels car collection. I am not a hippie man hating lesbian, but when I went through my toys to decide what to keep when I moved out...I saved my hot wheels and hess trucks and ditched the barbies. I think it's great that you want your kid to play with what she wants. My great grandma thought it was weird that I liked "boy" toys, but I turned out okay.
ok i do not get this whole "gender neutral" bunk.
let girls be girls and boys be boys and who cares if they play with what toys as long as they are playing and not trying to kill eachother!
my boy plays with babies and my little girl plays with hot wheels.
Yeah, I think people read a little too much into toys. lol My daughter plays with barbies, loves woody and buz from toy story, wears tutu's and has play make up, legos AND cars. She's a happy 3 year old who loves a lot of things. If she wants to have a tea party, well darnit, we'll have a tea party. If she wants to play legos, we play legos. People are SOO overdramatic, I swear. A tea party and a doll isn't going to screw a kid up and neither are trucks and superheroes. Gah! Dur!
Gender neutral is a death trap. I almost got fired from my job for complimenting a handsome baby in navy blue overalls with cowboy bear slip on shoes and a baseball cap. The problem? Handsome baby is a girl, and it is absolutely unacceptable customer service I thought "it" was a boy because they dressed it so. Wow go fuck yourself.
wow i can't believe that, some people are just so crazy with the things that they say we should do.
like when i was pregnant w/ my daughter little Sky Harmony, one of the grandma's was on this kick that she couldn't like pink that it had to be purple and we should make her wear purple all the time and make sure purple is her favorite color, and she just went on this crazy purple kick and how we have to make sure that she's a princess and so on an so forth
i got so frusturated that i said "just shut up! she's gonna like what she likes im not gonna try to push her into anything...jeez" and that was the end of purple talk lol
but i think you should raise YOUR Child the way YOU see best =)
btw i think Raine is just lovely <3
I have boy girl twins, even from the early days the kids gravitates towards the toys designed for 'their' gender. My son somehow knew that toy cars should say "vroom", and without ever seeing a real gun or any shows featuring weapons, he knows to point toys like you would a gun and say bang. My daughter cradled her dolls and she loves to walk around in my shoes and play with my purses. I have offered them each all the toys and the ones for their own gender have been what they enjoy the most.
when strangers would give me unsolicited parenting advice, especially when I was pregnant, I would stare at them with blank eyes and tell them what they said was all well and good but I planned on doing the exact opposite because I fully intend to raise an emotionally crippled, socially inept, and intellectually challenged child. I tell myself I will be more polite with pregnancy number 2, but I am sure that will change when the hormones change.
Man some people are messed up. The idea of letting your child play with what they want is a good idea though. And what's so bad about putting your girl in dresses or pink clothes? When they get old enough to tell you they don't like it, then you should stop.
My big question to those people that want everything to be totally gender neutral is: what are you going to do when your child throws a tantrum because they WANT that gender specific toy you don't want them to have??
@xjadersx@xanga - Agreed. I hated pink as a kid and wouldn't wear it, but if I have a baby girl, she'll be in little pink dresses at least some of the time. All babies look the same, why shouldn't I help people identify its gender?
No matter what gender the baby is, I can *almost* guarantee it will play with the box more than the toy until it's about 3+ years old.
People need to keep their opinions to themselves.
when i was little I was SUPER SUPER SUPER into cars and construction toys.
my sister had a BAZILLION dolls and stuffed animals. My parents never minded that I never like gily toys and my mom, an engineer, was always telling me about different construction equipment, and my dad let me "help" with his projects and took me out "exploring" and they let me watch ninja turtles and bill nye and majic school bus and play school and play with microscope. I loved traditinoal boy toys. loved my dinos and my ships. I loved "nerd" things.
It's really nobody's business how you raise your kid. Gender neutral? That in and of itself is offensive, because what if the child doesn't want to be gender neutral? What if she wants to do everything pink and frilly, like my grand daughter chose to do. Are we to deny the children because we have a political agenda? Or deny boys tonka trucks and blocks and legos only if they have dolls they may not like? Somebody slap me. I'm 58, and this stuff is ridiculous. When my son was 3, all the kids in the neighborhood were girls, and they wouldn't let him play because he didn't have a Barbie. So I bought him one. And that lasted about a month. Just wasn't interested. Gender neutral would have been mean. He liked everything masculine, period. My daughter liked everything books and art, period. Let them be who they are, and don't worry about being required to expose them to stuff they clearly don't care for. Jeeze.
All of this gender neutral stuff is such crap in my opinion. I do not think that denying your child's gender is psychologically healthy or good parenting. Like posters above, I say if you just let your child be who they want to be and make an effort to support them, they'll end up just fine.
its'; totally impossible to raise the gender neutral baby, unless you want to piss off all of your family and friends. At your shower you'll get tons of clothes for little girl from 3months to 18months, so you'd have to throw all that away. Then for birthday and christmas you;ll have to throw all the toys away, too, because she;ll get dolls and little girl things. Just about the only thing you can keep for her are books.
That's just nuts.
I'm not a big fan of giving advice unless asked anyway. When I was a little girl, I remember my uncle taking me to a toy store in Korea to buy me some dolls. After all, I was a girl and that's what girls played with. I literally went straight for this toy gun that lit up and made all sorts of noises. I think I was bout 5 or 6 years old. Anyway. My uncle tried to argue with me about it but I wouldn't budge. He went back to the house and asked my mom what was wrong with me. Did he mean to be hurtful? No. He just thought it odd that a little girl was so adamant in playing with guns and transformers and not dolls and tea parties. It's one of those socially accepted stereotypes. I'm pretty sure that the toys your child plays with won't determine what kind of person they become.
@Erika_Steele@xanga - Oh man, I laughed out loud at that one. Hehehe. :D
Well said! I really enjoyed this article. Your child is YOUR child & she should be playing with what makes HER happy. All these strangers who approached you or spoke to you about keeping her gender neutral to the point where it seems you need to lock her in a white room with white bedding; need to quiet themselves! It doesn't matter what toys she plays with as a child, I played with Barbies & Hot Wheels & whatever else gave me enjoyment & there was never an issue for me. Who I am is not based upon what I played with as a child. The important thing with having a child, is to make sure they're happy & safe. It doesn't matter if they grow up to be bisexual, lesbian, transgender or gay. Who cares? As long as they have a happy & fulfilling childhood! Again, great blog on the badly constructed ideas that keeping your child gender neutral to the extreme is ill thought out.
My daughter had things all on the spectrum.... pink furnature, yellow and green clothes with "girly" shirts. Even some sports shirts that I had to grab from the boy section. Now I have a 3 year old with a PINK room, princess poster, pink kitchen, princess table, princess bed. What does she like to play with? Trucks, soccor balls, Buzz Lightyear, Curious George, Thomas the Train and loves to point out football and basketball games!!! I guess it helps that her father has skills as a mechanic, went to a trade school to be a trucker mechanic, went into the army to be a repair person and loves engineering. So maybe it is in your blood to be "who you are!" I want to put her in girlscouts for the experience but the badges seem too girly for her. I see my daughter being a strong independant person regardless of her gender. God knows I tried introducing girl stuff but she she still loves her THomas the Train.lol. She does have a gentle side with baby dolls but that's about has far as it goes. I got her a boy baby with blue clothes and she loves that thing.lol. So just put in whatever decoration and toys that you went. They'll either play with it or they wont. Id work on "developmental appropriate" toys, not so much trends these days. Im afraid my daughter will wrestle a toddler in daycare. Good luck!
I don't think it matters a whole lot
Some girls like cars and trucks and planes.
Some boys like dolls..
It just.. happens.
Well put ohletitbe. Best post of the week.
My kids can play with whatever they want as far as I am concerned, But
I think it's funny how anytime my daughter gets a hold of toy cars, it alwaysturns into a little family with a mommy, a daddy and a baby car. When my little brother was 2 or 3 and got a hold of barbies, you know how he played? Fighting. Ya, the barbies fought and killed each other. Clearly the choice of toys does not matter.Good for you! Honestly, it's your child and only you have the right to make decisions on parenting. I absolutely hate all the "girl" toys. We get vacuums, kitchens, brooms, babies, makeup, and etc. What kind of message are we sending to our kids? "Here you go sweetie, we've got to start training you early because this is what society feels is appropriate for you!" While boys get firetrucks, race cars, swords, guns, action figures of super heroes, and other toys that encourage wild imaginations. There are tools and work benches now also, but the fun stuff far outweighs the other crap.