Anyone who has taken a Women’s Studies course in college learns that
gender is a social construct -- that from Day One, girls are dressed in
pink, handed dolls, and expected to be sweet and pretty. Boys are
wrapped in blue, given toy cars, and taught to be tough.
But anyone who has kids knows that that’s a big blue truck full of
crap. My sons can stare at pictures of tractors, monster trucks,
diggers, excavators, concrete crushers, fire engines, police cars,
mobile cranes (you get the idea) in a book for hours. Sure, they’ll
accept a baby doll and pretend to feed it a bottle…for about half a
minute. Then they club the poor thing on the head with a truck. Every
parent I know has something similar to say about the gender-based
leanings of their kids.
But still. This story about a Swedish couple who refuses to identify their toddler’s sex,
in hopes of letting the child grow up without the limits of either
gender, gave me pause. Only a few people who have changed Pop’s diaper
(yes, the child’s name is “Pop”) know the truth. “We want Pop to grow
up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mould from
the outset,” Pop’s mother has said, according to The Local, a Swedish
news site.
The ethics of this “experiment” aside, it reminded that me every
parent has a different agenda when it comes to nurturing (or not) their
child’s gender identification. This family has taken an extreme stance
against what they believe to be stereotypical socialization, but many
parents I know also go out of their way to steer clear of the whole
pink-blue juxtaposition, disavowing anything princess-y for their girls
and enrolling their boys in dance classes.
And as much as it seems obvious to me that my sons are “boy boys,”
this story made me own up to my own weird ideologies. My wife, Emily,
and I are raising our twin sons as two moms. Ever conscious that there
still remains a degree of bias against our family in this country, I
often (and this is the first time I’ve even admitted this to myself!)
dress them super boyish, so as not to give anyone any ammunition
against the idea of two women raising boys. I think I’m unconsciously
afraid that people will think we’re “turning” our sons gay if I dress
them in pink or if they’re seen playing with a doll in public.
Ridiculous, right? Right or wrong, I think we all have our fears and
prejudices that influence our parenting decisions.
Not sure where I’m going with this, but I’d love to hear what
everyone thinks and how you handle you encourage or discourage or
ignore gender stereotypes. Maybe Pop’s parents have a point?
