As a reward for being born, Big Cuter received maroon overalls with bright pink piping from a fashion-forward colleague of mine. She was mildly concerned about the pink stripe; TBG and I were not concerned. The only problem was finding socks to match. I carried my baby into the upscale boutique around the corner, hoping to match the pink.
He's a boy, said the sale clerk.
Yes, and the stripe is pink.
He's a boy, she repeated, and so it went, around and around until I finally had to gently mention that if wearing pink socks at 2 months of age was going to have an impact on my baby's gender identity then I already had more problems than I could imagine. I bought a pair of pink socks, put them on his feet in the store (to make a statement), and left.
Fast forward 16 months to Thanksgiving. Picking gifts from the Sears Catalog for Nannie to purchase for Christmas, I circled an anatomically correct plastic boy doll. When Big Cuter took him out of the wrapping, he was nonplussed. This is stupid, he said, throwing the doll over his shoulder, never to look at it again.
Little Cuter grew up in a house with more cars and trucks and things that go than any little girl I ever knew. She named them, put them in her doll carriage, and pushed her plastic and metal four wheeled babies around the house.
TBG and I really tried to raise our kids in a gender neutral household, but character got in the way. There was no way to convince Big Cuter that Chester the doll with all the relevant body parts was an appropriate plaything. Little Cuter liked running the cars and trucks down a slide into the kiddie pool, but would have been happier if we could have put wheels on the backs of her dolls.
Big Cuter and his friends played with the Barbies we accumulated, but only as sacrificial victims falling to the power of their GI Joe's, He-Man, and Transformers. While his little sister crawled on all fours, being a dog or a kitty, looking for love and a bowl of milk on the floor, my big boy was creating traps and weaponry out of scotch tape and toilet paper rolls.
I made certain decisions about parenting a girl, but the only ones I could see through to completion were superficial at best. I never cut bangs for her. I allowed her to wear mis-matched outfits to school. Combing her hair was a battle; with a headband keeping it out of her face I'd let her go off to school relatively unkempt. I taught her to accept a compliment with a sweet smile and a Thank You.
She set and cleared the table, but so did her brother. She turned her dirty clothes right side out before putting them into the hamper, but so did her brother.... and if they didn't, they got them back, folded, inside out. They made their beds and did their homework and took turns sitting in the front seat of the car. We were conscious about keeping thing relatively equal and fair, looking to both of them when they were taller than I to reach things from the top shelves, to carry the heavy suitcases out to the car, to deal with whatever disaster impinged on our lives.
There were decisions to be made - from their names to the expectations we had for their behavior. We tried to be open minded and thoughtful and kind. We tried to listen and to see thing from their perspective. We tried to be gender neutral.
We did pretty well in most things, even if we couldn't quite get Big Cuter to love Chester.
And I'm so glad you did! It's such a gift to give your kiddos the freedom to actually BE who they are, shopkeepers (and elected officials) be damned.
ReplyDeleteIf the recipient of the parenting is happy, then I guess I did a good job!
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Sounds like you did a good job. I'm convinced that some parts of gender identity are hard wired (like Little Cuter and her car "babies" and Big Cuter using anything available as a weapon).
ReplyDeleteI rarely agree with Freud, but I have to admit that boys like long tubular objects and girls like boxes. Just sayin'
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I never thought about gender as something I needed to concern myself with when I was a parent. I encouraged both our kids to play with what interested them. The big thing for me was people don't have to fit in a niche. They did play with her Barbies and his GI Joes, but squirrels and other animals were also characters. She got mad at me one year when she wanted me to play Barbies with her and mine was a truck driver. She was the one offended but the lesson stuck-- women can be whatever they want. I got that from playing with my brother where we often played army or used my Wild West town for our imaginary stories. I also got it from my mother, who didn't worry about whether a job was one for a man or woman (although so far as I know Dad never cooked a meal). Mom though took on tough jobs as did I through the years.
ReplyDeleteSetting a good example is huge. I made my kids crazy by pointing out gender missteps. And it worked, I suppose. Big Cuter is a feminist, (though he'd probably refuse the label, saying he's just doing what's obviously right) and Little Cuter's validation is two comments up. Except for refusing to teach me to change a tire ("wear a short skirt" was my father's useless advice.... in Ithaca, in the winter, Daddy??) but my brother came to my rescue and introduced me to the tools) my father assumed that the world would make a place for the wonderfulness that was his eldest child.
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I made sure I watched what they did. We limited TV a lot when they were small. They could choose what but like just a few hours a week. One show they liked was Happy Days, considered innocent by most but I pointed out the things I saw as disrespectful to women. Those were the years that seemed humorous but I didn't see it that way. Little things sometimes turn out to be bigger than we think
DeleteI like your thinking. Our daughter was so independent from the day she was born that she made her own decisions and we lived by them! It's still that way and she just turned 40.
ReplyDeleteAs Little Cuter tells FlapJilly, "As long as it's safe, I support you!"
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