Wingstaff writes: I am currently a stay-at-home mom to two boys. My husband is Active Duty in the Air Force. We are your ‘traditional’ white ‘All-American’ family. We are also very liberal and I am trying to raise my sons in the most feminist way I can. My husband and I are originally from the US West Coast, moved to the US East Coast three years ago and are slated to move to the United Kingdom next month.
It has started. The yearly inundation of ads for new toys that will be available just in time for Christmas. I can’t complain too much about how ‘it gets worse every year’ since my oldest son is only four and he didn’t really start noticing toy advertising until about a month before Christmas last year. However, this year he wants EVERYTHING. Seriously. Everything.
As long as it’s not a girl toy.
Every boy toy commercial ends with him turning to me and saying, “I want that. Promise me I’ll get that for Christmas.” Luckily my stock answer, “We’ll see.” is holding strong with only the occasional reinforcement of “Make sure to put it on your list for Christmas.”
Every girl toy commercial ends with complete silence. I do my best to combat the message he’s getting about what is and is not appropriate for a boy to play with. When I hear mutterings about how pink is a girl color or how he can’t play with dolls, I remind him that colors are just colors and toys are just toys. All colors are beautiful and toys are for anyone who has fun playing with them.
OK, mostly I get out “You can like anything you want” and then he loses interest and walks away.
But lately there has been a lot of “We’ll see” floating around. Santa is going to be making a lot of choices about what is appropriate for a four-year old (and, seriously, why do they advertise toys for 8+ during pre-school shows? It’s just a recipe for heartbreak since even if the parent does buy the over-age toy the preschoolers have no idea how to play with them.) Unfortunately Santa is also going to be basing his decisions on what can be shipped in advance. We’re moving to a different continent three days before Christmas.
There is a lot of angst regarding Christmas this year in our household.
Most of the angst has to do with the physical realities of moving two adults, two kids under the age of five and two cats across the Atlantic Ocean. There will be a very long flight involved. A flight where all I’m hoping for is that the two kids will sleep.
We already live across the country from all of our extended family, so the kids know how to fly. However, one of the biggest issues we run into on the plane is how to keep the kids comfortable when they actually do fall asleep. We’ve used coats, shoulders and overly large stuffed animals as pillows. None of them were very successful.
So when the Pillow Pet commercial returned to heavy rotation, instead of “We’ll see” the response was “Next time we see them in the store, you can pick one out.”
A few days later we were on a shopping run at the mall when we ran across a display of Pillow Pets. There were only four animals to choose from: dog, ladybug, bee and unicorn. The dog, ladybug and bee were relatively gender neutral since they were really just cartoony versions of the actual animal. However, the unicorn was obviously a girl toy – lavender purple body with a bubble gum pink mane, tail and horn.
I geared myself up to buy yet another version of a stuffed dog when I looked at which animal my oldest son was actually holding. It was the unicorn.
Given his general stance on ‘girl toys’, I asked him twice if the unicorn was the one he wanted. He replied yes both times with quite a bit of irritation at my doubt.
Once big brother had picked the unicorn, little brother had to pick it too.
That moment felt like a tangible feminist mothering win. The unicorn was definitely the prettiest of the choices. It was also the closest thing to a horse, which is the animal my sons are currently obsessed with. My son knew it was a girl toy but chose it anyway because he liked it best.
I feel like I’m now up a point against a culture that spends much of its time socializing boys to choose the opposite of the ‘girl’ option. I know that my victory will probably be fleeting and that in the future I will have to work to make sure he is not ashamed that he did choose the pink and purple unicorn, but in that moment my voice was the strongest.
On the way out to the car, I asked my oldest son what he was going to name his new pet. He decided to name her Miss I Love.
First, thanks to your husband for his service and for you and your family for supporting him. It’s not just the service person who changes his/her life to join the military.
As the parent of a grown son and a grown daughter, I have to say that the gendered toy problem is not one of the more important parenting issues we face. It’s annoying and frustrating that toy companies feed the nonsensical stereotypes that exist in our culture, for sure. But kids are going to play the way they want to play regardless of what specific toys are available. If you have a good range of choices on hand, that’s about all you can do.
It also sounds like you’re giving them the right messages about colors and toys. (Laughing at the silly ideas in the commercials is always a good strategy.) I trust that they’re hearing the same thing from your husband as well. His example will be enormously important as your sons grow up, especially once they start school when peer influences will become very powerful.
You don’t always know if your words are getting through as a parent. But now and again you score an unexpected victory, so then you know that the kids are listening, even if they don’t act like it.
Good luck with your move!
Good luck with your move!
I’ve got a 15 month old son, and have spent the better part of the last two years beating my head against the “this is for ____” wall. I cannot stand it. The toy catalogs this Xmas nearly put me over the edge.
Good for your son for picking the unicorn, and good for you for giving him the space to make that choice. I fear the biggest hurdle my son will face (other than the media – which is so.damn.pervasive) will be other parents. I see it at the playground already, and some days I am almost brought to tears with my frustration.
I never want to hear “that’s for girls” in my house, and hope oh so badly, that I will be able to lay the foundation for acceptance and understanding in my son.
I have a nephew who really wanted a Barbie doll a few years ago. I don’t know if anybody ever got him one. There wasn’t outright derision over it, but it was treated as kind of a joke. Like aww isn’t that adorably weird. It’s just a female action figure, really.
Sweet story, and good luck with the move!
We never had much of a problem with gendered toys, but something that drove me nuts was how gendered kids shows are, even the better quality ones. For example, all of my kid’s school principals were women and all of the ones on the TV shows and movies he watched were men. He had lots of friends who were girls, though, so I never saw him internalize the message that women and girls don’t do stuff.
I’ve got 2 boys (13 and 10) and I sympathize with the toy thing. As MM said though, they kids are going to play how they are going to play. The most important thing is the toys you allow in your home. This is easier with relatives living far away, as you can toss that toy gun in the Goodwill bin, and keep the marble run. With relatives close by, they might wonder where their cool “boy” toy went.
And on the TV thing, it’s weird, both my kids watched a zillion hours of TV between the ages of 3-6, mostly kids stuff, a lot ad free, but not all, and at about 6-7yo got really exasperated with the ads and lost interest altogether. This has happened with a bunch of other families I know. We all survive on Netflix or on demand shows now. If parents model how annoying the ads are and show how to watch shows without them, most kids choose without.
In some ways, I think it is easier to raise feminist boys in a boy only house. I have only my two to do stuff around the house, so they do it. They can’t expect a sister to do it. I don’t have a girly daughter (it happens) wanting Disney princess movies, and I can control what type of movies they see which have balanced character development.
I must go, but appreciate the stay at home mommy guest post!
Good luck with your move! I hope that the flight went well, and that some sleep was had to help mitigate whatever jet lag you’re dealing with now.
I think that appreciating and celebrating the little victories is very important – it can get so easy to become demoralized by all of the ‘X is for GIRLS and I’m not a GIRL’ messaging that’s out there. I think that Miss I Love will be a good reminder that the resistance that you’re working to maintain isn’t in vain, though, and that your sons know their own minds!
Thanks for the comments! This reaction is almost as great as the reaction the unicorn pillow pets have gotten. It has actually been really nice, everywhere the boys have taken them (from the doctor’s office to customs at Heathrow) people have complemented the pillow pets and commented on how cool they are.
I also agree with Alice, celebrating the little victories is important. It helps give you confidence for the bigger and more subtle problems that pop up.
Good for you, WingStaff! I would be totally stoked, like you. I love that your insistence that they can like what they like allowed them to get the toys they wanted. You are a great role model for them, and for other feminist mothers.
As the mother of a 2.5-year-old boy and an 11-month-old-boy, I’m also intent on creating gender neutrality in my home.
So imagine my surprise when my husband objected to the baby doll I had bought for my oldest boy. It was too late – my son had liked it in the store, and I’d already bought and wrapped it, and put it under the tree. But Mr. Elibard was “freaked out by the weird proportions” and didn’t like baby dolls at all. He had a bit of a fit, in fact. However, when my son opened it, he LOVED it immediately, and wanted it to go to the potty with him, to change its diaper, and for me to feed it milk and put it to bed. I love seeing him having so much fun with his own baby – one he can treat however he wishes, unlike his little brother to whom he must be nice. He’s very caring and very empathetic for a 2-year-old, and we’re trying to encourage that.
So again, congratulations on this achievement! I look forward to reading more from you.
I find it amusing that while my parents – let’s get real, my mother – was reasonably good about not giving me gendered gifts and toys as a child, now that I am an adult she falls back on standard lady-gifts.
This year, every female child in my family, including my sister in law, got a set gift: Julie & Julia, The Art of French Cooking, and a set of pearl jewelry. I don’t cook and am a vegetarian trying to go vegan. I don’t like happy movies. I’m allergic to jewelry metal and don’t have pierced ears. But hey, I’m a woman, so clearly I’ll like this stuff!
If you are interested in this topic you should read “Delusions of Gender How our minds, society and neurosexism create difference” by Cordelia Fine.
my daughter is grown and out of grad school and there are no grandchildren in sight, so I am thankful I am not raising children today as opposed to 25 yrs ago, altho in many ways things were just as gender biased. But i really don’t remember pink or lavender being almost the only choice of clothing colors back in the 80′s when my daughter was young. Today I find it unreal…
One day last year, I was waiting in line at the library for the doors to open for the day. Apparently, it was a preschool story time day as well, for there were about 50-75 parents in line with their children. What was striking to me was that EVERY single girl but one (out of around 100) had on mostly pink. There was one exception. A little girl had on a brown velvet pantsuit. I was so shocked at all the pink, that I looked for the little girls mother to compliment her…Alas…she was in a bright pastel pink outfit from head to toe, including her shoes, so I just kept silent.
A light bulb moment for me, altho color choices are certainly not the only way to promote gender equality…it seems to be one of the divisions that is easily ‘seen’.
btw, to the author of the post…what a cute and encouraging story
[...] Marie Anelle’s and guest Wingstaff’s recent posts on raising kids amidst a sea of gender-coded crap, and SarahMC’s on Fine’s neurosexism [...]