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

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!

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 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.

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!

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!

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.