Fluther parents, please tell me that you don't lock your kids in a "gender box"?

I’ve worked really hard at not “locking my kids in a box”. It was a lot easier for my son, boys have so fewer restrictions put on them, so when he prefers doing community service and reading and creative writing more than sports, nobody really questions it.

My daughter has faced more challenges (although she is very capable of overcoming them). I have done my best to encourage her to do what she wants and not get trapped. She played soccer through eighth grade, loved feeling good and strong on her body. She takes advanced math and advanced courses and does well.

It’s a lot easier for kid now than when I was growing up, when boys took shop and girls took home ec. It takes open minded parents that encourage their kids to find their own passion.

I try to treat all kids equal. Loved that video. If anything, though, I would think boys are more restricted… I didn’t care for dolls as a kid, never owned any Barbies and mostly played with toy animals. That never bothered anyone. A boy with a doll, though, is likely to be called a sissy and/or predicted to grow up a homosexual. I suppose country and even area play into this.

I didn’t focus on a gender box but I also exposed my daughter to all sorts of non-gender activities and interests. She was never a baby doll little girl, she is a brainiac, knowledge seeking, creative like her mama. She preferred stuffed animals and toy dinosaurs and rubber bugs to dolls any day of the week.

She did have a few Barbis but they had zero impact and she, like I, mostly used them to play with her model horses. haha
She was a total animal, nature nut like me and wanted to be an Entomologist for years, hatching all kinds of cocoons and insects in her dresser drawers in tin foil covered Dixie cups. We raised chickens and went on wildlife hunting expeditions, adopted a BLM burro for a pet, lived the hippie farm life here in the Sierra Nevada foothills, grew gardens, played guitar, painted and in general she had a great, if not by default, upbringing. She was fearless, curious, and a sponge for learning, just like me.

She is now 26 and the most open minded, out of the box, artist and just all around amazingly great woman. I love her beyond words. :-)

I guarantee you I don’t and they are aware it’s a social construct and how so often it’s complete nonsense and other times it’s quite harmful.

Well, my son gravitates toward “typical boy” things, but then, my husband and I are both interested in “typical boy” things, like video games, baseball, and superheroes. However, I’ve painted his nails along with mine plenty of times, and allowed him to play in my makeup when he’s asked, and things like that.

Kids in his Kindergarten class were quick to establish for him what boy things were and what girl things were, and he would come home and report, for instance, that he learned pink and purple are “girl colours”.

Now, my son is obsessed with knowing everyone’s favourite everything, so I asked him, “E, what’s Mama’s favourite colour?”

“Brown and green. Like trees”.

“Is that pink or purple?”

“no”

“Am I a boy?”

”giggling No…”

“Could a boy like pink if they wanted to?”

”...Yes?”

“That’s right. We can all like anything we want to. No one gets to choose our favourite colours for us.”

It’s easier with boys, I think, because no one really tells them what they must do, only what isn’t acceptable. Girls are really stuck in the box of “You can only do the stuff that we don’t allow boys to do”, and that box is small and it’s full of saccharine garbage and what if I don’t want to be a Fairy Princess/Housemaid? With my little one, all I have to say occasionally is that yes, he is allowed to play with that doll if he wants to.

My son has always hated football/soccer, this despite my lifelong passion for it. I’ve always encouraged both my kids to go with their gut, my daughter plays in goal for her school footie team, loves playing Call of Duty on the Xbox & regularly watches horror films with me, she’s 14 by the way. Never gets spooked by them either, more interested in how they’re made & what goes on behind the scenes.

I let my son wear his favorite color – purple (pre-Barney) – when he was young. He had stuffed animals he played with, and if he’d wanted a doll, I’d have let him have it. When we moved after my divorce, the kids his age were all boys, so his play was riding bikes and skateboards and playing sports. He loved matchbox cars and Legos… I let his interests dictate his activities.

He took enough flack for playing basketball and liking hip-hop because he’s white and most of his friends were other ethnicities, as was his “step-dad”, my boyfriend who lived with us for several years.

My mother dressed me in Dior and Eton suits.

They must have had (a lot of) help from some boys, in making that commercial…

I always believe in giving children equal opportunities irrespective of gender—from the basics to education to everything else. When I was a kid, my granny always did have favoritism. She was always a biased grandparent (for my brother; we’re only two). For each and everything she keeps reminding me, you are a girl, he is a boy, you should not do this, he can do that etc. I belong to a country where baby girls are killed or abandoned if not aborted as foetuses. I’m lucky my parents did not resort to such measures. During my pregnancy period I never asked my child’s sex. Gender based discrimination is still prevalent everywhere.
My daughter recently developed an interest towards Karate. I did not go against her wishes and got her enrolled for Karate classes. When I went to India, my relatives were shocked, most of them asked me “Karate is for men, isn’t it?”
This has been a general idea of the public for quite a long time. I don’t know when people start thinking the right way. Anyway I don’t plan to lock my daughter in any gender box. I will always be there to support her.

My girls had Barbies and play kitchens, along with dump trucks and Matchbox cars. They had more books than toys. If I’d had any boys, it would have been the same.

It really bugs me that even identical toys often get made in different colors for girls and boys. Why do pink hammers/Legos and blue play ovens even exist? Just make all hammers, you know, wood colored, all Legos primary colors and all ovens in silver or something. How hard is it to pick gender-neutral colors, for goodness sake?

@augustlan I figure there must be some study done somewhere that proves children are attracted to certain colors. Many girls obsess about certain colors. Boys seem to do it less. I don’t even mean gender identification necessarily, just saying bright bold colors are more tantalizing. Like loving cartoons. Bright colored characters and toys seem to “speak” to children.

I prefer hammers be wood color and kitchens be maybe orange or white, but the colorful ones probably are more attractive to little kids. Logically if wood color would attract both girls and boys that would be a bigger market for the toy company than just marketing to just one gender, so I figure they must do it for a reason. However, there is always the possibility the comapanies just keep doing what they have always done with no research at all.

I let my daughter play with whatever she wanted. She had some toys that were marketed at girls and some that were marketed at boys. Up until she was about nine or ten she was quite a girly-girl but she got bored with it, and she’s grown up to be quite butch.

@JLeslie Actually, there’s absolutely no evidence to suggest that girls on the whole prefer pink over any other colour in the known universe.

The one study that is usually cited was done on adults showed that women tended to prefer redder shades of blue and men tended to prefer greener shades of blue, however, both genders chose blue over other colours. Reaction to shades of pink was never tested. And at this point, any study done would be subject to the childhood conditioning of the test subjects.

Are pink toys marketed to girls because girls like pink, or do girls like pink because pink toys are marketed toward them?

I think it says something that the first pink train, marketed to girls in the 1950s, was a commercial flop. Parents thought that any girl who wanted to play with a train would want a normal-coloured train, and surely no boy would want a pink train at all.

@Seek_Kolinahr Very interesting. I never was a pink girl. It doesn’t surprise me that girls are conditioned towards pink; rather than it being some sort of innate attraction. The same might be true about everything colorful. The children possibly learn primary and pastel toys are for kids. So they know the plastic looking colorful hammer is targeted for them. Whatever color it is. Many people encourage children to pick a favorite color; I always had trouble answering that question; I still do.

I love the train example. Maybe pink only works on toys that are also perceived as girl things to begin with? Like an easy bake oven. Ironically there are probably more men who are chefs than women. Or, at least when that oven came out it was probably the case.

I like the idea of making toys look the color the items really are, except toy guns of course, there are laws for that.

The only “Barbie” I had was a barbie head where you do her makeup and hair, and a Marie Osmond “Barbie” doll. My parents never had expectations for us to play or do girl things. If anything my father encouraged us to pursue what was typically male at the time. He felt girls all too often self limited themselves because of the messages in society. He is a sociologist so I guess since he studied such things, he had a more heightened awareness of it and worried about it for his daughters.

My father was the school jock.

Football, track, state champion wrestler.

I appreciate that he didn’t push me regarding sports.

I was (and still am) very physically active. All I ever wanted was a clear day so I could run around until I thought my heart would burst.

Later I got deep into skateboarding, my nickname was “Rubber Band.”

Then road cycling, won my share of races and continue riding to this day.

On the other hand I would have been happier as a girl. I didn’t fully realize this until much later.

Sadly, had I known from an earlier age it would have caused a great deal of confusion and fear for my fundie mom.

I’m happy in my manhood today but am envious of today’s male to female trans that got support from an early (easier) age.

I won’t be transitioning. Too hard now and I’m quite content but I can’t help wondering sometimes how it would have been.

@SecondHandStoke Are you living (you say happily, which is wonderful) as a gay man or as a heterosexual man?

^Naturally as a heterosexual man.

My interest in males waned quickly as males my age became men instead of other boys.

I’ve played some with men along with my female partners, admire the male form (especially my own) but could never imagine falling for or having a relationship with a man.

While I find physical manhood impressive it’s the female form and or femininity that engages my lust.

Had I made the complete transition I would be a lesbian.

@SecondHandStoke I envy your ability to be comfortable with the body you’re in despite your feelings. I was never able to manage that, and eventually I got to the point where transition (the other way, female to male) was essential to my survival. I felt like I’d spent my entire life acting a pantomime, in drag, and I was just too exhausted to keep doing it any more.

We don’t, and it really pisses me off when we tell other parents how disappointed our daughter is because she’s not allowed to play in the local JFL and they give us a bewildered look.

Our daughter plays flag football and she also won 1st place in the local and sectional division of this years NFL Punt Pass & Kick. She screams just as loud as my husband when they watch a Packers game. She’s also a beautiful dancer and she likes to wear pretty clothes and accessories. She sings, she’s artistic, she enjoys math and science and she hopes to play drums in band next year.

We would never keep our daughter from trying an activity that she’s interested in. Her opportunities are endless and her father and I wll not stand in her way.

@jonsblond JFL? What’s that?

Junior football league. Some leagues now allow females to play, but the league closest to us doesn’t unfortunately.

^ Oh, right. Thanks. That’s just wrong :/