Ok, I heard about this ‘no gender December’ quite a few weeks ago and it really made my blood boil, then I calmed down. As I was putting the finishing touches on Christmas wrapping for my daughter, my mind started to tick over again so I decided to put pen to paper (or fingers to keys!)
Greens Senator Larissa Waters has a major issue with gender targeted toys saying, “While the starkly separate aisles of pink and blue might seems harmless,” Senator Waters said, “setting such strong gender stereotypes at early ages can have long-term impacts, including [on] self-perception and career aspirations.” Senator Waters said that “outdated stereotypes” about girls and boys perpetuate gender inequality, “which feeds into very serious problems such as domestic violence and the gender pay gap”.
Has the world officially gone mad? Let me set the scene for you at my house. I have read and read about the importance of not pigeon holing our children into gender specific play, so as soon as my daughter was born I bought toys of neutral colour and at times she quite frankly looked like a boy due to my husband’s fashion choice. I remember even buying a teething ring that was clear as I thought buying a pink one was evil.
Over the years my daughter was given Thomas trains, Lego, cars, dinosaurs, a pirate water play table, a marble run, balls of every description and guess what she plays with? – Barbie. She also loves her dollies pretending they are her sisters. This week one is called Allegra. She loves craft and pretending she is Elsa from Frozen.
Movies. Her first ever movie in the cinema was “Planes”. She wasn’t that thrilled. We have Yogi Bear, Babe, Rio and many other non-gender specific DVDs to choose from yet her favourite (apart from Frozen) is “The Little Mermaid”.
Clothes. My daughter refuses to wear anything other than a dress. This winter a mountain of warm, fluffy tracksuits went unworn. Whenever my daughter was forced, yes forced to wear one there were tears and tantrums. I tried to clothe her in shorts at school because dresses were supposed to restrict outside play – well good luck explaining that to her. She would and continues to play outside, climb and run, all achieved in a dress. She rarely leaves the house without a tiara on.
The final straw or pure acceptance from me was her bedroom. For many years I made it perfectly clear “she is not having a pink bedroom. No way!” well guess what? It is now wall-to-wall pink.
Adults are really crap at looking through the eyes of a child. We over complicate matters, put pressure on ourselves to be fair and perfect. We look at the worst-case scenario and fight our point of view to the bitter end.
Children are children. It is natural for girls to like pink and boys blue. Mind you my daughter likes blue more now seeing it is the colour of Elsa’s dress! My daughter tries to breast-feed her dolls, swaddles them and nurtures them. Why try and stop her playing with things she enjoys and force her to be something she doesn’t want to be? Don’t get me wrong, we still provide many opportunities for her to play with other things. In fact my husband has great joy teaching her how to use the drill, create things out of wood and build rocket launchers. It’s all just done with a ‘girly twist’.
Come on everyone, lighten up a bit. Give our kids the freedom to choose what interests them and give us, and them, enough credit that they will grow up to be balanced, intelligent individuals that will make the right decisions when they are adults. Senator Waters, do whatever you want to do at your house because I am off to play Barbies with my daughter. Now where did I put that tiara?
Janelle Jeffery
Child Sleep Consultant for sleepy time.
Excerpt from Essential Kids here.