Friday, February 24, 2017

Parental Sexism

For the past five years, I've repeatedly been given countless reasons to ponder one question: "Why is sexist parenting so socially acceptable?"

It starts from the moment you tell people you're having a baby: "Do you want a boy or a girl?"

It never seems to end.

Bafflingly, it often comes from the strangest places. Adults, male and female, who treat each other with respect and equality - as soon as they become parents they seem to feel the need to "teach" their little ones that blue is for a boy and pink is for a girl.

For little children, the entire world is split into "boys" things and "girls" things. Flowers, football, dolls, cars - the list goes on and on.   Even if someone "allows" their child to break the mold, they feel obliged to make statements such as: "she's not really a girly girl, she's more of a tomboy."

Why? At an age when girls and boys have most in common, why does society do everything they can to split them up?

Maybe you think I'm being silly, they're small, it's cute, what does it matter? I can't help thinking all the battles for gender equality stem from this one area we seem to have all agreed to ignore.

We split boys and girls up, we make their interests not overlap, they grow apart or face social ridicule. They only start noticing each other again over a decade later when their minds turn to sex - at this point they turn each other into objects and, hey presto, we have all the grown up, less cute, sexist issues.

Maybe you think I'm wrong. Boys and girls just are different. Maybe. But why do we need to amplify those differences? Why do I see so many parents pushing their little boys away from the pink aisle in the toy shops? "Those are girls toys."

Why can't a little boy be interested in pretending to be a daddy? I was. I still have my doll, gave it to my kids. I also loved Transformers, watched Carebears, like Thundercats, was (am) bored silly by football.

I don't think I'm alone in having a mixture of "male" and "female" interests - I think the people who don't have any mixture are far more unusual.

So why do we falsely "teach" our children that their are "boy" things and "girl" things?

Why is sexist parenting so socially acceptable?

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