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agonyaunt2020-09-24 11:34 am
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2020-09-24 11:34 am
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Dear Care & Feeding: We're raising our child gender-neutral but she only wants pink dresses
Where did we mess up?
My husband and I have a frequent disagreement on our 3-year-old and her love for dresses and all things pink! For the first two years of her life, she was constantly mistaken for a boy because she wore gender-neutral clothes. We direct her towards books and other media that do not represent traditional gender roles (no sparkle princesses!). We ask friends and family to refrain from commenting on her appearance and clothing, if they can help it, and to instead focus on skills or interests. However, our daughter adores the color pink, insists on wearing dresses, and is currently obsessed with accessories. I am fine with this, though I hope it will be a phase.
After a few battles about wearing her sole pink dress when it was dirty, my daughter and I did some online shopping together and she chose a few more dresses to order (all of them were pink, obviously). My husband is unhappy that I encouraged her obsession by purchasing the dresses and letting her wear some of my old jewelry. He gets annoyed when dresses get tangled while climbing a rock or running and says that dresses and accessories aren’t suitable for doing most things. I appreciate his commitment to raising our daughter without gender stereotypes, but I also want to encourage her to make her own choices. I feel like if we push back too hard on her love for dresses and jewelry, it will backfire, and she will only become more obsessed! Help!
—Pretty Annoyed With Pink
Dear PAWP,
It often seems to be the case that eschewing “traditional gender norms” involves identifying things that are coded as girly or feminine as bad. The argument against “sparkle princesses” is typically that they teach girls to aspire to unrealistic standards of beauty, or promote the idea that they should be looking for Prince Charming to come save them. The same argument could be made for encouraging boys to climb rocks and run, while discouraging them from practicing nurturing with baby dolls and stuffed animals.
Pink, puffy dresses should not be the only option available to girls, nor should they be for girls exclusively. However, that doesn’t mean that something is inherently wrong with the garments themselves. Furthermore, I think you’re missing the blatant sexism in “dresses and accessories aren’t suitable for doing most things.” I wear dresses and accessories nearly every day, as do millions of people of varying gender identities across the globe; I assure you, we do “most things” with ease.
It seems to be that the goal for shielding a child from gendered clothing and activities would be to allow them to define their identity without having it assigned to them by their parents and society at large. But the “gender-neutral” clothing you have selected has led to your daughter being misgendered for a reason, and that’s because what we consider “neutral” in terms of gender often defaults to a masculine norm. “Boys clothes” are for everyone. “Girls clothes” are for girls. Additionally, there are many games and activities that can be played in dresses and even heels, so that these “girly” clothes are considered impractical suggests that the “gender-neutral” things you are choosing for your daughter to do may also fall along the lines of what would usually be labeled “boy stuff.” Is masculinity more neutral than femininity?
Also, you’re worried that trying to direct her away from pink princess dresses will only make her like them more, but what’s the big deal if she does? Are you of the opinion that tulle skirts are inextricable from a damsel-in-distress worldview? Is this just fear that your daughter will have starkly different interests from you guys? Patriarchy is the enemy. Misogyny. Discrimination. And while glittery dresses and baubles are used as tools of these systems at times, they are not themselves at the heart of what stands between your child and the sort of liberated existence you want for her. To free her from dress-wearing as an obligation is noble; to code dresses as some sort of deplorable relic of a time gone by is just out of step with reality.
Without saying it intentionally, it seems as though your version of gender-neutral is casting a negative light on traditional femininity as opposed to the ways of thinking that prescribe it as mandatory or inherent.
Go to Goodwill and get your daughter some ruffly, puffy dresses that she can wear as she climbs trees without worry over replacing something expensive if she gets them messed up. Trim the dress so it’s not too long, put some shorts under it for ease of mobility, and get her some sparkly sneakers so she can complete the look and run around safely. Talk to her about gender norms, and why it’s so important that she doesn’t buy into the myth of “girl stuff” and “boy stuff.” Surround her with images and stories of dynamic women of diverse backgrounds—including those who serve high femme looks in dresses and the ones who prefer suits and hard-bottomed shoes, and those who are just as likely to show up in either. To quote the singer india.arie, “It’s not what a woman wears, but what she knows.” Refocus this project. Good luck to you all.
My husband and I have a frequent disagreement on our 3-year-old and her love for dresses and all things pink! For the first two years of her life, she was constantly mistaken for a boy because she wore gender-neutral clothes. We direct her towards books and other media that do not represent traditional gender roles (no sparkle princesses!). We ask friends and family to refrain from commenting on her appearance and clothing, if they can help it, and to instead focus on skills or interests. However, our daughter adores the color pink, insists on wearing dresses, and is currently obsessed with accessories. I am fine with this, though I hope it will be a phase.
After a few battles about wearing her sole pink dress when it was dirty, my daughter and I did some online shopping together and she chose a few more dresses to order (all of them were pink, obviously). My husband is unhappy that I encouraged her obsession by purchasing the dresses and letting her wear some of my old jewelry. He gets annoyed when dresses get tangled while climbing a rock or running and says that dresses and accessories aren’t suitable for doing most things. I appreciate his commitment to raising our daughter without gender stereotypes, but I also want to encourage her to make her own choices. I feel like if we push back too hard on her love for dresses and jewelry, it will backfire, and she will only become more obsessed! Help!
—Pretty Annoyed With Pink
Dear PAWP,
It often seems to be the case that eschewing “traditional gender norms” involves identifying things that are coded as girly or feminine as bad. The argument against “sparkle princesses” is typically that they teach girls to aspire to unrealistic standards of beauty, or promote the idea that they should be looking for Prince Charming to come save them. The same argument could be made for encouraging boys to climb rocks and run, while discouraging them from practicing nurturing with baby dolls and stuffed animals.
Pink, puffy dresses should not be the only option available to girls, nor should they be for girls exclusively. However, that doesn’t mean that something is inherently wrong with the garments themselves. Furthermore, I think you’re missing the blatant sexism in “dresses and accessories aren’t suitable for doing most things.” I wear dresses and accessories nearly every day, as do millions of people of varying gender identities across the globe; I assure you, we do “most things” with ease.
It seems to be that the goal for shielding a child from gendered clothing and activities would be to allow them to define their identity without having it assigned to them by their parents and society at large. But the “gender-neutral” clothing you have selected has led to your daughter being misgendered for a reason, and that’s because what we consider “neutral” in terms of gender often defaults to a masculine norm. “Boys clothes” are for everyone. “Girls clothes” are for girls. Additionally, there are many games and activities that can be played in dresses and even heels, so that these “girly” clothes are considered impractical suggests that the “gender-neutral” things you are choosing for your daughter to do may also fall along the lines of what would usually be labeled “boy stuff.” Is masculinity more neutral than femininity?
Also, you’re worried that trying to direct her away from pink princess dresses will only make her like them more, but what’s the big deal if she does? Are you of the opinion that tulle skirts are inextricable from a damsel-in-distress worldview? Is this just fear that your daughter will have starkly different interests from you guys? Patriarchy is the enemy. Misogyny. Discrimination. And while glittery dresses and baubles are used as tools of these systems at times, they are not themselves at the heart of what stands between your child and the sort of liberated existence you want for her. To free her from dress-wearing as an obligation is noble; to code dresses as some sort of deplorable relic of a time gone by is just out of step with reality.
Without saying it intentionally, it seems as though your version of gender-neutral is casting a negative light on traditional femininity as opposed to the ways of thinking that prescribe it as mandatory or inherent.
Go to Goodwill and get your daughter some ruffly, puffy dresses that she can wear as she climbs trees without worry over replacing something expensive if she gets them messed up. Trim the dress so it’s not too long, put some shorts under it for ease of mobility, and get her some sparkly sneakers so she can complete the look and run around safely. Talk to her about gender norms, and why it’s so important that she doesn’t buy into the myth of “girl stuff” and “boy stuff.” Surround her with images and stories of dynamic women of diverse backgrounds—including those who serve high femme looks in dresses and the ones who prefer suits and hard-bottomed shoes, and those who are just as likely to show up in either. To quote the singer india.arie, “It’s not what a woman wears, but what she knows.” Refocus this project. Good luck to you all.
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This made me want to find children's books about sparkly self-rescuing princesses. Or, failing that, to write one (with what time, of course). More seriously, this reminds me of the Pink Wars of my high school and college years. The opposite of forcing someone to do something is not to ban them from doing it.
(Another good reason to get the dresses from a thrift store is that when this phase passes they won't be tempted to say, "but you need to wear these clothes that cost so much!)
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Mattel is very aware of their reputation, and very eager to make sure that their movies don't do that.
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I will say, Mattel's response to BLM is amazing.
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??
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Also, their presidential candidate doll this year is a dark-skinned Black woman. The set of her and her advisors is awesome, and it makes me sad that I can't display it in my office (well, I can, but I can't meet with students there, so why bother).
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"One day, though, Harriet’s parents tell her of the curse that a rat placed on her at birth, dooming her to prick her finger on a hamster wheel when she’s twelve and fall into a deep sleep. For Harriet, this is most wonderful news: It means she’s invincible until she’s twelve!"
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This is all very age-appropriate. This child is a girl, she knows she's a girl, and she wants to act like she thinks girls act. If you don't make a big deal out of it it'll ease faster. Think of it like the Bad Words phase (which, incidentally, this kid is running up to - they enter it around age 4, or, as I call it, the "eff you fours") - if you treat using bad words like any other small misbehavior, causing no more comment than "Let's pick another word next time", then there's no fun and they soon start using those words only when appropriate. But if you make a big deal out of it, they use them all the time.
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Yeah, my take on this letter is that their enforcement of gender neutrality is just as rigid and problematic as society's enforcement of femininity - with the addition of "not only is society's enforcement bad, but we're going to make sure that you think everything feminine is bad, regardless of what it signifies or how you interact with it." Way to stifle a kid, parents.
Icon!
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It's complicated, and I don't think it's that simple. I mean, yes, the parents are doing that thing where "gender neutral" is coded masculine, and "feminine = bad", and the thing where they're policing the kid's chosen expression of gender, and that sucks. But it's not simply a matter of turning that off. And gender neutrality (or the thing we are more wanting kids to have the option of, which is picking and choosing from an inclusive gender salad bar), isn't something either the parents or the kid will be able to control. The kid will get different societal feedback depending on whether she's girl-coded or not, and she'll make her decisions about how to present herself based on which feedback gives her the rewards she wants.
I don't know how the zoomers are going to wrangle this as they grow up.
I know I don't like how well meaning parents handled it in the 1970s, which was very much like LW -- feminine coded is bad, and gender neutrality means short hair and being mistaken for a boy (there's a reason I say my gender identity is "Leslie from Bridge to Terebithia). I guess Free to Be, You and Me tried to go full on 1970s genderqueer, but they were so timid about it, and pretty much stopped at "boys and cry and have dolls and bake cakes."
But I don't like the way the next generation of well-meaning parents handled it either (not speaking of individual parents here, but of parents and well-meaning society working in concert -- systemic, not individual, action). Girls can have trucks and tutus! And boys can have those things until they are old enough that they start getting negative feedback from everyone around them, at which point, if they're trans or gay we'll totally support them, and if they're straight... well, there's an awful lot of societal pressure against being a straight boy who likes tutus. You still end up with femininity being the set of traits that are non-masculine.
And the thing is, it's literally impossible for individual parents to craft a good set of choices to give their kid maximal freedom. The kid lives in a society and that will have influences on them. And parents of daughters don't have nearly as many opportunities to create the radical set of gender choices as parents of sons, because one (good!) side effect of the last 40 years of gender trouble is that girls have more options. Boys don't have nearly as many, though, still.
Zoomers are growing up in a world where there's a lot more options for boys to be straight and sparkly, or sparkle-phobic, or into glitter trucks, or into camo tututs. Three cheers for the gender salad bar! And in that world, parents can be less worried about the gender norms their kids subscribe to, seeing pink dressy truck-phobic girls as comfortable as any other choice.
But, like, I don't know where LW falls on the spectrum of fears -- and obviously their choices to circumscribe their daughter's gender expression are the wrong choices. But I remember when a lot the sex-positivity of the 90s turned into another way to shame women who weren't "GGG" (thanks for nothing, Dan Savage). For that matter, I was part of a generation of women who have ping ponged back and forth between women's careers (where we are paid worse and get less respect, or worse, can feel shame, because the 2nd wave feminists who taught us were aspiring to escape) and men's careers (where we hit a glass ceiling and also there's a constant expectation to present Girly Enough to be professional but not Too Girly to be respected). We all have a complex, and nobody knows how to escape, or what the right answer is. And parents are constantly told that every choice they make for their kids is wrong! It's no longer just "They fuck you up, your mum and dad", but now every choice parents make is Failing At Social Justice.
So yeah, LW is messing up, but I can see the fears it comes from. "If my kid is a sparkle princess, and then people around compliment her for being pretty, then she'll stop caring about being adventurous or smart or kind or hard working!" And depending on when LW was born, they, too, might have grown up in a time when the best way to fight gender norms was to assume that the ones coded for icky wimmins was the icky ones.
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**Most of the people I've interacted with who are raising their kids gender-neutral are doing so from the perspective of "I want my kid to tell me what gender they are when they're old enough to have a concept of gender identity." Which like, I'm not disagreeing with necessarily on principle (nor do I feel like everyone should HAVE to do this to be a "woke" parent, since most people are cis I think it's OK to start off with the pronouns correlating to biological sex and if the kid tells you something different THEN you change pronouns and help with transition and so on). There is, however, a right way and a wrong way to do it and if your kid wants to like sparkle princesses and you're acting like this is the worst thing ever, YOU ARE THE ASSHOLE.
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(Which is part of what bugs me about the parents enforcing "no pink, no princesses". Boys can like that stuff too and it doesn't send a good message to act like that sort of thing is just for girls and thus girls shouldn't like it because sexism.)
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^This. Son is now in their twenties, still loves MLP, adored pink (but not dresses) as a child, and has at least one dress in their wardrobe now.
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It sounds like the parents in the letter have in fact gendered their daughter (presumably based on biological sex given they talk about her being "mistaken" for a boy when under 2). They use female pronouns and refer to her as a daughter; their idea of gender neutral is not about waiting until she's old enough to express a gender identity. It's about treating her as a person, not an ornament. Which I hope would not cause any harm or blame to a trans kid either, but I agree that the overreaction to liking sparkly princess stuff is a problem.
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I didn't say that.
1. The word "woke" and "allies" was used in sarcasm quotes.
2. The word "woke" and "allies" has been applied in a broader sense than anti-racism activists.
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My country is burning down right now. I am firmly on the side of the left and was into activism before a lot of you were born. Arguing with me over semantics isn't really going to accomplish anything. If you want to assume I'm some sort of racist (and all white people are, and it's something we have to unlearn), then by all means, go ahead and think that, but I've already given an explanation of why I said what I said and you arguing with me is not accomplishing anything; you could invest that sort of time and energy in things like calling your local Congressperson (if you live in the States) or things that will actually help people in the States. You are coming off self-righteous now with the language prescriptivism, and I assume I hit a nerve because I mentioned "cishet allies", which sounds a lot like tone policing a transgender person TBH.
I'm done having this conversation now. Have a nice day.
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Said kid is now nearly five and firmly in the "I'm a THEY" camp, with no apparent interest in anyone's gender; they refer to all people, animals, and toys with they/them pronouns. (They once called Gramma "herm", which I love unreasonably.) They love wearing sparkly twirly dresses and are insisting on growing their hair long. They also happily put on a t-shirt and "boy" shorts (because "girl" shorts are twice as short! why are there booty shorts for toddlers!) or a comfy cotton dress and bike shorts to go to the playground. Mostly they like spooky things like witches and ghosts and monsters. Adults still use gendered pronouns for them—I enjoy that one of their teachers says "she" and another says "he"—and it just rolls off them, so we correct occasionally but don't stress it. Gender just... isn't a thing in their world.
Two of our friends raised their kids the same way. Both of those kids have now indicated cis gender identities but have no apparent attachment to a particular presentation. I think it does make a difference that those kids, and my kid, all have nonbinary parents or close relatives; the gender binary ends up being a thing they sort of vaguely heard of once and isn't very relevant to their actual lives, and the parents understand the difference between "we make room for all gender expressions" and "we shaved off every possible bit of genderedness and dress our child only in beige".
That said, see my comments above about the absolute uselessness of so much "girl" clothing. I don't blame any parent who sees "boy" clothing as functional (and therefore appropriate for all children) and "girl" clothing as nonfunctional (and therefore appropriate for no children). We do a lot of shopping at Old Navy and Target, and the difference is stark. I definitely think the LW and her husband need to examine why exactly they're doing this and for whom, and support their child being who she is without being terrified of her interest in feminine things, but I also get how a first-pass attempt at gender-neutral parenting might end up as enforced masculinity. I'm glad the LW wrote in and could be set on a better path.
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Also I like the idea of steering a kid towards practical rather than impractical clothes, but making it specifically that, not banning bright colours or pastels, not banning sparkly things and accessories.
IME most three-year-olds, regardless of gender identity, love sparkly puffy dresses and jewellery and makeup. A lot of cis boys get that impulse squashed, whether it's parents saying 'don't be silly, dear, that's for girls', or school and peers enforcing gender rules, or even just picking up gender norms from media. Excluding girls as well from age-appropriate, ridiculous tacky impractical clothing doesn't actually make things better.
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The other is that it seems like her preferred outfits + 3 yo coordination are legitimately impeding her movement during some activities, possibly dangerously (like, I do find it a little disingenuous to act as if people regularly go hiking in evening wear... A suit would also be inappropriately restrictive). So I think this is something to address - pink, good; dresses, good; accessories, good but maybe floor-length/oversized puffy dress isn't for hiking and we go with a shorter dress or skirt (which also can be pink!). Basically, there are plenty of dresses that you can stomp around the forest in safely and maybe at three, it doesn't matter so much but idk, I think it's worth it to present some options irt princess-y active wear.
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Trim the dress so it’s not too long, put some shorts under it for ease of mobility, and get her some sparkly sneakers so she can complete the look and run around safely.
Another benefit of cheap used dresses -- a 3 year old doesn't care about unfinished hems!
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I dunno if it's a good idea to trim the dress vs buy one that's already cut appropriately though (depending on their sewing skills). I think, as a child, I would find that deceptive and destructive because I was actually pretty particular about things. Maybe say from the start "we're going to trim it to here" and show her, when you get it? I might not have cared about unfinished hems but I would care about my parents cutting up clothes I was excited to get.
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Enh, it was a bit long (which is one of the reasons I found it meaty enough for this community).
I like your note. Since the whole point here is about seeing who the kid is and what she prefers rather than pressing her into any pre-made box, the advice needs to be filtered through the child's personality. When I was little I would not have cared if my play-dress was ragged, but you would have, which would have required slightly different approaches for each of us.
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I guess the advice about thrift-store dresses for hiking and climbing is okay, but I also think it's useful for kids to learn to dress appropriately for their activity and the weather. You have to wear a jacket when it's cold. You have to wear your boots in the snow. Your plastic dress-up shoes are just for play; you have to wear sneakers when we go on a hike. Kids make ridiculous clothing choices. We let ours choose their own styles, but we consistently enforce the rule that parents set boundaries on which outfits are appropriate for each day.
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I think the mother is relatively sensible here; her concept of gender neutral is . And she was willing to support her daughter's fascination with all things pink and girly, understanding that forcing a kid to reflect their parents' tastes is a bigger problem than the fact that society has weird views about dresses. The father sounds borderline misogynist, frankly.
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Which basically parent the child you have and this hit me a lot.
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I'm at the frothing at the mouth level of frustration with this bullshit. If one is going for gender neutral, it is so much easier to supply both sides of the clothing/toy binary than to restrict either. As a child of the 70s, I had trucks, dolls, skirts, and overalls. My children of the late 90s and early oughts had a mix of whatever caught their fancy (and lots of op-shop clothing, because they were allowed free choice). I did have people tell me off for some of the choices, but typically only when a let a 'boy' wear 'girl' things. Except for the one who was cranky that the 2 week old wasn't in pink or blue, because how were they to know what to call the baby?
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For eldest, I had DIY black baby clothes. By the time Middlest was born, there were more 'gender neutral' options. But those black items got worn and worn.
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YOU HAD A GOTH BABY . I AM IN AWE.
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