I like the ride-on radio flyer fire engine a lot.
I’m serious. It’s fantastic. The kids like it too. Thing 2 smiled when my MIL wheeled it in, festooned with a gorgeous heap of red and yellow curling ribbon. It has a rubber horn that honks easily and with a satisfying “ooo-ga ooo-ga.” She handed him a glossy red baby sized fire hat. My mother had also given him a red and gray striped outfit embroidered with the words “little hero” and a fire truck on the chest. Everyone said we should take a picture. We should. He’s too cute for words - beaming that uneven gap toothed grin, hat off-kilter. It was a nice day, a lovely little party.
For his first birthday my son got a total of nine vehicles. One toy airplane, two toy fire trucks, a toy globe with a train that goes around and around inside, a tractor, and a few other sundry transit items.
That’s what boys like.
Except he didn’t have a wish list. Nope — I didn’t take him, diaper and all, to do a registry or something. This isn’t what he wanted, this is what others wanted for him.
Big difference.
I remember the year my daughter got 8 babies for Christmas. I loved one in particular, much like the killer radio flyer ride-on fire truck. It isn’t any one item that makes my skin crawl. It’s the bounty — it’s the power of emphasis and omission. Like the kids can’t hear what the toys are saying.
She received a kitchen at 2. He’ll get a train table.
To compensate for my daughter’s doll museum, I bought her the tool bench. I bought her the doctor’s kit, I bought the little tykes basketball hoop. I don’t have a problem with baby dolls or with vehicles, but I do have a problem with proscriptive identities.
And I especially have a problem with the shitty biological determinist lay talk about gender. Like the well-blogged stupid Tonka commercials, “Boys - they’re just built different.” Sure they are - I change diapers. But what my daughter and son have in common is so incredibly vast in comparison to how they differ.
And what of the differences that they’ll have later on? They are likely to be grand and real. But isn’t it time we recognized that we’ll bear a good deal of responsibility for the authoring of those differences (that’s the universal “we”, not the you and I kind of “we”, you and I, well, we’re already brilliant)?
If one more person calls him Little Man or Tough Guy…
I’ll smile politely, probably. I was socialized too, you know.
Crimethinc publishes a poster I have in my office that has this version of a 1970s poem:
For every girl who is tired of acting weak when she is strong, there is a boy who is tired of appearing strong when he is vulnerable.
For every boy who is burdened with the constant expectation of knowing everything, there is a girl tired of people not trusting her intelligence.
For every girl tired of being called over-sensitive, there is a boy who fears to be gentle, to weep.
For every boy for whom competition is the only way to prove his masculinity, there is a girl called unfeminine when she competes.
For every girl who throws out her EZ Bake oven, there is a boy who wishes to find one.
For every boy struggling not to let advertising dictate his desires, there is a girl facing the ad industry’s attacks on her self esteem.
For every girl who takes a step toward her liberation, there is a boy who finds his way to freedom a little easier.
I like the poster. Actually it’s the concept I like. I think it could be rewritten in a way that would make it resonate better today, for me at least. But, I’m too lazybusy to do it. If you like the poster - you can get 25 of them (on newsprint) for $2 bucks. Yep. $2 bucks. Check out crimethinc.
The point is that we make all these rules and pass them on, reinscribe them, and then act as if they are natural. The gifts? That’s social, baby.
Gender, as they would say in Boston, it’s wicked constructed.
My little sister (half sister for those who know I have a Jerry Springer complex family) is 15 - she’s a cheerleader, she’s beautiful, and she’s in full teen girl Cosmo magazine, done up to the nines, love to shop mode. Long blond hair, highlights, perfect, eyebrows, great clothes. She’s a girlie girl, though I hate that expression. Her best friend Ann, has masculinity down pat. Not only the super short hair and baseball hats, but everything about her is a study in male perfection — her clothes, her posture, the way she stands, the way she walks, the way she makes eye contact, the way she avoids using vocal color. She is regularly mistaken for a boy. What is fascinating to me is that in Ann, the performance of masculinity is so transparent. As impressive as it is, it still reads like an act, like a guise, like a carefully constructed effort. Because it is. We notice it. What goes unnoticed is that my sister’s performance of femininity requires equal effort and emulation. She works just as hard at being feminine as Ann works at approximating masculinity.
In their pairing, people only notice Ann, because Ann is performing, but so is my sister. So am I. So, probably, are you. Right? I didn’t come up with this, I wish I had, but I live it - we all do. We get so used to “doing gender” in our own lives, that it’s awfully easy to forget how contrived it is. I see it much more clearly now that I have these darn kids.
Like when my dd says, “When Thing 2 grows up, I’m going to let him have all my favorite dresses.”
Gender takes work. The work starts early and requires constant care. It starts at baby showers. It continues into hormone replacement therapy.
It’s interesting to watch, but rip-my-hair-out frustrating that so many people insist it’s nature’s immutable law of sex difference. Is there a fire truck gene?
Midodok
November 21, 2007 | 12:36 am1
I’m surprised your family and friends buy such stereotypical gifts for your kids even though they know your strong views and beliefs.
Not the Mama
November 21, 2007 | 3:24 pm2
I think I love you. (And I mean that in the least creepy way possible. Really.) I know EXACTLY what you mean about not disliking individual gifts. It’s the sheer bulk of gender-specific, stereotyped toys that bother me. Your line about the kitchen vs. train table explains the dichotomy so succinctly. I love this post. It’s one of my favorite so far. I’m glad Thing 2 had a wonderful birthday!
N1nj4G1rl
November 21, 2007 | 10:50 pm3
Wow, this is my second day on this blog and just…wow. That was great! I’m about to have my first (a boy) and I’m at a loss as to how I’m going to deal with this kind of stuff with my son.
eszter
November 23, 2007 | 12:07 pm4
This is an excellent post! I have had similar thoughts so many times, but you articulated it all so well. Every time I go shopping for a gift for my niece and/or my nephew, it’s such a major challenge. I don’t want to get stereotypically gendered items, but it’s unbelievable how stores are set up that way. Some stores don’t even have a general section, you either go one way for the boys and one way for the girls. In some cases, everything is either pink or blue, no way to get something green or yellow.
Thanks also for your very helpful post about books, I’m taking that list to the store with me. Just the other day I was in the kids’ section wondering what to get, but ended up walking out in frustration without buying anything.
R
November 23, 2007 | 1:42 pm5
What goes unnoticed is that my sister’s performance of femininity requires equal effort and emulation. She works just as hard at being feminine as Ann works at approximating masculinity.
I think that’s true for a lot of young women, particularly in their teens. But perhaps the sense of comfortableness that comes with getting older is either growing into the role you’ve chosen for yourself, or just getting to absorbed in life to bother with the performance.
Jenny
November 23, 2007 | 8:34 pm6
I go through the same thoughts with my 4 year old boy and 2 year old girl. The thing that drives me crazy is how everyone views them through a genderized lens. My car-loving boy also loves books, pink and princesses (I always worried about my daughter falling in love with princesses, but not my son!) and can out-talk any girl. My daughter loves dolls, trains, yellow, jumping off things way to high, being outside, and bikes (her legs aren’t long enough to ride, but she’ll climb on any bike she finds.) But most people only see/acknowledge/accept the portion of my kid’s personalities that fits with the gender stereotypes. So my son gets massive positive reinforcement for loving cars, but little else, and ditto for my daughter with dolls. Everytime I well-meaning friend or relative say “he’s all boy” or “she’s such a little princess”, I just cringe.
At least they have each other and each other’s toys. They both get to play with cars, trains, dolls, kitchen stuff, etc as much as they want. I feel badly for my nephews. With no girls in the house, they don’t even get exposed to the toys in the pink aisle. Maybe they’d like toys other than legos and trains, but they won’t have the opportunity to find out.
mad grad mom
November 24, 2007 | 8:48 am7
There’s been an ongoing debate in our house for about a year. I am D-Y-I-N-G to get our son a kitchen playset. He loves to play in the kitchen when we cook and I want him to think that boys can play chef, too. SuperDad worries that kids would make fun of him.
My parents have bought him the obligatory train table for Xmas . . .
radical mama
November 24, 2007 | 9:45 pm8
“I’ll smile politely, probably. I was socialized too, you know.”
That made me cringe a little. I hate it when I catch myself playing the “good girl” but I do it… all the time. And my daughters will probably do it, too.
emjaybee
November 25, 2007 | 8:38 pm9
Crap, I call my 2-year old son “little man”. I had no idea that was any more gender-training than just calling him “little boy” or “darlin” or what have you. It’s always been just one of his many nicknames.
I am going to get him a kitchen set when he’s a bit older. He plays with the fake food at daycare all the time, and with my pots and pans already. I just have to find an affordable not-pink one.
He loves his trucks, or anything with wheels, and has a bit of a fear response to dolls, which is puzzling. He likes balls and is big for his age–so we’re getting “football” comments already. He may be “lucky” enough to easily fit the roles that are going to be expected of him, but we’ll do our best to help him see that there’s always more out there.
bitchphd
November 26, 2007 | 4:54 pm10
Nice site!
I have a 7yo boy. He has long hair–we didn’t cut it until he was 2 1/2 and said he was tired of getting it in his eyes, and we stopped cutting it a year later when he said he wanted long hair again.
It’s one of the best parenting decisions we made. He gets plenty of “sweetheart”ing from strangers along with the “little man” stuff (and yes, I call him that). This makes me really happy, because boys need the loving too, just as girls need the rough n’ tumble.
He’s perfectly comfortable telling people “no, actually I’m a boy, but don’t feel bad because everyone makes that mistake because I have long hair”–doesn’t think it’s insulting to be told he looks like a girl (though he does think it’s sexist that people assume that girls have to have long hair and boys short, which is of course correct). We’ve always gone out of our way to make his clothes be as gender-neutral as possible (I’ll still buy things from the girl’s section). And yes, he had a toy kitchen when he was 2 (which I got used for about $30). Which he LOVED playing with. Now he’s moved on to loving to help with the real cooking.
I can’t urge parents of boys strongly enough to buck the gender norming that they have control over. I know I overcompensated when he was younger by actively avoiding “boy” toys for neutral or girl toys–because I knew everyone else would get him plenty of boy stuff and that way he’d have a balance. And it worked: he loves “girl” movies along with boy ones, doesn’t have a problem with female protagonists in stories, and loves cute things and flowers as much as he does legos and Star Wars. And because some of his preferences buck the norms, he’s learned (with help) how to talk to people about that.
And contrary to a lot of the worrying I got, and continue to get, he’s confident and popular with his teachers and his peers. Partly, I think, because he’s gotten the chance to explore a *lot* of things and decide what *he* likes, and has always gotten his parents’ backing on that.
Karen
November 27, 2007 | 11:23 am11
Mad grad mom, why not start building from the ground up? Get him little dishes and pots and pans and that wooden food that he can “cut” and then velcro back together, and let him play with real utensils that you don’t need at the moment, etc. He doesn’t have to have a tiny kitchen to play chef. A plastic knife and some playdough or clay allows my son to cut tiny slices of “cheese” for both of us to eat.
A lot of kitchen things are kind of mechanical and therefore more stereotypically masculine…maybe his dad would have less of a problem with him playing with tongs or a garlic press than, um, a spatula or wooden spoon? My son hurt himself with a can opener once…can’t believe I let him play with that…but he played with it for a long time *without* hurting himself before anything happened, and it was just a pinch. More mechanical kitchen stuff: corkscrew, meat grinder, apple corer/peeler, springform pans, old-fashioned ice-cube trays with removeable ice-cube separators, hand-cranked egg beater–there’s all kinds of good stuff out there! Once “Superdad” sees how much fun your boy and his friends have with all this, the play stove, cupboards, sink, etc. may become a non-issue. Or, they may materialize on their own out of empty boxes.
Scrivener
November 27, 2007 | 2:55 pm12
Great post. I took a photo for my project 365 earlier this year that makes the same point, albeit far less eloquently.
mom
November 27, 2007 | 4:24 pm13
Barfing, Scriv! Barfing.
Great photo.
Very eloquent of me, no?
momomax
November 27, 2007 | 10:40 pm14
such a great post. bravo.
I’m going to link to it if I can ever get up enough energy to write another post myself. my son has been ridiculed for being beaten up by a girl his own age, a friend’s daughter. my son is 19 months old. the critics are our sometimes horrid friends.
I want to strangle them sometimes.
mad grad mom
November 28, 2007 | 9:40 am15
Karen,
You’re absolutely right, except you can’t say the word “cheese” around my son without really giving him cheese! But, no, you’ve got a great point. He’s already got a little bit of play food. Imagine the space I’d save if I didn’t have a tiny kitchen in my already tiny kitchen!
Megan
November 29, 2007 | 12:36 am16
Hi - wandered over from BitchPhD and a) wanted to echo all the lovely compliments above and b) point you to girls not chicks (http://www.girlsnotchicks.com/index.html). They used to offer posters with the poem you mentioned, but apparently their stock is limited these days (they also used to sell awesome material swatches that read, “Fighting patriarchy is hard. Make friends!”) but they do still feature a couple of great gender-norm-bucking coloring books, just FYI.
cmh
March 27, 2008 | 8:10 pm17
This here is the post that got me subscribed to your blog, thanks to a friend at Crooked Timber. Thanks for the comments and links on mine… wow, somebody reading!
Crooked Timber » » Is there a fire truck gene?
November 23, 2007 | 12:47 pm18
[...] Tina over at the new Scatterplot, I just found a fantastic blog: outside the (toy) box. Here is an excellent post about gender socialization through toys. Plus the author maintains a helpful list of [...]
Toy stories « STEVENHARTSITE
November 24, 2007 | 10:52 am19
[...] it is to be a parent watching the stereotyping accomplished, with the most benign of intentions, by friends and relatives bearing gfts: For his first birthday my son got a total of nine vehicles. One toy airplane, two toy fire trucks, [...]
kielbasa, kimchee and narcolepsy « momomax
December 5, 2007 | 1:33 am20
[...] that way and they should shut up. They’re 19th months old for fuck’s sake. Mom wrote something that says it all when it comes to gender and [...]