4 ms·

At risk of being patronizing, you're probably being downvoted by parents who figure you don't have kids. We have spent many years trying to present gender-neut

by rfrey 11y ago

At risk of being patronizing, you're probably being downvoted by parents who figure you don't have kids. We have spent many years trying to present gender-neutral environments to our children. Yet at age 3 my son completely ignored the giraffe we were trying to point out at the zoo, and would only focus on the irrigation pump. That kind of experience was repeated often with him and my daughters. One daughter would only build babies out of the meccanno I taught her to use. OK, they were robot babies and that's awesome, but still. This was before school, none of them had daycare, and we never had a TV. These sorts of stories are repeated ad infinitum among parents, usually in the context of "I can't believe what I used to think..."

RodericDay 11y ago
You are being patronizing, though. Cordelia Fine, who does psychological research on this, has a great anecdote about this entire line of argument- the nonsexist parent who tried to do gender neutral parenting, comically failed, and then realized boys and girls truly are different, and now campaigns from the opposite perspective. She brings up one such anecdote from another book, where parents really tried to give their daughter firetrucks AND dolls, jeans AND dresses, but at the end of the day, the girl was tucking the firetruck to bed like a good mom and wanted to wear dresses. That book was all about how girls have innate nurturing tendencies and so on. Of course, the mom was the one tucking the girl to bed almost every night. It was funny that parents failed at giving their daughter fire-trucks, but it's even funnier that someone would ignore the massive impact their own behavior had imprinted on their kids. Same with dresses- mom may wear jeans frequently, but dad absolutely never wears a dress. How are you going to ignore this, even if your kid is only three years old? They learn to speak like you in such a short period of time, and you're going to chalk up zoos vs. irrigation pumps to biology? You say you're a proud machinist and woodworker in your profile. Does your wife spend equal amounts of time in the shop? Do you think your kids are not already making choices about whether they're more like you or your wife? She also brings up some interesting research by Castelli et al [0], where parents are interviewed about their opinions about racism (ie: I am NOT racist, and I teach my kid to NOT be racist), but then evaluates them on their implicit attitudes towards race (everyone's somewhat racist, I hope you'd agree), and kids match their parents really well not compared to their explicit attitudes, but more in the implicit ones. The truth is that if you tried to raise your kids in a gender-neutral environment, you completely failed, because we make it absolutely impossible, unless you control absolutely all media and social influence and tune your own behavior accordingly, which would be creepy and Stalinesque. It doesn't mean that there are no innate gender differences, or that they undesirable, but it definitely means that parents who get together to talk about how they "can't believe what [they] used to think" because they've been awokened to gender differences have just swapped one unfounded source of condescension for another. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19271841 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19271841 > Previous literature based on self-report measures has not found a clear relationship between the ethnic attitudes of White parents and those of their children. In particular, no study has evidenced such a relationship in the case of preschool children. In the present study, the authors measured parents' implicit and explicit racial attitudes as well as the racial attitudes of their 3- to 6-year-old children. They found that parents' explicit attitudes were not related to children's responses. In contrast, mothers' implicit attitudes (but not fathers' implicit attitudes) were significant predictors of children's attitudes. Results demonstrate that early racial attitudes might develop within the family.
- 2muchcoffeeman 11y ago
  >> Of course, the mom was the one tucking the girl to bed almost every night. So why did the daughter, given fire trucks and dolls, tuck in the fire trucks instead of the dolls?
  - andrewflnr 11y ago
    Actually, it's not clear from the given story whether she was also tucking in the dolls. That wouldn't surprise me. (not a parent, but I've seen little kids do some pretty goofy things)
ctrlalt_g 11y ago
If the parents are gendered, how can they possibly present a gender-neutral environment? They would have to cross-dress, vary their speech and mannerism, vary the length of their hair, be androgynous... Perhaps the parents you're referring to are failing to realize just how strongly gendered their lives are.
- DanBC 11y ago
  Sure, there is that. But same sex parents report similar things happening. And many parents try really pretty to fight aspects of this - talking about movies and tv shows; not conforming to the roles; etc.
- Chathamization 11y ago
  > Perhaps the parents you're referring to are failing to realize just how strongly gendered their lives are. Yes, that's a large part of it. I think people also underestimate how much children pick up from society in general. Beyond what they get from their parents, they're still going to be meeting friends and family members, going outside and seeing other humans interact, other people are probably going to be buying them gifts (even if you try to avoid this, there will be times when people spring them on you), etc. There are a lot of influences we've stopped noticing because they're so pervasive.
DanBC 11y ago
> We have spent many years trying to present gender-neutral environments to our children. [...] > This was before school My son's favourite colour before he started daycare was pink. That rapidly got policed out of him by other children and disappointingly by staff in day care. We persevered - "anyone can like any colour; boys can have pink as their favourite colour, girls can have blue as their favourite colour" and it sort of worked, but he's now in his first year at school and the policing from other children is pretty fierce (although the teachers are much better).
- iopq 11y ago
  Pink vs. blue is a cultural thing Liking animals and people vs. liking things is very much a natural preference.
- mafribe 11y ago
  Have you considered the possibility that your family has been putting strong pressure on your son (probably against your conscious wishes) to like pink, and that he has been trying to satisfy what he perceived a parental demand? Children learn by picking up and copying parental behaviour and preferences. If not, why not?
- 0092348203 11y ago
  I'm sure he will thank you for it later...
- jrapdx3 11y ago
  Possibly a bit tangential to the discussion, but there's some chance the "pink vs. blue" convention has a biological basis in respect to male/female color vision differences. For example, red-green color blindness affects about 7% of males, and < 0.5% females. IOW on the whole males are more likely to be able to see and respond to blue than red or pink. There's also intriguing if incomplete evidence that among humans with normal color vision, females are more likely to have finer color discrimination ability in the yellow-orange-red end of the spectrum compared to their male counterparts. Of course, there are going to be a few males "outliers" who have superior color discrimination ability, so a boy could very well appreciate pink even if it's not as likely as it would be among girls.

by rfrey 11y ago

RodericDay 11y ago

You are being patronizing, though. Cordelia Fine, who does psychological research on this, has a great anecdote about this entire line of argument- the nonsexist parent who tried to do gender neutral parenting, comically failed, and then realized boys and girls truly are different, and now campaigns from the opposite perspective. She brings up one such anecdote from another book, where parents really tried to give their daughter firetrucks AND dolls, jeans AND dresses, but at the end of the day, the girl was tucking the firetruck to bed like a good mom and wanted to wear dresses. That book was all about how girls have innate nurturing tendencies and so on. Of course, the mom was the one tucking the girl to bed almost every night. It was funny that parents failed at giving their daughter fire-trucks, but it's even funnier that someone would ignore the massive impact their own behavior had imprinted on their kids. Same with dresses- mom may wear jeans frequently, but dad absolutely never wears a dress. How are you going to ignore this, even if your kid is only three years old? They learn to speak like you in such a short period of time, and you're going to chalk up zoos vs. irrigation pumps to biology? You say you're a proud machinist and woodworker in your profile. Does your wife spend equal amounts of time in the shop? Do you think your kids are not already making choices about whether they're more like you or your wife? She also brings up some interesting research by Castelli et al [0], where parents are interviewed about their opinions about racism (ie: I am NOT racist, and I teach my kid to NOT be racist), but then evaluates them on their implicit attitudes towards race (everyone's somewhat racist, I hope you'd agree), and kids match their parents really well not compared to their explicit attitudes, but more in the implicit ones. The truth is that if you tried to raise your kids in a gender-neutral environment, you completely failed, because we make it absolutely impossible, unless you control absolutely all media and social influence and tune your own behavior accordingly, which would be creepy and Stalinesque. It doesn't mean that there are no innate gender differences, or that they undesirable, but it definitely means that parents who get together to talk about how they "can't believe what [they] used to think" because they've been awokened to gender differences have just swapped one unfounded source of condescension for another. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19271841 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19271841 > Previous literature based on self-report measures has not found a clear relationship between the ethnic attitudes of White parents and those of their children. In particular, no study has evidenced such a relationship in the case of preschool children. In the present study, the authors measured parents' implicit and explicit racial attitudes as well as the racial attitudes of their 3- to 6-year-old children. They found that parents' explicit attitudes were not related to children's responses. In contrast, mothers' implicit attitudes (but not fathers' implicit attitudes) were significant predictors of children's attitudes. Results demonstrate that early racial attitudes might develop within the family.

2muchcoffeeman 11y ago
>> Of course, the mom was the one tucking the girl to bed almost every night. So why did the daughter, given fire trucks and dolls, tuck in the fire trucks instead of the dolls?
- andrewflnr 11y ago
  Actually, it's not clear from the given story whether she was also tucking in the dolls. That wouldn't surprise me. (not a parent, but I've seen little kids do some pretty goofy things)

ctrlalt_g 11y ago

If the parents are gendered, how can they possibly present a gender-neutral environment? They would have to cross-dress, vary their speech and mannerism, vary the length of their hair, be androgynous... Perhaps the parents you're referring to are failing to realize just how strongly gendered their lives are.

DanBC 11y ago
Sure, there is that. But same sex parents report similar things happening. And many parents try really pretty to fight aspects of this - talking about movies and tv shows; not conforming to the roles; etc.
Chathamization 11y ago
> Perhaps the parents you're referring to are failing to realize just how strongly gendered their lives are. Yes, that's a large part of it. I think people also underestimate how much children pick up from society in general. Beyond what they get from their parents, they're still going to be meeting friends and family members, going outside and seeing other humans interact, other people are probably going to be buying them gifts (even if you try to avoid this, there will be times when people spring them on you), etc. There are a lot of influences we've stopped noticing because they're so pervasive.

DanBC 11y ago

> We have spent many years trying to present gender-neutral environments to our children. [...] > This was before school My son's favourite colour before he started daycare was pink. That rapidly got policed out of him by other children and disappointingly by staff in day care. We persevered - "anyone can like any colour; boys can have pink as their favourite colour, girls can have blue as their favourite colour" and it sort of worked, but he's now in his first year at school and the policing from other children is pretty fierce (although the teachers are much better).

iopq 11y ago
Pink vs. blue is a cultural thing Liking animals and people vs. liking things is very much a natural preference.
mafribe 11y ago
Have you considered the possibility that your family has been putting strong pressure on your son (probably against your conscious wishes) to like pink, and that he has been trying to satisfy what he perceived a parental demand? Children learn by picking up and copying parental behaviour and preferences. If not, why not?
0092348203 11y ago
I'm sure he will thank you for it later...
jrapdx3 11y ago
Possibly a bit tangential to the discussion, but there's some chance the "pink vs. blue" convention has a biological basis in respect to male/female color vision differences. For example, red-green color blindness affects about 7% of males, and < 0.5% females. IOW on the whole males are more likely to be able to see and respond to blue than red or pink. There's also intriguing if incomplete evidence that among humans with normal color vision, females are more likely to have finer color discrimination ability in the yellow-orange-red end of the spectrum compared to their male counterparts. Of course, there are going to be a few males "outliers" who have superior color discrimination ability, so a boy could very well appreciate pink even if it's not as likely as it would be among girls.