Quote:
Originally posted by purse junkie
Relentless toy gender-stereotyping kills me. What is so wrong with giving a little girl blocks and letting her build stuff? I actually had someone tell me I should have gotten her toddler daughter a doll instead (NTTAWWT, but exclusively?). I also notice parents holding back their girls more than their boys, all the time, when they get wiggly and start running around or trying to climb something. They don't have to be perfect demure little ladies all the time. Constant pink-ifying and frilling--I don't think you're inadvertently going to raise a burly mustachioed linebacker if you actually let the girl wear a primary color. Even blue!
|
You know, sometimes (more often than not?) the kids themselves pick the gender stereotyped toys. I have a friend with boy/girl twins, and so she has all kinds of toys in the house, and the boy picks the trucks and tractors and blocks more often and the girl picks the dolls and tea set and doll house more often -- and I don't think it's explained by a proprietary sense that they have because those toys were given to that child.
And the little girl is now in an ultra-feminine phase where she wants to wear pink and purple and curl her pigtails so she can flirt with my boyfriend when we visit (that beeyotch!); and the little boy is like a little ball of destruction and I always leave with bruises. (Little girl is actually quite funny -- she flips her hair with her hand and then coyly looks over her shoulder. I still haven't mastered that one without laughing at myself.)
They are actually an interesting study in gender-specific behavior and nature/nurture. And studies do show that hormone exposure in vitro does explain a lot of these behaviors.
And this is just my experience, but none of the ultra feminine little girls that I know are that way because their mothers want it that way, or because their mothers are that way themselves. Kids are funny.
