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!
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Stereotyping sucks, that's true, but I also think kids are by-and-large hard-wired to prefer what is often viewed as the "sterotypical" kind of toy or activity. In fact, I have a friend with boy and girl twins, and the parents were very conscientious about not imposing gender-stereotypical toys/activities on either one, and 99 times out of 100, the boy always went for the trains, trucks, etc. and the girl went for the dolls. These are kids in the same house, the same age, with the same parents, etc.
I have seen it with my own children, and in their playmates, from a very, very young age. I certainly didn't encourage my elder son to like dinosaurs (a sort of stereotypical "boy" interest), but damn if he didn't latch on to them from when he was about 2 years old. (Not that I discouraged it either, but he has a bunch of different books about different subjects, and it was like the dinosaur-related things had a homing device on them -- he went straight for them.)
I will also say, that he adores the series of books called "Junie B. Jones" which are about a kindergartener/first-grader (as she gets older). I didn't think he'd like them, because they were about a girl, but he loves them (loved Charlotte's Web too -- even though the protagonist is a girl.)
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