Three different things happened recently that gave me pause and made me ask, “Why are we doing this to our kids?’
The first:
I was in a cafe working when I overheard a boy around 7 years old saying that pink was his favorite color. A woman in her 30s discouraged him with a smile and asked, “What does your dad think about that?”
Everyone at the table was smiling and it may have all been a joke, but the message was clear. Boys shouldn’t like pink. If they do, surely their father will be disappointed.
 The second:
My family was at a children’s museum when a 3 year old girl joined us at a table with coloring supplies. She grabbed a crayon and the first coloring page she saw. A woman who looked like her grandmother walked up, saw that the little girl was coloring a picture of baseball players, took the coloring page away, and handed her a coloring page with flowers on it instead.
Come on, grandma. Don’t do that.
The third:
Grace and I were at a frozen yogurt place. The lady working at asked grace what color spoon she wanted, “Do you want blue, green, or purple?” Grace said blue. “Oh! I thought you were going to say purple!”
Grace is a sensitive girl who delights in doing the right thing. I am confident that if I hadn’t have made a point to reassure Grace that she is free to choose any color that she likes, Grace would have walked away thinking she made the wrong choice.
There are gender stereotypes for a reason, right? Girls and boys are very different. They usually are naturally drawn to different things, but we don’t need to freak out when children take a small step outside of the box.
We don’t need to take away our girls’ baseball player pictures and give them flower pictures instead!
How We Are Handling Gender Stereotypes With Our Kids
My goal is to encourage my children to express themselves in a variety of ways. Most of the time they will align with traditional gender stereotypes, but sometimes they won’t. That is okay in my book.
Grace is a girl who loves pink, purple, princesses, and all things Frozen, but I still encourage Nate to do sports with her (I stink at sports so it is all up to hubby). I am delighted when she plays trains with her little brother. I also make a real effort to expose her to different types of videos and books, rather than always showing her princess and fairy themed media.
Noah is a boy who loves getting dirty, wrestling with Daddy, and playing with anything on wheels, but Noah’s deep love for his big sister means that he tries to be like Grace. He loves cooking and often plays with Grace’s dolls.
Noah went through a phase where he was obsessed with wearing Grace’s shoes. I assumed he was attracted to the bright colors of her shoes, so I took him shopping and showed him several brightly colored boy shoes. Noah was not impressed and we left the store empty handed.
Occasionally, Nate and I Â forced him to wear gender appropriate shoes (like when we were going to church), but the majority of the time we let him wear what he wanted. We chose to be relaxed about Noah’s shoes. It wasn’t worth the fight.
Thank You, Target!
I am thrilled with Target’s recent decision to create a more gender neutral atmosphere in their toy aisles. Target will no longer have gender specific signs, like the one shown in this tweet that went viral, which shows a sign for “building sets” and “girls’ building sets.”
Target isn’t trying to erase gender from their toys. Instead, they are creating an environment that allows children and parents to shop more freely without the subliminal messages that girls should only pick from toys in this section and boys should only have toys from that section.
This is especially empowering for girls. For the girls with an interest in science kits, Legos, and Minecraft, this is a good thing.
However, if you walk down the toy aisle of Target, I doubt you’ll walk away feeling like it was a completely gender neutral environment. Toy manufacturers are still the ones controlling the toy packaging. There will still be a aisles predominantly filled with pink boxes and others with blue boxes.
This is still a step in the right direction. Thanks for that, Target.
I’m Talking About The Small Things
Playing with certain toys, wearing certain colors, or coloring pictures of baseball players are small things. This post is meant to address the small ways that we are forcing our children into gender stereotypes. Many people associate going against gender stereotypes with homosexuality and transgendered issues. Those concepts are much bigger and more complex than what I am addressing here.
Noah was 2 years old when he wanted to wear Grace’s shoes. Would Nate and I have responded the same way if he was obsessed with Grace’s dresses instead of her shoes? Honestly, I don’t know. I’m just trying to take things like this moment by moment and hope that my husband and I are making the best choices for our little ones.
All I’m saying is, let’s stop assuming that all boys want blue and all girls want pink.
Am I Being Too Sensitive?
Sure. You could probably argue that I’m making a mountain out of a molehill when I’m complaining about someone commenting on the color of my daughter’s spoon.
However, as a mother who has a daughter and a son, I often see the different messages my children are receiving about what they should like and how they should act based on their gender. Sometimes I don’t give it much thought and other times it really rubs me the wrong way.
I guarantee there are moments I’m guilty of doing this myself! But I’m working on it.
I just hope my children know that they can color in whatever coloring book they want!
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Have you ever experienced people trying to force your children into a gender stereotype? How did you respond?
I completely agree. I want my children to be who God made them, not who society says they should be. My son loves red & pink. Lots of people make a big deal about him liking pink, and it drives me crazy! (I always say pink is really just light red, and it doesn’t matter!) My daughter and son are 2 years apart and very close and play together. They both like to play house, my little ponies, cars, and superheroes. How they play (kindness, sharing, etc) is much more important than what they play.
That is fantastic! My children also play together super well these days. I hope it continues for a lifetime!
I follow someone on Instagram who occasionally uses the hashtag #colorsareforeveryone. Maybe you could use that as a come back the next time someone says something snarky about your son liking pink.
These little messages matter! Same goes for girls clothing often being really short and skimpy. I have no issue with girls of any age wearing short shorts, but there should be longer options. What I really wanted to say is that I will polish the finger and toe nails if my boys without a second thought. Grandma commented something… Kids at daycare thought it was ‘so cool.’ Maybe their peers don’t care and it’s the adults …
Super short shorts for girls is a big problem. My girl is so small waisted. It really makes finding longer shorts difficult.
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with me!
The color thing happens to my kids all the time. Isaac’s favorite color is red and Charlotte’s is blue and their water bottles are those colors. People always assume it’s the other way around!
I hadn’t heard about the target toy isles but I like the change!
Oh I bet that water bottle thing messes people up!
I’m thrilled with Target, but a lot of people think it is terrible. The funny thing is that Walmart’s toy aisles are already like this. People are talking about boycotting Target, but they probably didn’t even notice that Walmart already had this policy.
I agree. There are other things that are indeed big things to be concerned about. These however are no battle at all. I have 2 boys (4 & 5) and when they were 2 & 3 and had just started a new daycare where the girls played with dolls and played house with the kitchen set, they came home and would do the same. I encouraged it because to me it expands their imagination. And I want our home to be an example of how God intended a daily to be, so if they want to imitate that, then I’m perfectly fine with then playing house. In fact, my favorite thing about this type of play was when my oldest son told me he wanted to be a mommy just like me and his brother could be his baby. It flattered me but I did in fact correct him… Not to criticize him but to tell him the girls are mommies and boys are daddies but he could pretend to be a daddy but still do things like mommy does. And I think you’re right…. Adults make the genders specific, not kids. They all play as one and I’m ok with that. They’re kids!!!! Let them be kids!!! Thank you for your honesty I this subject.
Heather, that is such a cute story about your son wanting to me a mommy. It sounds like you handled it well. So adorable!
I think there’s a fine line between kids being kids (who cares about the spoon, the coloring page or the favorite color, right?) and blurring genders to the point of confusion.
Our almost 5 year old likes pink and purple (this month, who knows next month). He’ll also fart on you given the chance. He’s all boy and there is no mistaking it.
My concern is that the over-sensitive, get-offended-by-everything mentality is going to push gender (and other things) to the point where nothing will be as it is. (I’m not speaking of you personally, but looking at what I’m seeing in society at large).
I don’t want my son to be confused about being a boy who likes purple. I also don’t what him to be confused or ashamed of one day being a man who is a Man.
Blessings!
I suppose someone could look at this and say that it is a slippery slope, but I really don’t see it that way. At least not with this issue.
However, I know that there are a lot of those “Things not to say about XYZ” types of blog posts out there. The author will list 5 terrible things you should never say to a parent who has adopted, someone who can’t have kids, someone who lost a lot of weight, or whatever. After reading several of those posts it can feel like you can’t possibly say anything right! I don’t want this post to feel that way, but I can understand how it could.
I think that in the end you have to decide what are the values that are important enough to your family that you are willing to get offended over them. For me, I don’t want my children to feel like they are limited in what they are able to do. Mostly we hear about this in girls, but I want my girl and boy to both know that they can grow up and do great things no matter what their gender is. These little things that I mention in this post are a trigger for me. I see them as small ways (sometimes VERY small) that my children are being pushed into a box. For my family, I see that as worth getting offended over.
But each family needs to decide those things for themselves. We can’t all be offended by everything. That is just ridiculous and unproductive.
Whoa. This got longer than I expected and I fear that I rambled a bit. I hope you understand what I’m trying to say.
Great post! It took me forever to realize that in the pumpkin patch Noah was wearing ‘girl’ shoes. Just looked like a pic of happy kids to me! After reading, I went back and looked and saw them.
WHY do people care about this stuff so much? It just doesn’t even enter my mind to notice or care.
That is great that you didn’t notice the shoes. Haha! I almost put a caption under the picture, but then I decided not to. I wonder if anyone else was confused by the picture.
Thanks for posting this. I saw so many people online from the faith community blow up over the Target thing, but I have to say I totally agree with what they did making the change! As a girl, I loved playing outside, art, reading, my brothers legos, my doll house, Little Mermaid, and building things with my dad. As an adult, I went to school for interior design and ended up working in commercial architecture. It’s definitely an industry dominated by men, and it was difficult to be heard and taken seriously as a woman, and I think that’s the gender stereotyping that needs to go away.
Now, I stay home with my 3 yo daughter, a baby boy on the way, and love to cook, garden, sew, but also have no problem using power tools and taking care of our yard and home. I want my kids, especially my rough and tumble girl who loves her baby dolls, to be able to do what they’re passionate about when they get older, and not have to fight against industries that are male or female dominated.
Really, men should be able to cook, and women should be able to use tools, because it all falls under being capable of taking care of yourself!
Yes, yes, and YES! I completely agree, Kate.
Wow! This post gave me a flashback to when I was little, my mom would always say it was fine if I played with my brothers trucks and climbed trees and he could play with my dolls ( he actually played more with my dolls than I did). She got really angry if someone tried to tell us that we were playing with the wrong toys. She’d say that we were only little and it wasn’t worth getting us upset over it when we were playing together nicely and sharing.
Yes! There is NO good reason to disrupt children playing together nicely. 🙂
Thank you!
I agree so much! Color stariotypes are the worst! Why is pink a girl color and blue a boy color? Only because society says so. It’s time to redesign. Most of the dishes and things we have came in sets with blue and pink and other colors. I let my two year old son chose whatever he wants and sometimes it means he is usuing a pink water bottle and that’s ok! God created all colors for us to enjoy!
Yes! Colors are for everyone. 🙂