0 Gender roles in childhood: the difference between can and must.

There's a brilliant article floating around the internet right now called ' One teacher's approach to preventing gender bullying in a classroom', written by teacher Melissa Bollow Tempel. She explains how she dealt with any possible troubles caused by a girl in her class who liked things traditionally perceived as masculine, but still identified as a girl. Its odd that this is the first article I've seen that deals directly with gender roles without being tied to a story about young transpeople or homophobia in classrooms; it's also the first proper attempt I've seen at pre-emptive action rather than post-bullying.

Here's a small chunk from the article that I absolutely love:

My own thoughts about gender curriculum shifted when I became a mother. As I shopped for infant clothes for my first daughter, I was disgusted that almost everything was pink and there was no mistaking the boys’ section of the store from the girls’. I refused to make my baby daughter fit in the box that society had created for her. “What if she doesn’t like pink?” I thought. “What if she likes tigers and dinosaurs?”

As my two daughters grew, I talked with them about gender stereotypes. I let them choose “boys’” clothes if they wanted to (and often encouraged them because they are more practical). The first week of kindergarten, my younger daughter’s teacher told me that she had a heated argument with a boy while they played dress up. “She insisted that boys can wear dresses if they want to,” the teacher told me. I beamed with pride.

For years, I've felt exactly the same; from buying birthday presents to choosing stock for my toy shop, there's a clear divide between toys meant for boys and toys meant for girls - blue racing cars, pink teapots. Very definitive. Every time I had to make a choice, though, I felt an underlying sense of guilt for no obvious reason. Then, I read a comment on a Jezebel article about Lego's new range aimed at girls:

 mrs_weasley

Thu 15 Dec 2011 4:06 PM 

I am flabbergasted and confused by all the negative comments about this. Did anyone actually read the article? The Lego people asked girls what they wanted and designed these sets accordingly. They didn't unilaterally make the decisions about the colors and content. They based this on five years of research! And almost everyone here's reaction is: "Ew, it's pink so it must be bad." Why??? Why is appealing to girls' love of storytelling somehow worse than appealing to boys' love of building stuff? (And before anyone jumps on me, YES I know that many boys like telling stories and YES I know that many girls like building stuff - but there is also a lot of research that shows that boys and girls play differently.) Are we going to be treated to a "pink toys are bad" post every day until Christmas, so commenters can brag about how THEY played with trucks and just hated princesses? Because by doing so, you are basically saying "boys toys are better." Again, why?? Why is a truck better than a doll? Why is racecar better than a My Little Pony? Why is play workbench better than a play kitchen? If you say, "Because the girls toys reinforce gender stereotypes," my answer is, "So why do you think a truck driver is better than a mother? Why is someone who drives a car better than someone who rides a horse? Why is building a bookshelf better than making a meal?" I'm sorry, but denigrating things simply because they have a feminine design doesn't seem like a very feminist thing to me. 

It was like a little switch flicked on in my brain. Yes! The option to play with anything, to be anything, should be there, but standing in the way of little girls wanting to be princesses is the opposite of gender acceptance. In the Lego situation, they had done their research - they didn't just decide that little girls all like horsies and fairies and pink, they actually asked them after giving them a chance to play with original Lego.

I realise now that my guilt was because I felt I was trying to force kids to only accept things that were not usually assigned to their gender, that I felt girls must play with trucks and boys must have dolls otherwise the Earth was going to spiral into the sun or something. Of course, it won't.

This is how I arrived at the idea of 'can'; rather that telling kids that they have to play with certain toys, just show them all the toys and tell them they can play with anything they want, the emphasis being on 'they want'.

Studying psychology has left me with a habit of conducting observational studies whenever I get bored. You know when you watch people on the bus and silently judge them? Like that, but with a bit more science (only a bit). Basically, I've ended up spotting certain trends and patterns in my toy shop's little customers. Boys will look at the remote control cars first, girls go for the sticker books. Our jigsaw and peg puzzles can go either way, but girls tend to pick the animal themed ones and boys pick the vehicle ones. Absolutely everyone loves the things with dinosaurs on them.

Parents have a tendency to steer their children towards gender-aligned toys without even realising it. We have one particularly obnoxious customer who makes fun of his grandson by suggesting he wants a doll set. They tend to consider what the child should like, rather than what they do like.

I've found two very simple ways of avoiding this from happening; first, I ask what age range the adult is shopping for. This opens the door of showing them everything we have for that age, rather than boy/girl toys. This gets narrowed down by finding out what the child is good at - are they crafty? Do they paint? Do they like building things or playing pretend?

The second option is to ask the child. I know, it sounds simple, but try going to a toy shop with a child and see who they talk to. Engage the parent too, but ultimately the child is going to have a better idea of what they'll play with for hours and what they'll toss aside after ten minutes.

Gender roles still need to be challenged, but their barriers should be explained and allowed to dissipate rather than demonised; denying a girl the chance to play with dolls when they truly want to in the name of gender equality is as bad as denying a girl the chance to play with cars when they truly want to.