Why gender neutral child raising is a terrible idea

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I should know better than to link to another article by Rachel Lu. But I like her writing, and was intrigued by this article. As the mother of four boys she does not think that boys need to be liberated from boyhood. And there is this pertinent quote:

“My boys have never asked me for a My Little Pony backpack. What would I say if they did?
“No. That’s for girls.””

Why gender neutral child raising is a terrible idea.
 
I think the question that I’d ask here - what, specifically, are they looking for in proper masculinity that doesn’t simply fall under the gender-neutral heading of virtue? After all, we want both our boys and our girls to develop virtue. We want them to be leaders when it is time for someone to step up to the plate. We want them to be able to follow authority when that is the proper thing to do. We want them to be kind and gentle. We want them to be willing to protect others when they need to. But what of that is specific to boys?
 
Nice article. Among the link below was also a satire piece on the same issue and that was hilarious.

The whole raising your child gender-neutral idea is just so creepy. I don’t understand how a healthy-minded person can get into that.
 
redbetta said:
Nice article. Among the link below was also a satire piece on the same issue and that was hilarious.

The whole raising your child gender-neutral idea is just so creepy. I don’t understand how a healthy-minded person can get into that.
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The thing is so much of our “gender” stuff is plain old arbitrary. Used to be pink was for boys and blue was for girls. Used to be horses and ponies were a thing for boys and not girls - now it’s mostly the other way around. Unless there’s something deeper than just “boys are supposed to like this and girls are supposed to like that”, I don’t really see what you’re doing except pushing norms that are going to change in 50 years anyways.

I mean, I was a girl. I hated dolls and dressup. I played with robotics and fake weapons and wore t-shirts and jeans and had short hair and did a lot of things that were “for boys”. I don’t see that I suffered any harm for it - if anything, the harm I suffered was from people telling me that who I naturally was wasn’t ok because it was too boyish.
 
DarkLight said:
The thing is so much of our “gender” stuff is plain old arbitrary. Used to be pink was for boys and blue was for girls. Used to be horses and ponies were a thing for boys and not girls - now it’s mostly the other way around. Unless there’s something deeper than just “boys are supposed to like this and girls are supposed to like that”, I don’t really see what you’re doing except pushing norms that are going to change in 50 years anyways.

I mean, I was a girl. I hated dolls and dressup. I played with robotics and fake weapons and wore t-shirts and jeans and had short hair and did a lot of things that were “for boys”. I don’t see that I suffered any harm for it - if anything, the harm I suffered was from people telling me that who I naturally was wasn’t ok because it was too boyish.
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I don’t think the author of the article was talking about letting kids be who they are. I took away that the author was criticizing forcibly stifling kids when they show any interest in something that stereotypically aligns with their gender. I never thought of myself as a tomboy. I hated dolls because they were creepy. I liked dinosaurs, legos, action cartoons, arts and crafts, and stuffed animals. I’m not a 100% girly, but, that quote from a lesbian mother that the author included in the article of forcing her son to wear tutus was very disturbing.
 
What I find strange is that it is perfectly acceptable for a girl to play with action men and refuse to wear pink, but boys can never play with, to use the example in the piece, my little pony.

These things are completely arbitrary. For example trucks have only been around < 100 years. There is no way boys have evolved biologically to like playing with trucks in that length of time. Kids are sponges and they soak up the examples set by those around them and by what they see on TV, so by the time they can talk they have already been imprinted with a lot of cultural norms. Which isn’t really harmful at all, I just think that since it is arbitrary, there really isn’t any harm in boys liking My Little Pony if there is no harm in girls liking Action Man.

The problem really, is whether or not their friends will make fun of them in school. That would be the only reason that I would be reluctant to let a boy have a My Little Pony schoolbag.

Obviously I am not condoning “conditioning” your child one way or the other, but I’m sure there are more than a few boys that like My Little Pony because their older sister has a huge collection and she lets her brother play with her, which seems harmless to me.
 
ShrodingersCat said:
What I find strange is that it is perfectly acceptable for a girl to play with action men and refuse to wear pink, but boys can never play with, to use the example in the piece, my little pony.

These things are completely arbitrary. For example trucks have only been around < 100 years. There is no way boys have evolved biologically to like playing with trucks in that length of time. Kids are sponges and they soak up the examples set by those around them and by what they see on TV, so by the time they can talk they have already been imprinted with a lot of cultural norms. Which isn’t really harmful at all, I just think that since it is arbitrary, there really isn’t any harm in boys liking My Little Pony if there is no harm in girls liking Action Man.

The problem really, is whether or not their friends will make fun of them in school. That would be the only reason that I would be reluctant to let a boy have a My Little Pony schoolbag.

Obviously I am not condoning “conditioning” your child one way or the other, but I’m sure there are more than a few boys that like My Little Pony because their older sister has a huge collection and she lets her brother play with her, which seems harmless to me.
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That was kind of my thought as well. In our culture it’s ok for a girl to be a tomboy, but if a boy has girly interests in our culture he’s a “sissy” or worse - or as he gets older, a “creep” or “pervert.”
 
Apparently the problem is more than just socializing or gender stereotyping. I clicked on one of the links in the article to a book by Leonard Sax—“Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men,” and read a few excerpts from the book. It seems that boys have within the last few decades been becoming physically more fragile, more apt to break bones, as well as becoming less motivated.

One anecdote tells of the good money to be made by journeyman plumbers, but when someone tried to recruit just 12 young men to joint a training program with a promise of a good job at completion, they could only get ten in the whole county, and then most of them dropped out. He thought they would be motivated by good pay and benefits, but they weren’t. They just didn’t want to put in the work.

So, I think there’s something going on that is more than gender roles. It seems that boys are becoming feminized both mentally and physically. But the same problems aren’t affecting girls, who continue to be motivated.
 
JimG said:
Apparently the problem is more than just socializing or gender stereotyping. I clicked on one of the links in the article to a book by Leonard Sax—“Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men,” and read a few excerpts from the book. It seems that boys have within the last few decades been becoming physically more fragile, more apt to break bones, as well as becoming less motivated.

One anecdote tells of the good money to be made by journeyman plumbers, but when someone tried to recruit just 12 young men to joint a training program with a promise of a good job at completion, they could only get ten in the whole county, and then most of them dropped out. He thought they would be motivated by good pay and benefits, but they weren’t. They just didn’t want to put in the work.

So, I think there’s something going on that is more than gender roles. It seems that boys are becoming feminized both mentally and physically. But the same problems aren’t affecting girls, who continue to be motivated.
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It’s the hormones used in food production and those that have leaked into the water supply.👍
 
My boys are about 110% boy, but they liked to put those little glue-on gemstones on their dinosaurs and they liked decorating with fake flowers. They like cooking, primarily because they like food.

When you child likes doing something that is a bit unusual for their gender, I would avoid making a big deal out of it. You don’t want them to think “I like X, I can’t say I don’t like X, but X is only for females, so I guess being a male is play-acting for me.” Don’t put them in that spot. Everybody in the NFL wears pink from time to time, and nobody mistakes that for a “gender neutral” sport. Loosen up a little!

If your boy likes X, then that makes X a thing that boys like.
If your girl likes Z, then that makes Z a thing that girls like.
Period.
 
I think gender stereotyping starts very early, in UK shops even newborn clothing is divided into pink for girls and blue for boys. Kids should just be kids without all these modern gender issues. I do agree that there is a problem with how schools treat boys and the educational outcomes for men as well as a lack of good role models for young men but I dont think a rigid gender stereotyping approach is the answer.

What worries me most with this lady’s sons is what if for whatever reason they cant live up to her idea of manhood, where does that leave their self esteem.
 
ConfusedLucy said:
I think gender stereotyping starts very early, in UK shops even newborn clothing is divided into pink for girls and blue for boys. Kids should just be kids without all these modern gender issues. I do agree that there is a problem with how schools treat boys and the educational outcomes for men as well as a lack of good role models for young men but I dont think a rigid gender stereotyping approach is the answer.

What worries me most with this lady’s sons is what if for whatever reason they cant live up to her idea of manhood, where does that leave their self esteem.
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The prejudice against boys goes against active children in general compared to compliant children. It’s not just the males who suffer. It is the do-ers, generally. Instead of being taught how to channel their active nature to the best effect, they’re all expected to be sit-still-and-be-quiet model.
 
EasterJoy said:
The prejudice against boys goes against active children in general compared to compliant children. It’s not just the males who suffer. It is the do-ers, generally. Instead of being taught how to channel their active nature to the best effect, they’re all expected to be sit-still-and-be-quiet model.
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What makes me laugh is how one minute people are making little children sit still at desks for long periods (school starts at 4 here) then a year or two later people moan about kid’s “sedentary lifestyles”. Well duh they are being taught that not sitting still is naughty!
 
I remember watching a news program on TV about a couple who were raising their child to be gender neutral and I thought it was sooo strange. They took it to the extreme. The kid was about 3 or 4 years old. The kid always wore only neutral clothes, hair length and style was neutral where it could be a little long for a boy or a little short for a girl but could go either way. The kid had one of those genderless names like Terry or something. It was so bad that the couple even kept the child’s true gender a secret from their own family and even the grandparents! :eek: From pregnancy onward they never told anyone the child’s gender. I remember they said their family thought they were crazy. They never referred to the child as he or she, just by name. The only ones who knew the child’s true gender was the parents. I think that is very strange and will just make the child confused and does more harm than good.
 
She says boyhood is in trouble, but it’s honestly not just that. It’s also girlhood. Liberals get a little uncomfortable when gender stereotypes are forced onto both genders. When girls are told to play with Barbies and look pretty, when boys are told to play with trucks and hide their emotions. Of course, she only has sons so I guess it makes sense that she would only care about issues that will affect her family, so it’s understandable.

I definitely wasn’t raised up in a gender neutral way, but also not in the way she raises her kids. My mom would buy for me dresses and dolls, and I do ask for them sometimes, but she also let me play with power rangers (action figures) and we have VCDs (anyone remembers them? :D) of stuff like power rangers, and ultraman, stuff like that. My brothers and I will use Barbie dolls and action figures and we will play fighting with them. I can also recall us playing barbie dolls…the set with mini baking tools. It’s basically a mixture of both. She did start off by buying gendered toys (because we were babies, she would obviously pick stereotypical toys, and if we ask for something else, she wouldn’t be bothered)

While we don’t have to go out of our way to make sure our children defy gender stereotypes, it doesn’t mean that we should enforce them either…she does make a point somewhere because some people will call you problematic if you wrap your newborn baby in a blue towel because he is a boy :rolleyes:

There will always be men and women who are not masculine and feminine, no matter how you raise them up. We are all different, and gender roles are so rigid. What exactly is masculinity? Femininity? It’s not clearly defined and it won’t be anytime soon.

Parents shouldn’t shame their kids for having certain qualities that make them less manly or whatever IMO. I know parents, who would freak out if a boy were to have some feminine qualities. Ironically, it usually causes the boy to feel less “of a boy” because he is being “girly”, and then would identify as such, while the father will shake his head and sighs and acts like he doesn’t see it coming. You have rigid gender stereotypes, someone is going to feel like he or she is in the wrong body because he likes My Little Pony, and then you complain about how society is with its transgender “agenda”…when you helped to create it. 🤷 Not directed to Rachel but worth bringing up, because this tends to be common within religious circles
 
redbetta said:
Nice article. Among the link below was also a satire piece on the same issue and that was hilarious.

The whole raising your child gender-neutral idea is just so creepy.** I don’t understand how a healthy-minded person can get into that.**
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You hit the mail right on the head… Not any health in their minds… a new form of child abuse?
 
ConfusedLucy said:
I think gender stereotyping starts very early, in UK shops even newborn clothing is divided into pink for girls and blue for boys. Kids should just be kids without all these modern gender issues. I do agree that there is a problem with how schools treat boys and the educational outcomes for men as well as a lack of good role models for young men but I dont think a rigid gender stereotyping approach is the answer.

What worries me most with this lady’s sons is what if for whatever reason they cant live up to her idea of manhood, where does that leave their self esteem.
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Pink and blue are hardly modern ideas and try selling anything even slightly pink or less than robustly coloured to an Irish person… “That is too girlie” is the immediate reply… I made a huge error at my market stall once, Offering pretty hats to the long haired curly headed child in front of me to learn he was a girll… Not Irish…

I don;t see it as stereo typiing, simply harmless custom and it makes it easy to differentiate…
 
Rosebud77 said:
Pink and blue are hardly modern ideas and try selling anything even slightly pink or less than robustly coloured to an Irish person… “That is too girlie” is the immediate reply… I made a huge error at my market stall once, Offering pretty hats to the long haired curly headed child in front of me to learn he was a girll… Not Irish…

I don;t see it as stereo typiing, simply harmless custom and it makes it easy to differentiate…
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Actually, pink for girls and blue for boys dates back only to around the 1940’s.
 
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