You do not force social stereotypes on people. That is wrong, demeaning, immoral, all the bad words you like. Don’t do it, don’t advocate it. Sell/buy the toys if you like, but don’t put them in stereotyped colouring and label them “boy” and “girl”.

I had a microscope, and a toy toolbox, and plenty of Hot Wheels, and though I never was into sports I still loved dinosaurs and rockets and dump trucks.  And yet I’m a big washer of dishes, mopper of floors, changer of diapers, and shameless purchaser of feminine products when the household has the need.  Whenever anything needs ironing (which isn’t often), I do it because my wife doesn’t know how and is cleverly uninterested in learning.

You never know how people are gonna turn out, even though sometimes you can guess right.

It’s just funny that it seems like we’re running into these stereotypically 20th-century American daughter situations just like our parents did, even though we’re actively trying to be a bit more mindful of our parenting choices than it seems our parents were.  And those parents of ours, I have no doubt, just sit and laugh their asses off at us.

Hey, check out this excellent piece of musicianship!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmw-440ZGuo

I think that along with all the ridiculous assumptions made by toy manufacturers, there’s a certain archetype we’ve come to assume that smart and feminist women all started out shunning girlie toys and girlie ways, but I think that’s really untrue. There are certainly plenty of fantastic women who could never be bothered with pink and ponies and frills and princesses but so too have many very progressive, capable and thoughtful women grown up loving all things girlie or being somewhere along the spectrum between the two extremes. And it seems to me that where women fall on that spectrum has very little if anything to do with what their parents would prefer their interests to be. We’re all idiosyncratic in our own way.

It sounds to me, though, like you are doing what’s most important, namely, talking with your daughter and asking her questions that make her really think, but in a non-judgmental way. That makes for good rational thinkers who can also go ahead and enjoy the things they like without feeling self doubt. 

What’s wrong with purple for boys?

Purple, specifically lavender, is the LGBT color since it combines pink and blue.

I’ve started lately washing out and giving empty spice cans and things to them and wiring their name in marker on the bottom. They enjoy having a real retail item to work with.

I’ve always want to do a cooking show with them using plastic food, but, when they take it out of their “oven” or take the lid off of a pot, it would be real food. like magic! :)

There is a lot of research that shows children learn by modeling their parents actions at an early age.  As they get older, they individuate and separate their own ideas from their parents.  Suppression of ideas in children almost always results in an out of balance condition leading to “acting out” later on.

In a nutshell, the largest factor in how a child develops is what kind of parents they have and not what they see on TV or in school.

And it’s certainly not the worst thing a kid could pick up from her classmates, or our society and its culture.  Future years might have our daughter picking up smoking, shoplifting, slut-shaming, and cheating on tests from Jenny Piccolo.  There’s plenty of time to look forward to those bad influences.

 Just as you seem rather blasé about your son liking things that are primarily targeted at boys, but also showing an interest in things primarily targeted at girls, you can see your daughter the same way. Her love of “girlie” things doesn’t exclude an interest in non-gendered or male targeted toys.

Well, before preschool she liked all sorts of non-gendered or male-targeted things.  She’s at an age now when she and her peers feel most comfortable dividing colors, toys, and activities into definite “boy-things” and “girl-things.”  She’s at a very progressive preschool, and we and her teachers will often ask the kids why they think long hair, for example, is a girl thing, or why playing with the dump trucks is only for the boys.  Little by little, the kids realize that all these outward indicators have nothing to do with gender, even though the preferences and percentages might stack up one way or another.

My daughter has a lot of baby dolls, including one “anatomically correct male” doll.  She gave them all names, and all except “Paul” were given feminine names, even the nongendered babies.  She’d say they were all girls.  I asked, “But what about Paul?”  To which she replied, “Paul’s a girl with a penis.”  This was before she was two.  We figured that was a pretty good baseline for a 21st century kid’s ideas about gender determinism.

And now that she seems to have contracted the pinkprincessaphilia from her schoolmates, we don’t express any disappointment about it around her.  She may outgrow it, or she may not, and she’s pretty awesome either way.  It was just surprising (and yes, a bit frustrating) that she caught this particular bug, when outside of school she was always presented with so many other (IMHO more interesting) choices and opportunities.

But I’m just some guy.  Maybe there are many fascinating layers in the Pink Princess realm.  Some people spend years of their lives happily poring over stamp collections or organizing their Lego minifigs.  I don’t get those either.

It’s a shame, because I’d genuinely like to know how to test such assertions, and you’re coming across with such authority as leads me to believe you might actually have some knowledge underpinning it.

But, if you want to keep that to yourself … that’s fine. I’ve no right to demand it of you. Shan’t waste your time any more – see ya ;)

Though I also suspect that imported foreign swear words are also automatically more casual.

But I think it’s time to just lose the whole distinction altogether and have no separate sections for boys and girls in things like this. Just group the toys according to category, for instance “house hold toys”, “science toys”, etc.

In primary school, however, I did learn at some point that red was a girls’ colour. No idea why.

Most toys are unnecessarily gendered. Boys love playing with dolls, girls love playing with cars. At least until we ruin them with our cultural bias.

I also really abhor the whole “girl stuff needs to be pink” thing that you see way too much recently. Though hypocrit that I am, I still refused to buy my son a pink romper when he pointed it out in the shop.

“An article in the trade publication Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department in June 1918 said: “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”[17] From then until the 1940s, pink was considered appropriate for boys because being related to red it was the more masculine and decided color, while blue was considered appropriate for girls because it was the more delicate and dainty color, or related to the Virgin Mary.[18][19][20] Since the 1940s, the societal norm was inverted; pink became considered appropriate for girls and blue appropriate for boys, a practice that has continued into the 21st century.[21]“

BUT, she is also no doubt going to be a structural engineer. She is so smart. She loves to build things and has since she was very small. I spoke with a co-worker with an engineering degree and she told me that I should buy my daughter toys with lots and lots of instructions – dollhouses, for example, or Kinex – to teach her the skills she needs to be an engineer later on in life. She loves these kinds of toys.

Don’t despair! Girls can be cool and smart and wear all the pink and purple stuff they want. 

However, this is pretty egregious. Marketing a dish washing set specifically to girls is pretty much like saying that women belong in the kitchen. And a microscope is just as much of interest to girls as to boys.

I still love blue and wear it and paint it and stare at it all the time…

While we’re on the subject of colours, (which I care about very much) I’d just like to bring up my intense annoyance with the gay population for stealing the rainbow..rainbows symbolize so much more than the way you like to get down, and I am launching an official campaign to reclaim the rainbow. Colours belong to everyone!

Swear words aren’t inherently bad, they are only bad in the context of the society in which they originated because of the connotations it evolved to have there. I’d say “godverdomme” in the Netherlands is about comparable to “fuck” in America in level of offensiveness.

You mean it could be even worse?! ;-)