Many children like role-playing that is traditionally associated with the opposite gender
'Why are you wearing stockings, Papa?'
'These aren't stockings, Otto. They're called long-johns. Look, they don't have any feet like stockings.'
'Oh. Are they like stockings for boys?'
'Yes, that's it Otts.'
It was one of those anecdotes parents share over dinner or in bed, when the kids are asleep and the house is finally quiet. Exchanges you have with your kids that elicit pride and fondness for their quirky expressions and endearing insights. But this one, seemingly not much, held something else in it for me. When Nic related Otto's questions from that morning, we realised it was the first time either of us had explicitly made a distinction for our children between 'boy' and 'girl' things, be they clothes or toys or colours. And even then it had come from Otto not us. It wasn't that we'd done any conscious 'gender-neutral' parenting – for me, that was an irritating expression I'd only come across on the internet – it's just that we've never pointed out any differences along the lines of gender between what Otto and his sister wear. She might be wearing flowers, but just look at that fabulous dinosaur on his top. (And yes, Esther, you can wear the dinosaur pyjamas tonight.) Otto might be in a skirt, but only one voluntarily picked out from the dress-ups to dance around in.
Before I had kids I had no particular parenting philosophy or rulebook I set out to follow. I've developed methods for dealing with unwanted behaviours, some more successful than others, and ideas around parenting have formed along the bumpy road of experience. When Nic related the long-john conversation, a vague notion that had been brewing crystallised into an idea I could finally articulate to myself. I recognised something I am passionate about when it comes to raising my children – or I should say my son. These days, at least among the toddler population, I reckon it's the male who gets short-changed when it comes to choice and freedom.
2010 was quite a year for attention on gendered parenting and the new term 'neurosexism', and my interest was piqued by both Lise Eliot's book Pink Brain, Blue Brain and Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender. In these books the authors (a neuroscientist and a psychologist) argue that innate differences between sexes are tiny and soft-wired, not hard, and are exacerbated by our gender-preoccupied culture not set by biology. While I wasn't entirely convinced by their pendulum-swinging ideas, there's no argument from me our society is still gender-obsessed.
Also in 2010, a Missouri woman's blog went viral after posting about her son dressing as Scooby Doo's Daphne for Halloween and the flak she received from other preschool mothers. A Seattle mother got the media into a frenzy after taking her frock-loving boy on a TV chat show, ensuring more publicity for her self-published book Princess Boy in the process. In both cases, commentators made reference to gay teen suicides and condemned the mothers for outing their five-year-olds. I was outraged at the lunacy of people's reactions and distressed that the freedom I want for my own son here is so threatened and threatening there. But while Australians might not be so prone to hysteria and evangelism, are we any more comfortable about boys dressing up?
When Otto was a baby, he was often mistaken for a girl. It didn't bother me, in fact I thought it was an acknowledgement of his pretty face and took it as a misguided compliment (why a pretty face can only belong to a girl beggars questioning). If he was wearing red when mistaken for a girl, or a favourite Bonds jumpsuit with pink and purple stripes, I would be slightly annoyed at the implication that boys only wear blue. But I put it down to the person's well-conditioned conservatism, corrected them with a smile and moved on.
It was when he was a toddler that my feathers really started getting ruffled by other people's comments on my son's appearance. At around two years, if Otto saw me putting on nail polish, he'd insist on 'fingernails' too. Not uncommon among both girls and boys, in my experience. At the time we had a (male) neighbour who'd bend down and say, 'What's your mum doing to you? Better watch out there...' and then tell me, in one way or another, to be careful, the loud subtext being that such genderbending displays were a warning sign of future homosexuality and that that would be the last thing I'd want for my son.
One thing that has startled me since many of my friends started having kids is the fearful streak of conformity - similar to our old neighbour's - that rears up in otherwise urbane and liberal-minded friends, almost exclusively fathers. Their sons' hair is cut short as soon as it hints at curling up, tutus are banned from being borrowed by well-meaning girl friends, and there's not a spot of pink to be seen. In short, threats to masculinity are something to be guarded against from - well, birth.
'Relax,' I want to say. 'Your child is going to be okay.'
What are these fathers so scared of?
I think for many it is a fear that their son is going to be ridiculed for looking or behaving like a girl and I understand any parent's wish to save their child from humiliation. What I protest at is the constraining of a child's freedom of expression when they are still too young to form a proper sentence, let alone a targeted insult.
With all the passing comments about my son's shows of so-called feminine leaning, I started forming an idea around the wish for my son to be free to explore and not be constricted by social conditioning that just seemed so irrelevant and ridiculous at that young age. This issue doesn't come up for girls. It's ok for them to wear blue. At worst, you're depriving them of looking 'pretty'. It's ok if they want to play with trains and cars and get filthy in the dirt. 'Tomboy' is hardly derogatory. But 'nancy boy' and 'sissy' definitely are.
I'm sure my son is not going to remember the spotty pink chiffon dress that was his favourite dress-up when he was three. If he does, I'm confident he's not going to be scarred by it. He's certainly not going to remember getting teased by any of his friends, because he never has been. Often they ask for something equally frilly to adorn themselves with.
Is there, as I think was latent in my neighbour's warnings, a homophobia that doesn't want to speak it's name? Sad if it be true, let alone the fact that it is unfounded. In many years of babysitting boys of all passing persuasions later on in life, I never saw any evidence that a passing fancy for pink in a boy's toddler years equates with coming out as gay a decade or two later.
I want, as most parents do, for my child to be happy and accepted for who he is, in all his colours. One afternoon recently he was racing around fighting off invisible monsters with his friend. An hour later in the car driving home, he said 'It's a lovely night, Mama.' It was, and all the more so for his unprompted appreciation of it's beauty.
I never say anything to Otto about what girls and boys do and don't wear or play with because in ruling something out as 'girl' I feel I am denying him a choice and I don't want to do that. That is what I'm so fierce about protecting – his right to choose and explore and have freedom like he'll never know again. I don't care if he's not interested and only wants to feed his car obsession, it's the choice I care about. Soft toys sat in a basket for two years until his sister gave them life – his sister whose freedom to choose is not threatened in the same way. As Gloria Steinem famously once said (and I tried long and hard to find out how many years ago), 'We've begun to raise daughters more like sons ... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like daughters.'
Running naked at the beach, weeing on the grass, believing in Spiderman and Santa Claus – and wearing whatever you like. What a precious time! – surely to be protected and guarded by us who know how short-lived such freedom is. Otto is already is on the cusp. At preschool, if there are remains of nail polish, the four-year-old alpha males now interrogate me at pick-up like I've upturned the order of the universe.
It's all over by Big School. Well, actually, it's just about all over already. Otto turned four recently and there are clear lines being drawn between girl and boy stuff. Drawn by Otto from what he has gleaned from friends, older kids and preschool. I knew it was inevitable but I hoped it wouldn't happen quite so soon. The twirly dress-ups are now only worn occasionally – and definitely not outside in case someone sees him and laughs, hairclips are 'just for girls' and there are no more fights over the pink pram. I can only hope that, if he decides one day he wants to dress as Lola or Dora or any other female character for Halloween, he feels free to do so.
