<

« The Day I Decide to Let Tom Waits Dictate My Parenting Style | Main | What Happens When I Have a Day to Myself »

March 09, 2007

Friday Shuffle - The Nature vs. Nurture: Gender Roles Edition

The timing's excellent, what with yesterday being International Women's Day. I celebrated by ... um, having a vagina. That's about all I did. Clara Jane, though, acted like a total girl.

Her daycare class is girl-heavy. I think there's eight girls and four boys, but I'm not sure. They're all moving so quickly when I see them that it makes them hard to count. That, and the fact that I tend to lead Clara Jane into the room, sign her in, briefly chat with her teachers, kiss her goodbye, and run run run for sweet, child-free freedom as fast as my chubby legs will carry me.

Anyway, we arrived yesterday at a rare point in time: Clara Jane was the last girl to arrive, but none of the boys were there yet. The girls were circled around a table, and I swear to God, they were all talking at the same time. The terms "magpies" and "hen party" immediately came to mind. I think Clara Jane started chattering before she was all the way in the room.

As she took her spot at the table, her little gal pal Lucy came running to her, arms outstretched, palms facing the floor, squealing, "Clara Jane! Clara Jane! Look at my pink fingernails!"

"Oh, your pink fingernails are sooooooooooo beautiful for you!" Clara Jane cooed, holding Lucy's hand to examine her smundged little manicure up close as two other girls started a shoving match over a toy.

The first boy arrived as I was fleeing the scene. I couldn't help it. I looked at the poor kid, who looked terrified, and said, "You're outnumbered. I'm so sorry."

The whole scene flat-out bewildered me. I've tried to be as gender-neutral as possible with Clara Jane. If she wants to be girly, fine. If she wants to be a tomboy, fine. If she, like most women, falls somewhere in the middle of the continuum, great. I just don't want to foist femininity onto her, at least not without having some masculine balance.

When I was pregnant, I even went through a "no pink" phase. Unfortunately, "no pink" translates to "boy's clothes" or "naked baby" because guess what. Non-pink girls clothes are hard to come by. So I erased that line and drew a new one: pink's fine, but nothing with princesses, Barbie, Bratz, slogans extolling the virtues of negative behavior and for God's sakes, no ruffles! I want my kid to be comfortable and able to play, so we haven't done much in the way of frilly dresses.

I'm not getting her ears pierced. Not until she's old enough to make the decision herself and understand what it involves regarding pain, possible infection, and post-piercing maintenance. I've got enough to do right now without having to turn earrings and clean them with alcohol ten times a damn day, so she's not getting them pierced until she's old enough to be responsible for her own ears. I also want her to be old enough that we can make it a rite of passge. If you want to pierce your daughters' ears, I have no problem with that. I just don't want to pierce my daughters' ears right now, mainly for the same reasons why I don't want to get her a kitten right now: I have enough work to do, and I want to save some things until she's old enough to appreciate the experience.

Anyway, despite this mostly gender-neutral environment, I'm constantly amazed to see the girly things that appeal to Clara Jane. She discovered nail polish before she turned two. I had given myself a rare manicure before I went to Vegas. While bidding adieu to Clara Jane, she noticed my blood-red nails (because if I'm going to do go to the trouble to paint my nails, I'm going to make sure everyone can tell). "Pretty. Pretty. Pretty." That's all the kid could say. You would have thought she was looking at a rare van Gogh.

Shortly after that, my mom started painting Clara Jane's toenails, which she loves more than anything in the whole world. To mark her third birthday and official passage into big girlhood, I relented on the fingernail painting, even letting her pick out a bottle of nail polish. I'm pleased that it's clear with purple and silver glitter, instead of my preferred whore red.

She took a liking to tutus while having her two-year portraits taken, a blow that was softened by the fact that she wore the tutu with her green frog rainboots.

But there's boy stuff, too. She told me the other day that she wants to be a rock star, which is still a bit of a boy's club. Unfortunately, when she plays her guitar, she usually tells me that she's a boy, which means I'm not exposing her to nearly enough Bikini Kill or Sleater Kinney. She's crazy about all sports and has to play baseball several times a day.

Oh! Let me tell you this. She got a little baseball glove with a cushy baseball from my aunt for her birthday. She loves it, of course. Someone at the party, though, said, "Oh, that'll be fun! Your daddy can teach you to play baseball now!"

Excuse me?

Ahem. Her father maintains a constant state of fear-based flop sweats for three days prior to his department's annual picnic/softball game. It's her mother who played softball for the better part of a decade. It was also her mother who once took a bat in the face, and on another occasion, caught a pop fly under her chin for the most spectacular out ever made by a nine-year-old. Let's leave the baseball lessons to Ma, shall we?

I think we've struck a good balance, all told. While she loves those tutus and nail polish, she really loves bugs and playing ball. A few days ago she handed me one of her neglected baby dolls and said, "Get rid of this. It goes in the trash." That concerns me a smidge. Not the lack of interest in dolls, but the idea of where babies should go.

Today, Beqi and her darling 19-month-old son came over for lunch and child free-for-all time. Beqi and I have had the discussion about how, pre-baby, we were both certain in our feminist minds that gender roles are dictated by society. Ha! Ha hahahahahahahahahaha! Naive! Certainly, society and the images and mores we see daily do have an effect, but in seeing tiny kids falling into these roles when they've had little exposure, one has to wonder how much really is encoded into our DNA. Especially when Beqi's son is doing his best Bam-Bam (just like nearly every 19-month-old boy I've encountered) while my daughter is doing this:

That's right. She's head-to-toe pink (at least her shirt has a girl drummer), singing at the top of her lungs (granted, she was singing Grover's "Fuzzy and Blue", not anything by the Pussycat Dolls), flinging her new pink feather boa about like she's being raised in a burlesque hall.

Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that. I never would have guessed that feather boa-flinging and snakey dancing code might be encoded into the XX chromosome pair. Just like I never would have guessed a little 19-month-old boy could push a heavy chair with my 35-pound dancing girl back and forth, shuffling her up to the table and back.

Posted by Robin at March 9, 2007 09:31 PM

Comments

Posted by: pkb at March 9, 2007 11:26 PM

Posted by: pkb at March 9, 2007 11:27 PM

Posted by: Annie at March 9, 2007 11:28 PM

Posted by: michelle/weaker vessel at March 10, 2007 12:17 AM

Posted by: Exena at March 10, 2007 07:20 AM

Posted by: Katya at March 10, 2007 11:11 PM

Posted by: kara joy at March 12, 2007 01:46 PM