Pink and Blue Parenting

While on a recent jaunt with the kids to a foam-padded migraine-factory known as a ‘soft play centre’, I found myself sitting next to two mums who were there with similar aged boys to my daughter. The kids were getting on well, bounding and stomping about and having a heads-first race down the big slides when one mum pointed them out.

“Mad aren’t they?!” she exclaimed. The other mum rolled her eyes and they both said together at the same time “BOYS!!” and had a proud little giggle together. Nothing remarkable in that, I’ve heard it dozens of times before; but on this occasion I couldn’t prevent my eyebrows shooting skywards. The winner of the race, and by far most aggressive slide whizzer there, was my daughter.

It made me reflect how so often lately I have heard mums proudly relate how their sons have boundless energy, or are walloping one another, or keep jumping off the sofa… accompanied by clichéd reference to ‘oh he’s such a boy’, ‘that’s boys for you’, or ‘boys are like that’. It’s a given that this is explanatory, even excusing of behaviour that from a girl may not be ‘expected’. Yet almost every example being given, applies to my girls. Such is the fondness of my newly walking twins’ for climbing on and leaping off furniture, we have all but stripped the playroom bare. (It’s not that I want to discourage them exploring, I just can’t bear another night in A&E).

I’ve been racking my brains to think of girl equivalents; examples of where I have heard parents proudly boasting of their daughter’s evident femininity or attributing their behaviour to it… but other than the occasional mum talking about how they love ‘making time to do pretty things’ like teaching make-overs and nails to their daughters (we’re talking pre-schoolers … I kid you not *sneaks off for a minute to repeatedly bash head on wall*) I’m drawing a blank. It’s like painting by numbers, only it’s parenting by colour – pink and blue and all that they imbue.

When looking out for positive affirmation of being female, it is notable primarily by it being mainly about the child’s appearance, or simply by its absence. Yet the behaviour so lauded as ‘boyish’ seems to be merely overlooked when exhibited by girls. At worst it is decried as naughtiness where a boy would be excused. What’s up with that?

Interestingly, debate about gender and small children seems to have the opposite focus; it’s ALL about what the parents of girls are doing. Too much princess, too much image, not enough sports etc. All valid points, but I find myself asking: What about the parents of boys? What of their role in promoting childhood sexism?

It seems straightforward to me that the parents of boys are equally responsible for considering gender, yet pro-masculine and anti-feminine sexism is rife and openly displayed. I have lost count of the number of mums who say they wouldn’t dress their sons in pink, but who would put their daughter in boy’s clothes. Of parents who excuse the sometimes aggressive exuberance of being three as a gender, not parenting issue. Of parents who even make daft insinuation about gendered toys/clothes and sexual orientation. Of course there are some who have no choice but to use hand-me-downs and who re-use girls clothes on boys, but rarely in a visible way. I’ve noticed that people who wish to compliment my daughters will almost always do so on their appearance and not behaviour. Many seem to think I’ll be genuinely concerned if they guess the babies’ gender wrong – as though I have failed some basic test in marking them out. Is this all the same with boys? Am I just seeing the girls’ side? (Genuinely interested – I don’t pretend to have all the answers!)

Fundamentally I can’t believe that these gendered choices, behaviours and activities are the natural selection of the children. I don’t see how they possibly can be. We parent according to our cultural norms; our sexism is evident but politely obscured with children just as it is with adults. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that parents of boys seem able to adopt a position of entitlement where they are not obliged to consider sexism, just as adult males are able to, should they choose. But I am surprised. And oh-so frustrated because it’s so unconscious that to even discuss how people parent their children is taboo, as though you are telling them they are doing a bad job. Despite being perfectly common to highlight inadvertent sexism in the adult world, it’s still taboo to highlight that many parents operate on gender autopilot.

It’s a quandary. Do we adhere to these ridiculous norms and teach our daughters what is expected of them, and the cultural limitations and prejudices she can expect to find, or does that once again place the responsibility for sexism at the feet of females? Do we let her continue to run, jump, wallop and roll in the mud and risk her arriving at school as an unusually boisterous girl who may then find relating to other children (who have been unwittingly taught ‘the rules’) harder? I know a few mums of sons who have the opposite concerns; that their boys are too gentle, that they won’t manage the rough and tumble of school… just how much are we imposing on these barely-out-of-nappies children anyway?

We can’t make all of her choices for her, that much is clear. If the history of child-parent relations is anything to go by she wont pay the blindest bit of notice to us no matter how hard we direct our spotlight of experience to illuminate her path. It’s just frustrating to think that she might feel obliged to start taking delicate timid steps along it, when her natural urge is to continue to bound and stomp.

JT

Tags: blue, boys, culture, feminism, gender, girls, pink, sexism

Not for Sharing

I’m hiding in the kitchen as I’m writing this. Not because the kids are screaming or I don’t want to be seen. Instead I’m doing what I (and no doubt millions of others) do when I have acquired my favourite chocolate bar; scoffing it alone in peace.

I don’t care how many times the companies put ‘perfect for sharing’ on their oversized monster bars and bags, they know full well that sharing, where chocolate is concerned, most definitely is not the perfect way to enjoy it. Same goes for Doritos, Pringles and any other similarly marketed product. Share? Bollocks to that. No one really wants to share. Even when they offer.

I dally between two schools of thought on this. One is that it is some kind of slightly repressed guilt-act whereby I am hiding binge eating in some way that pop-psychologists could no doubt attribute to filling some void in my life. This is simply explained and dismissed as a) its only a sodding bar of chocolate and b) everyone does it to c) fill their chocolate void.

The other is that I have fallen hook line and sinker for years of adverts showing a glamorous and impossibly skinny woman sinking into an oversized bath or sofa while breaking off chunks of galaxy on her tod. I am convinced it is in fact the skinny woman who exemplifies mental health issues. If you dress up for your chocolate and eat it in slow motion there is quite clearly something very very wrong with you.

So if you are a secret chocolate snaffler as well, do so in the knowledge that you are in good company. The best company in fact, as I can neither see you or ask for a bit.

Nom Nom Nom!

Tags: Chocolate

Out of Blog Auto Reply

Thanks for your clicks. I am currently not at my blog, although I fully intend to be back at it very soon! In the meantime you can meet a couple of very good other bloggers at the following addresses. (Please note that they will not take messages on my behalf).

The Mommy Man blog: http://jerry-mahoney.com/

The Wife.Mother.Me blog: blogabyebaby.wordpress.com

Alternatively you can subscribe via the box on the right hand panel, and through the magic of t’internet WordPress will email you when my usual content resumes

JT

A Sliver of Summer

My Head Gardener tending to imaginary flowers.

Despite my determination to do as much as I can with ‘my hands full’ of little ones, I reluctantly concede that the month of March nearly got the better of me this year, consisting as it did of seemingly endless damp dreary days which force your head and eyes down, and with more than a few boxes crossed off on the winter childhood illness bingo-card.

Then last week the sun came out for a few glorious days, and the world looked and felt a different place. Instead of the usual seasonal coats and wellies I found myself applying factor 50 to slightly confused children and sitting in the garden with a cup of tea, face lifted and eyes lowered in quiet worship to the sun. Well… for a couple of minutes at least, between kid-kamikaze-style attempts at the slide and the irresistible lure of the empty raised beds five-foot mud buffet to the babies. I don’t blame them; after months looking at the wet muddy garden from behind closed windows I could have hurled myself at it and then taken a bite too!

It didn’t last, we knew it couldn’t, but we sucked in as much of that satisfying lovely sunshine and running/crawling on the grass as we could, and were reminded of how much better things will be in the summer when we can get out and about without the kids being strapped in under a raincover. I also realised just in time for planting that I should probably put vegetables in those raised beds, as there’s an outside chance that they might then actually eat them once in a while.

Roll on the summer!

JT

Dear Union…

Dear Union Representatives,

I wonder of you can help me and my fellow workers with our work related problem.

We are in a job where we work a minimum of 100 hours a week (without opting out of the EWTD) and frequently do nights as well. We get no national minimum wage, annual leave, sick leave or pension. We do constant heavy lifting and deal with bodily fluids but our employer has provided no mandatory training or equipment. We rarely get the legally required breaks in our working day and are regularly screamed at, bitten and worse by those we work with.

We do get a little respite from government funded children’s centres but this is slipping away. They say we can choose to get another job but childcare costs, cuts to child benefit and tax credits would make that actually cost many of us money.

Many parts of society offer us little respect, and other employers frequently discriminate against us for joining this profession. Sex discrimination in particular is rampant. Many of us are more qualified than others earning greatly superior salaries and benefits.

We can’t contribute our union dues, our employers won’t negotiate and we can’t attend any meetings or courses. We are not officially represented anywhere or unionised yet mostly experience the same working conditions. Many of us love our jobs, but somehow the conditions don’t seem quite fair.

Which union will represent us?

Yours Faithfully,

Average stay at home Mum

PS Unless the army can be trained to babysit, striking is out of the question.

 

Follow @janey_uk

She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not…

When my eldest was about a year old a friend told me it was her favourite age for kids because ‘they just love you’.

Now with a three and a half year old I realise exactly what she meant! My daughter’s feelings towards me (and, to be fair, just about everyone) are utterly unpredictable ambivalence; at times delightful, at times plain torturous.

While the toddler hobby of spontaneously combusting is (thankfully) showing signs of abating, she’s instead developed slightly more sophisticated skills, such as doing the flop-and-drop (collapsing in a heap an refusing to communicate) or simply running away shouting ‘I don’t want to!!’.

It’s no longer just over the obvious (hair brushing, teeth brushing, when where or how many Freddo’s she’s allowed) so I must credit her with keeping me on my toes. On the plus side her sulks and scowls are balanced with random displays of affection and joy – which are all the more appreciated when they are independent and unrelated to bargaining for cadbury’s.

Then this week she decided she was going to get a grump on at the library, first refusing to go in, then staging a sit-in protest as I tried to leave (nothing if not consistent) when a serious looking local pensioner approached me.

“I have to say, about your daughter’s behaviour…”

I thought ‘oh joy of joys, now for a public scolding as well, can my day get any better…’

Instead she grinned…

“…it’s absolutely normal. I had five of them and they all did this! It’s bloomin’ hard and you want to run away, but she’s just showing you she’s a person too. Oh I’m SO glad those days are over for me!”

With that she patted my confused little grumpy heap on the head and walked off chuckling to herself.

Thank you lovely random elderly lady – you have no idea how much better that made me feel!!!

JT

*off to wake up the babies so they can adore me a bit more – I am cherishing every last snotty cuddle now!!

Tags: babies, parenting, tantrums, toddlers

Punxutawney George

Grab yourself some popcorn and settle in folks: it’s budget week here in the UK! It’s a quaint tradition where the Chancellor emerges from no 11, much like on the annual groundhog day, where millions get to watch a strange creature poking out from its burrow to give us all an indication of the climate ahead. Its late winter appearance is celebrated annually with a fanfare of media attention and analysis, but for many it will remain classed as a rodent whatever the forecast.

Although the groundhog’s acumen in relation monetary policy is (allegedly) lacking, there are some striking similarities. Much like a Chancellor’s, groundhog’s life span is an average of 3-4 years, although they can live up to six, which would put it on a par or doing better than all but three of our Chancellors since the start of the 20th century (only Lloyd George, Lawson and Brown have met or exceeded six years, in case you’re curious).

But the factoids on furry vermin aside, the main connection with this years budget is not physiological. Instead, it comes in the form of an aching concern, shared by many, that the current Chancellor is most certainly going to forecast more winter for women. He is hell-bent on leaving British women in our own Groundhog Day hell where progress toward equality need never have happened. Just as groundhog burrows can threaten what’s built above them, this year millions of us women have reason to fear our foundations may collapse, trapping us in our homes. Women are under sustained attack from a Chancellor and Prime Minister burrowing away furiously at policies and benefits which are having a wrecking ball effect on equality.

David and George won’t tell us that they are trying to trap us in our homes, and ‘put us in our place’. David might be stupid enough to occasionally tell female MP’s to ‘calm down dear’, but that really is the least of our worries. Instead he pays lip service to women with Women’s Days PR stunts and a few high-profile female MP’s laughingly claim they are pro-women, while aggressively pursuing policies that are systematically undoing years of progress and forcing women, particularly mothers, out of the labour market, and into dependent status, back in the home.

While the speed of the demolition is shocking, women voters shouldn’t be surprised that a conservative government would seek to push women out of the public sphere. They are open ambassadors for ‘traditional’ families, and their policies leave little illusion that this implicitly includes returning us women to our ‘traditional’ place – stuck at home while the increasingly scarce jobs are lined up for the boys. Think I’m being dramatic? Take a look at some of the details of where their cuts are targeted – and targeted they indeed are – they don’t draw randomly from a hat when they decide who will face cuts and who wont. So far they have offered this:

1. Swingeing cuts to the main benefits which enable mothers to work – Cameron’s overhaul of the tax credit system means many will see £545/year (£45/mth) cut in April, but this is NOTHING in comparison to the cuts being planned for next year, with a proposed cap on working tax credits per family. Where women frequently earn a fraction of the minimum wage once childcare is covered this will force people into poverty and onto benefits. Many mothers I know are seriously reconsidering working at all as they barely break even as it is. Bazinga! Back in the home!

2. Dropping of universal benefits – starting with a debate about it which has tripped many otherwise sensible thinking people into a trap of judging the deserving and undeserving poor. It was a hard won victory to ensure that it is a benefit paid straight to the mother, one of very few, which serves to support women where inequality within the household is very real and acutely felt. It is also a lot of money to lose (Child Benefit is £188 a month with three kids), which is more than enough to put many a committed hard-working part-time mother on the negative side of net income. But then that’s our ‘choice’ to stop working isn’t it! And wouldn’t you know – if you leave work voluntarily you won’t be eligible for employment benefits. Bazinga! Back in the home!

3. To accompany these moves, hollow concern about getting the swathes of recently unemployed people ‘off benefits’ have been accompanied by an inhuman increase in anti-benefit and ‘scrounger’ rhetoric. Female unemployment is rising twice as fast as for men, and is at its highest for quarter of a century. Bazinga! Back in the home!

4. Public sector cuts which are disproportionately hammering women; nearly two-thirds of public sector workers are female, and they are more likely to hold the lower grade jobs as it is. Bazinga! Back in the home!

5. Cuts to vital services which are predominantly used by extremely vulnerable women; domestic violence support and rape crisis are suffering badly. Bazinga! Or not. Fucking terrible. Sent home and not helped if you’re beaten there – nice one boys.

6. Cuts to services which are an essential part of local communities for women and children; Surestart centres are closing and under threat, restricting services and increasingly unavailable, leaving women less and less choice of where to go for community. Bazinga! Back in the home!

And these are just the obvious examples. Women are being systematically chucked or squeezed out of their jobs, stigmatised for claiming benefits which are also under attack, have fewer places to turn with their kids, left in vulnerable financial circumstances and (where in a relationship) more dependent on their partner, and will have less support should that vulnerability be exploited in a violent way. Not to worry though, recent Mumsnet research shows that if that is accompanied by sexual violence a huge proportion of the population won’t believe her anyway.

It’s little wonder that women in the UK are wringing their hands in frustration that this government (who didn’t include much of this in its manifesto) is taking its window of opportunity to give us women a right royal kicking while the country is down. Many seem to be realising far too late – web forums I’ve been looking at are full of women shocked to find that their benefits or tax credits are disappearing, and that this makes working unworkable.

Before long it will be the ‘logical choice’ for all but the highest paid mothers (or those with ‘free’ grandparental childcare) to step out of the workforce. They won’t be technically classed as ‘unemployed’ though if it’s a choice. The jobs will be reserved for those who can work full-time to make it worthwhile, and lo and behold we’re back in the 1960′s. Why not add a plan to review all of our hard-won workplace protections too… oh wait. They already announced they’re looking at that.

So seriously, REALLY seriously, if this bothers you take note. Read the new Fawcett report at http://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/

Take BIG notes and do something. Email your MP, sign an online petition, donate to the Fawcett Society who are one of the few organisations keeping an eye on all this (if you can) or do whatever you think you can. And, for heaven’s sake, vote these money-loving women-hating misogynist men OUT at the next available opportunity.

Otherwise before long you will be waking up every morning to Sonny and Cher’s “I’ve got you Babe” in your own anti-women 1960′s Groundhog Hell.

JT

Tags: Budget, Budget2012, Fawcett Society, feminism, feminist, groundhog day, groundhogs, women