Liberating Young Children or Taking It Too Far?

When you think of raising a family what are the ideals that come to mind? Most women dream of having a daughter who will wear bows and ruffles, excel in gymnastics, be the head cheerleader in high school, and make all the right choices as a young adult. Most men dream of having a son who will play fearlessly in the dirt, perfect the art of blanket-fort making, be a young baseball star, and become a successful businessman as an adult. Have you ever wondered why you think this way about how your son or daughter should behave, act, and ultimately be?
Outside influences tell us wanting a daughter who plays with army toys, plays on the pee wee football team, and wants to be a mechanic when she is older are wrong. Having a son who plays with baby dolls, acts in plays, and chooses nursing as his profession is abnormal. Is there a correct way you have to behave in order to be a respectable man or woman? Who determines what is right and wrong? Is it you or your parents and grandparents before you? Society? The Government? Have you ever challenged yourself to think about how your beliefs came about on gender roles? A friend of mine has done exactly that.
She has challenged today’s expectations of what a young boy should be like, play with, and how he should behave. The question I ask myself is, has she figured out how to incorporate both “girl” and “boy” norms in order to give her son a balanced and full view on life itself, or has she taken it too far in challenging the expectations of little boys from society by over influencing? In my experience as a mother, I understand the unspoken expectations that are present in raising three boys. I know that if I go to the supermarket and my children are prancing around like ballerinas that I will be undoubtedly judged by other moms. On the other hand, if I go into the same supermarket with filthy, muddy boys who clearly just got done wrestling around at football practice I will get looks from other mothers that imply approval, achievement and satisfaction. For my friend, she sees the unspoken expectations of her son as something to rebel against. Her view is that little boys can play with Barbies and dollhouses without it affecting who they become one way or another. I believe that what you are taught to believe, or not believe, and what social structures you are taught to adhere or not adhere to, definitely play a role in shaping you as a person. This includes what you do or don’t play with as a child. Influencing children to play with specific toys based on their genders can be detrimental to the way children develop as adults because taking away original thought and freedom hinders the evolvement of their true selves.
My friend has always had great intentions with her son. She wanted him to see the world simply and beautifully. She didn’t want him to see color, race, religion, or sex. She wanted him to see people and life and love. I think all mothers want this for their children, but all people interpret how to achieve this differently. In her case, she broke society’s gender roles for her son by buying him gender neutral clothing as a baby, by allowing him to pick out whatever toy he wanted at the store on his birthday, regardless of what aisle it was found in. She encouraged him to dance and sing and do artsy things when he wanted. To me, this is all okay. She is letting her child express himself purely and innately.
However, over the following five years, she stopped letting him express himself as he chose and she started to influence his choices more and more. When her son would want a Batman Lego set she would tell him things such as “That’s not a fun toy, but this is!” and hand him a paper doll kit complete with outfit changes. When her son wanted to play in the rain and mud puddles she discouraged it with statements such as “Getting dirty is bad. It will just ruin your clothes! Stop being such a boy!”
One distinct memory that stands out for me is her son’s fifth birthday party this past summer. When I got the birthday invitation, I contacted my friend to get some ideas for a present. When I asked her what he was into, she replied “Anything in the pink aisle! He doesn’t like any of the normal boy stuff like superheroes or Ninja Turtles that your boys are into.” I was taken aback by her response. I said that I was not sure what I would buy in the “pink aisle” for him because I don’t have any girls and couldn’t think of a single thing that my three boys would want from that section. She just told me that anything would do. For my gift, I ended up settling on a gender-neutral gift: a blue and green tie dye shirt kit and a 100-count box of ready-to-make crafts. I decided on these two gifts because I felt that my boys would enjoy these items, and that these items would also fit into her category of “non-boy toys.”
While I internally struggled to find items that would make both my friend and me happy, I felt content that, ultimately, it was about her son and that he would also be happy with the presents I picked out.
When we attended the birthday party, I saw that she decorated with a rainbow theme. Not too out of the ordinary compared to his last birthday party, which was chock full of pink cupcakes with tiaras on them. This time around the cupcakes were rainbow colored topped with edible glitter and chocolate coins. Still, I didn’t think this was pushing the gender code norms too much. I just thought it was creative and nicely coordinated. As her son was opening his presents, though, I was shocked by the things I watched him unwrap. His first gift was a paper doll set and two separate boxes containing paper clothes for the dolls. Next, he opened a pink caboodle filled with nail polish, a jewelry-making kit, and two Barbie dolls. After a few more presents of the same sort, he opened a toy car race mat with toy cars to match and also a t-ball glove and ball. He was ecstatic. When my friend saw these gifts, she was clearly unimpressed and almost seemed disappointed in the gift giver. She quickly tucked these two items to the side and then proceeded to show her son the jewelry-making kit.
I couldn’t believe what I was watching. It wasn’t the gifts that he received that bothered me the most. Nor was it that the kids —all boys— who at his birthday party were laughing and ridiculing what he was opening. I was more bothered that she ignored her son’s reaction to the toys he seemed to like the most simply because she didn’t want him to like them. How could she not indulge him even though she disagreed? I began to wonder if she had taken it all too far.
Just a few years ago, she seemed as if she had done a great job at not pressuring him into either gender-genre of toys. Now it seemed as if she views her son as a little girl. She has told me more than once that she thinks her son “will be gay when he grows up and she actually prefers it that way.” I don’t believe that people “turn” gay. I don’t think people are influenced to be gay based on toys that they play with, or what sports they do or don’t play. My belief is that people are born with a preference towards a specific sexual orientation, and all people discover this as they go through puberty and start to have the individual freedom to explore their own free will. I also believe, however, that you can seriously cause a child confusion and internal conflict about who they are by the type of unnatural influencing she is doing. This is detrimental to him for many reasons.
The decisions she is making for her son will cause bullying and different treatment from peers and teachers as he gets older. Why should he be bullied even if his mother did this to him? It is still proven gay children are mistreated unfairly. It will cause personal questioning of who he wants to be and who his mother wants him to be. He would be dealing with all of the normal challenges of growing up in the minority as a gay child, plus the possible confusion of perhaps he's not really gay himself by nature, but appearing so because of his mother's nurture influence. Most of all it will hinder his development as a young man in America. He will be pre-judged before people ever get to know him. He will be scrutinized based on his appearance that his mother chooses for him. One can say that what she's doing is akin to trying to force an obviously gay boy or girl into being straight. If society now believes that is considered unhealthy influence, certainly what she's doing must be a new-era version of the same unhealthy influence in reverse.
Most people only recognize women’s objectification in today’s world, but boys and young men are equally subjected to the same microscopic lens as women. The difference for males is that society thinks this exposure has less of an impact on them than it does on females, which I believe is untrue.
In Maribeth Theroux’s article, “The NEXT Plague: MTV’s Sexual Objectification of Girls and Why It Must Be Stopped,” she states “…when a show like NEXT is as antifeminist and problematic as it is, how will girls even know that they are being sent dangerous messages that they should not accept, and more importantly, should not emulate?” While reading this article, I was extremely frustrated that the author did not touch base on how boys are also objectified on this show. As anyone who has seen the show NEXT can attest, there are just as many episodes aired of such “entertainment” that include male contestants being picked or not picked by the female dater based on each of the boy’s clothing, style, language, and the way they carry themselves.
An article like this is emblematic of a society where the needs and feelings of girls are emphasized, yet the needs and feelings of boys are minimized. As my friend’s son grows into a young man in his current environment, it is likely that he will learn that his thoughts and emotional needs are not as important as his female peers around him in both society and in his own home.
Between the societal mores which minimize the emotional needs of boys and my friend’s desire to raise to her son as she would a daughter, he is being setup to be socially crippled and unable to survive as a boy in today’s world. Too much influence in either direction on a young boy or young girl causes abnormal social situations that are nearly impossible to experience unscathed in one way or another. It’s hard enough as an American boy trying to navigate the path from childhood to manhood without the added pressure from a parent trying to conform to a nonconformist ideal.