A question about children and toys


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mitchell175 is offline mitchell175 Post #21  January 26,2012, 11:52am
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harnomygirl wrote :
I think you are writing that is necessary for every child to have societal values forcibly imposed on them during their formative years. After that is it okay to allow them to march to their own drummer.

Don't you wonder if they can really hear their original beat after decades of being used, figuratively, as a recording device by conscientiously conformist parents?

Why is early enforcement of gender roles not considered abusive, while consciously raising a child in freedom is?
That is not at all what I am saying. What these parents are doing is forcibly imposing an absence of societal values on their child. By forcing him to live a "genderless" existence, they hope to prove that gender differences do not matter. And, in that part, they are right. There is nothing inherently different between males and females that prevents either sex from doing just about anything they set their minds to. If your son wants to embrace his inner Billy Eliot by taking dance lessons, more power to him. If your daughter wants to go out for the wrestling team, bring on the mats.

As I recall from the article, right now this kid is about five, and still preschool age. In another year or so, he will be matriculating with all of his peers in the same age group - kids who will be either "boys" or "girls", when he is "neither", or "either" as the mood strikes him.

I think these parents would have been better served by encouraging their son to recognize that he can play with or wear whatever he wants, without thinking of them as "boy things" or "girl things", while still telling him "Yes, you are a boy, but that doesn't mean that you can't have a doll if you want one." You don't have to live a "genderless" existence to appreciate that there is more to life than just "male" or "female".
 
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harnomygirl is offline harnomygirl Post #22  January 27,2012, 9:17pm
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mitchell175 wrote :
That is not at all what I am saying. What these parents are doing is forcibly imposing an absence of societal values on their child. By forcing him to live a "genderless" existence, they hope to prove that gender differences do not matter. And, in that part, they are right. There is nothing inherently different between males and females that prevents either sex from doing just about anything they set their minds to. If your son wants to embrace his inner Billy Eliot by taking dance lessons, more power to him. If your daughter wants to go out for the wrestling team, bring on the mats.

As I recall from the article, right now this kid is about five, and still preschool age. In another year or so, he will be matriculating with all of his peers in the same age group - kids who will be either "boys" or "girls", when he is "neither", or "either" as the mood strikes him.

I think these parents would have been better served by encouraging their son to recognize that he can play with or wear whatever he wants, without thinking of them as "boy things" or "girl things", while still telling him "Yes, you are a boy, but that doesn't mean that you can't have a doll if you want one." You don't have to live a "genderless" existence to appreciate that there is more to life than just "male" or "female".
The parents are teaching societal values, just not gender based ones.

I think that what you would prefer relies on people knowing that you are female or male because you don't really believe that the two are equal, and you'd like concessions made for that while still giving both sexes equal opportunities.

The bold part sounds like a feminist agenda to me. The parents in question had a solution that is cleaner. No societal imprinting. No knowledge of anything but performance and personal preference. If everyone did it we'd have a world that is fair. There would be equal opportunities with no concessions. Perhaps biological females would achieve less than biological males, perhaps not. The results would be true though.
 
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mitchell175 is offline mitchell175 Post #23  January 29,2012, 7:55am
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Frankly, I like being a girl. Call it societal imprinting or whatever you will. I have no desire to live a genderless existence.
 
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harnomygirl is offline harnomygirl Post #24  January 29,2012, 7:58am
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mitchell175 wrote :
Frankly, I like being a girl. Call it societal imprinting or whatever you will. I have no desire to live a genderless existence.
Best point ever. I like being female too.
 
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VolGal is offline VolGal Post #25  January 29,2012, 4:45pm
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States leave parents to raise their children, for the most part, as the parents see fit. I believe in this Constitutionally-protected right of privacy in my own family, so long as my "raising" doesn't harm the child such that the State comes in.

We can all debate the right or wrong nature of what the parents have done. For me? I want to see this child 20 years from now - what did the CHILD think of his parents' experiment? And is there some deep-seated psychological reason the parents did this? And will the parents will be married to each other in 20 years? Only time will tell all, folks...
 
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VolGal is offline VolGal Post #26  January 29,2012, 4:49pm
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Oh, and I like being a female. I also like being treated by an equal in my peer community - lawyers. That doesn't happen very often, and the thin veil of "chivalry", from the wrong male attorneys, is actually a put-down. I know those guys, fortunately, and steer clear of them. The younger ones - in their 50's and younger, however- have grown up in a different world and treat me so much more like an equal.

And even the judges have grown up, too. I remember when I started practicing law in 1989, there was this one judge - he had a reputation that with any female attorney he'd grill her about her name - was she married, was she single, did she keep her maiden name, did she take her husband's name - and mock and make fun of any of these decisions (to marry, to stay single, to keep the maiden name, to take the husband's name). I personally witnessed him do this to a number of new female attorneys. To new male attorneys? Nothing. Gladly he retired from the bench and was replaced with --- how fitting --- a female judge who later became our first female Supreme Court Chief Justice for our state.
 
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