Now for a couple more details about these parents’ behaviors…
1. The woman who didn’t want to dress her infant son in the pastel “boy” colors felt that way because she didn’t think pastel was appropriate for boys. She thought that pastels were “too girly,” even if they were blue, green, etc.
Coincidentally, this same family recently moved into a new house. The son’s room had a lavender/violent accent wall. The first thing she wanted to do when they moved in was to paint that wall because “purple is for girls.” The boy wanted the lavender and did not want to change the colors, but the mother absolutely insisted and chastised him for wanting to keep a “girly” color in his room. They are going to paint it a dark blue, maybe blue and gold for the Chargers colors. The boy had no say about it.
2. The boy whose father wanted him to sit with the adults instead of at the kids’ table wanted to sit with the other kids, but his father insisted that he come over and sit with the adults. The mother, who knows my views about these things, looked at me and immediately got my reaction, and then insisted (repeatedly) that the boy sit with the other kids. They all had a good time together, BTW.
3. In our neighborhood, there are multiple families with sons and no daughters. There are other families with sons and daughters, and there are a couple of families with only daughters. The families with both genders hang out with both of the single-gender families, but the girls-only and boys-only families tend to hang out separately. When they occasionally mix, there is an emphasis on boys hanging out with boys, and girls hanging out with girls. This is reinforced by the parents who often guide the kids to different activities or spaces in the house/yard. When asked, their reason for doing this is because “the boys want to play with the other boys.” They don’t. Many of these boys have played with the girls at different times, and they all have fun, but the parents of the boys have gotten together and scheduled their sons’ activities in such a way that they never have an opportunity to play with the girls.
An anecdote: One time, when we were leaving the house of an all-boy family, the boy from one of the mixed-gender family wanted to come with us for a sleepover at our house (including his sister). The male host of the first party said: “You don’t want to go to the girls’ house. Why don’t you stay here with the boys. You can hang out and have a sleepover with the boys, instead.” Mind you, this boy is one of our kids’ closest friends, and is closer to our kids than the other kids.
That’s just one example. Things like that happen very regularly. The girls are often excluded from the neighborhood football or baseball games, even though they play as well as the boys, if not better, in most cases. Sometimes, when they are all playing together, the boys will want to go into one of the “all-boys” houses, and they won’t allow the girls to join them. Again, this type of thing happens often to girls who want to play with boys, especially if there is a critical mass of boys who can dominate the activities.
And then, there’s the old “you can be cheerleaders, because that’s what girls do” line. Blatant and overt sexism.
For the record, the boys’ parents are often present, and they hear and see this behavior. All too often, they just ignore it, or even encourage it by reasserting the premise on which it is based (“it’s for the boys,” etc.).
Now, you might not think this is sexist because you will pass it off as “natural” or “normal,” but think for a moment if the girls were switched out with black kids, or gay kids. Would that be okay with you, too?