ILX Parenting 6: "Put Some Goddamn Pants On Before You Go Outside!" is a thing I say now

http://www.citydadsgroup.com/nyc/2015/09/daddy-i-want-makeup-so-i-can-look-pretty/

I'm having a dumb facebook argument about this article right now. Tell me if you agree or if I'm being obtuse -- I think this dad is just being overly anxious about something his three year old doesn't really get yet and projecting his own fears about self esteem. I don't think a three year old girl saying "I want make up so I can look pretty" means that the three year old thinks she's not pretty without makeup, that just doesn't sound to me like how a three year old mind works.

As we walk into the bathroom to brush her teeth, I hear something I was not prepared for:

“Daddy, I want makeup so I can look pretty.”

I instantly recoil at what has just been thrown at me, then my mind races to determine where our toddler got this idea. Who told our child that in order to look pretty she needed lipstick, blush and mascara? Was it one of her friends at daycare who maybe has an older sister that said this in passing? Did one of the cartoon princesses she adores take a trip to beauty school in an episode she watched? Or was it in an article from one of the Toddler Cosmopolitan magazines that I see lying about in her room. I’ve been meaning to cancel that subscription, and perhaps this was a sign to do so. Then I remembered: my wife let her put on makeup to calm her down and give her something to do while they were both getting ready for a recent weekend getaway. I doubt my wife actually said something this absurd to our child, but now it appears the seed has been planted and we needed to do something about it.

I feel you on this - she's probably just made the (perfectly unconscious) observation that some women that look pretty also wear make-up and she is curious what that involves. Even so I wouldn't put makeup on a three year old. I think Veronica's aunts did this with her once when she was around 4 or 5 as a fun rainy day activity, which I was not really into, but it does not seem to have had any lasting effect. She does like getting her nails done, but that's something she does with her mom, which is what makes it "special" for her I'm sure.

I don't think I'd go out of my way to do it, but K has just been overwhelmingly fascinated by makeup and dresses since she was old enough to notice, even though her mom is more or less tomboyish. So at some point I let go and said to myself "if this stuff gives her so much joy, why should I inject any negative feelings into it?" We never tried to put makeup on her but she kept asking for it, so she has a little lip gloss thingy. And dressing up is one of her favorite things to do. It's a tough line to walk, but it seems like in trying too hard to avoid traditionally feminine stuff you can actually wind up stigmatizing traditionally feminine stuff.

Like to me if your three year old says "I want makeup so I can look pretty" and your reaction is horror, that kind of sends the message that there's something inherently bad about makeup.

yeah at 3 yrs old i think that equation is more like, "mommy's pretty & wears makeup, i want to do that too"

I've been pretty surprised at how gender identities assert themselves with little to no guidance from parents/peers, it's kind of crazy. Both our kids, with zero prompting from us or concentrated exposure to gender norms, gravitated almost instantly to trad boy/girl stuff. Judah is way into trains and cars and construction and shit like that, and it sure isn't because of me or anything I keep around the house, and this presented itself well before he had spent any serious amount of time socializing with other little boys.

xp

You really think that's happening without "concentrated exposure to gender norms"? Are you suggesting that interest in trains is an inherent genetic trait of masculinity?

I can't explain it tbh

literally the first time he saw a train it was like "THAT'S FOR ME!"

It's probably more in line with autism being more prevalent in males than females.

I can - you're underestimating how pervasive and impactful gender norms are in our society.
xpost

I see N/A's point.. there's no Teresa The Train Engine show.

Yeah I definitely think that is part of it. And I actually feel like we've regressed a good deal in that regard since I was a kid in the 80s -- everything only seems more gendered to me now in terms of toys, clothes etc.

Anyways it's near-impossible to avoid gendering of interests in the U.S. no matter how hard you try, and I don't think it's bad per se to let your daughter play with make up or your son play with trucks bc like you say who wants to be the sourpuss who's discouraging their interests, but I also think it's ok to be honest and sad about how these interests are pushed on them by everything around us.

*sigh* well I predict this thread is going to go in a fun direction thx for being patronizing

xp

I think there are probably subtle ways we do it in our parenting without realizing it too, e.g. there are studies on how parents are more likely to ask very small boys questions like "how many ___ do you see in the picture?"

Nonetheless, my daughter is enthralled by certain kinds of "girly" stuff, and I'm not going to discourage her. She also loves banging on drums fwiw.

Anyways it's near-impossible to avoid gendering of interests in the U.S. no matter how hard you try, and I don't think it's bad per se to let your daughter play with make up or your son play with trucks bc like you say who wants to be the sourpuss who's discouraging their interests, but I also think it's ok to be honest and sad about how these interests are pushed on them by everything around us.

― Immediate Follower (NA), Tuesday, September 29, 2015 3:28 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah this is p much what I think. "constructs" are real, and you can wage a one-family war against them but you'll never completely win.

She likes pretty dresses, so I'd rather teach her that you can like pretty dresses and still be a lawyer or doctor or scientist (or ballet dancer or fashion designer or w/e) rather than discourage what she likes.

like your formulation assumes a) a child identifies with a certain gender and then b) associates various characteristics or products or whatever with that gender and then c) adopts (b) because they see it as being consistent with (a). Now, in the case of my son I'm talking about when he was between 1 and 2 years old. Pretty much any child development expert will tell you that children at this age do not really have any concept of gender, they don't understand what it is, they don't readily differentiate between what is for boys and what is for girls. This happens a bit later, and is driven very much by socialization, exposure to peers etc.

I can't explain why my 1 1/2 yo boy would like trains. I didn't have trains around the house. He'd never seen or been on a train. He'd never watched television. There were probably trains in some of the books we had, but I'm sure they were just one of the many other random objects that typically fill up toddler books. He hadn't been around older boys with trains. And yet he was *instantly* super-excited about a toy train. I remember it pretty clearly, it was baffling.

xp

That doesn't really square with all of the times I've seen you and G yelling "BE A GODDAMN MAN FOR ONCE" to the boy, but whatev...

lol

I do find myself yelling "act like a PERSON" more than I would like

lol

J has been fascinated by anything w/ wheels since i can remember - cars, trucks, trains, rolling garbage bins, it doesn't matter

Maybe the explanation is that as a KID, your son was excited by trains. Like this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvpCmKUo1Aw

omg I could watch that 1,000 times.

I feel ya, Madeline. That is basically what I looked like commuting via NJT in 1998.

i fkn LOVED trains as a little tyke

my dad bought me a trainset & everything

that little girl = little veg

yeah obviously part of the problem here is using trains as a code for boys, which was not really my intention. That was just the first trad-boy thing Judah latched onto (which has been followed by other trad-boy things like construction vehicles and um the Incredible Hulk, among others - "HULK MASH!" as Judah says)

cuet

Ella's met a couple of transgender people, and she asked why these women sounded like men, so we explained that they were born with boy's bodies, but changed to girls when they were older, and now she's completely convinced everybody can and probably will swap genders at some point. like, if there's something I can't or won't do (eat peanuts, drive a car), it's because I'm a boy, but "when daddy turns into a girl, he'll be able to drive!"

My boy takes it a step further and says things like, "When I'm the daddy, and you're the son..." which haha, how could that happen? Oh yeah, gonna get Alzheimer's when I'm 50.

Ha, my blokes youngest still makes confusions like that too.

He's also recently discovered Fathers Day (long story but theyd never celebrated it til this year) and now hes decided this is a bargaining chip when being asked to do anything. ie "why should I? Its not FATHERS day. Why isnt it ever KIDS DAY mutter mutter"

haha when's international MEN'S day

In any case, whether or not we can solve big questions surrounding gender conditioning, I just feel like I see a lot of parenting blog articles where parents put SO much emphasis on something like this with such a small child, and inject so much anxiety into it, that it can't be good. "WHAT WHO TOLD YOU THAT YOU NEED MAKEUP TO BE PRETTY YOU'RE FINE JUST THE WAY YOU ARE I'M HIDING THE MAKEUP DON'T TOUCH IT"

I've probably posted this here before but: http://usvsth3m.com/post/21-struggles-faced-by-a-dad-raising-a-daughter-in-a-sexist-world

yea it is an overreaction xp

J sometimes asks to put his hair in a ponytail or pigtails "like mama" it is v cute

at J's birthday party last weekend some friends of ours brought their 5-month old boy and dressed him in this really cute pink wool sweater and my wife's parents kept making jokes about it like "don't show him the photos when he's older!!!" thinking they were so hilarious and goddamn it was so embarrassing.

my son had pretty long hair for a while, like a rocker, and we'd often get told "she's so pretty", & what could you really say but "thanks"

he also wore his sister's dresses for a while when really little b/c he wanted to be big like her. again, whatever.

otoh I had an acquaintance who once said to me that he hoped his son would be gay because gay people are better than straight people. kinda didn't know what to make of that.

I did freak out a little (internally) when K said she wanted to be a "woman lawyer." Also for a while she always wanted me to be the doctor and she was the nurse when we did checkups on her stuffed animals, but I think doc mcstuffins has put an end to that.

I really wanted to bring her to my office to meet all the "woman lawyers." Having mom home for a while and me continuing to work may be a bigger factor than any outside cultural influence.

otoh I had an acquaintance who once said to me that he hoped his son would be gay because gay people are better than straight people. kinda didn't know what to make of that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyjEAvIKD5c

otoh I had an acquaintance who once said to me that he hoped his son would be gay because gay people are better than straight people. kinda didn't know what to make of that.

"well they're certainly better than YOU" would've worked as a rejoinder imo

Apologies in advance for waxing philosophical and being pretentious, but I had this realization today about parenting, about something that makes it simultaneously so amazing and so fucking difficult for me: parenting frustrates nihilism. When I was childless, and even moreso when I was single, it was so easy to retreat into meaninglessness, even take comfort in it. But having this small, developing person there all the time, constantly observing you, listening to you, watching you for cues, asking you questions that have to do with what the world is and how to live in it, and it creates this weighty and almost burdensome feeling of responsibility in me. Changing diapers and packing snacks and dressing toddlers feels like the easy part compared to this, it can be done by rote. But never feeling like you can just have a true fuck everything moment, because this little person is watching you and feeding off of you and needs you to provide some kind of ballast in the turbulence of being so small and fragile and limited in understanding. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by this.

Hadnt thought of it in those terms, but that is very true

Time to get a sitter!

yeah I forgot to mention that the other one is only 4 months and won't take a bottle right now, so that kind of precludes sitters for a little while.

feeling that October 3 post a lot, man alive