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Baby Gendering
May. 22nd, 2015 09:54 amSort of a rant. Sort of an intrigued.
There have been many (more eloquent than me) tirades on the nonsense of gendered baby clothes (TFV has a particularly good one), kid toys, etc. So not really going to reiterate those here. I think sensible people can agree it is nonsense to enforce gender expectations on a tiny human who has no concept of gender yet at all.
Just wanting to share some thoughts/experiences I've had on the subject lately.
Maybe I'm just insulated or something, but I only regularly encounter two baby questions from the general populace:
1. When are you due?
2. Have you found out what you're having?/ Are you having a boy or a girl?/When do you find out?
First one is easy to answer - Aug. 21st. Yes I'll be huge and hot all summer but that's ok. /smalltalk. Pretty standard script.
Second one als easy to answer. No, we're going to be surprised. I do get a variety of interesting responses from women (men all seem to have the same answer - "Oh. Ok.")
"How fun! I wish I'd kept it a surprise./My first we were surprised but not my second./ My husband wanted to know so we found out.", or some other story about their experience. Generally positive and nonjudgemental.
"Oh I'd go crazy not knowing!" These ones we all sort of agree to disagree, I say something along the lines of, "well, we're excited regardless" and it gets the point across just fine.
However, leave it to Judy to keep pushing the point, and inventing a new response
"How would you know what to BUY?"
I was slightly floored. I stammered something like, "things with puppies on them!"
But really -
Diapers come in white.
Cribs come in wood.
The pack-n-play is brown, with animals on it.
Strollers come in any color you'd like, and my opposition to the pink or yellow ones at babydepot were really that I don't like pink nor yellow that much, when blue or green or purple are options.
Yes, some clothes say "little boy" or "little girl" on them, but certainly not all.
To be honest, I haven't yet faced "having" to buy gendered anything!
Baby gear (the big stuff) is most often generic, as it may be used for several kids.
Diapers are the only thing that might actually depend on sex (as they actually involve genitals), but don't seem to actually distinguish.
Clothes are probably the closest to "tricky". The new clothes stores often seem insistent on a pink vs blue aisle. But I don't shop at new clothes stores (they are scary. And unnecessarily expensive!). And I've had tons of success at thrift stores (my standard shopping locale). Yesterday I walked in to one I haven't been to in a while, and started flipping through baby clothes. I had a dozen adorable outfits with no genderedness in about 5 minutes (and then I stopped, despite having only made it through a rack and a half). I paid $9.23 for them and went home.
It might get more difficult as baby gets bigger - I haven't much gotten out of the teeny tiny 0-3 month catagory. And maybe it helps that I am thrilled to put a girl in a tiny blue romper with a spaceship on it. Or a boy in little blue bloomers and gown (did you know we've only stopped putting under-3 set boys into dresses in about the last 90 years?).
I'm more baffled at the notion that baby's sex matters than in finding awesome things to buy.
There have been many (more eloquent than me) tirades on the nonsense of gendered baby clothes (TFV has a particularly good one), kid toys, etc. So not really going to reiterate those here. I think sensible people can agree it is nonsense to enforce gender expectations on a tiny human who has no concept of gender yet at all.
Just wanting to share some thoughts/experiences I've had on the subject lately.
Maybe I'm just insulated or something, but I only regularly encounter two baby questions from the general populace:
1. When are you due?
2. Have you found out what you're having?/ Are you having a boy or a girl?/When do you find out?
First one is easy to answer - Aug. 21st. Yes I'll be huge and hot all summer but that's ok. /smalltalk. Pretty standard script.
Second one als easy to answer. No, we're going to be surprised. I do get a variety of interesting responses from women (men all seem to have the same answer - "Oh. Ok.")
"How fun! I wish I'd kept it a surprise./My first we were surprised but not my second./ My husband wanted to know so we found out.", or some other story about their experience. Generally positive and nonjudgemental.
"Oh I'd go crazy not knowing!" These ones we all sort of agree to disagree, I say something along the lines of, "well, we're excited regardless" and it gets the point across just fine.
However, leave it to Judy to keep pushing the point, and inventing a new response
"How would you know what to BUY?"
I was slightly floored. I stammered something like, "things with puppies on them!"
But really -
Diapers come in white.
Cribs come in wood.
The pack-n-play is brown, with animals on it.
Strollers come in any color you'd like, and my opposition to the pink or yellow ones at babydepot were really that I don't like pink nor yellow that much, when blue or green or purple are options.
Yes, some clothes say "little boy" or "little girl" on them, but certainly not all.
To be honest, I haven't yet faced "having" to buy gendered anything!
Baby gear (the big stuff) is most often generic, as it may be used for several kids.
Diapers are the only thing that might actually depend on sex (as they actually involve genitals), but don't seem to actually distinguish.
Clothes are probably the closest to "tricky". The new clothes stores often seem insistent on a pink vs blue aisle. But I don't shop at new clothes stores (they are scary. And unnecessarily expensive!). And I've had tons of success at thrift stores (my standard shopping locale). Yesterday I walked in to one I haven't been to in a while, and started flipping through baby clothes. I had a dozen adorable outfits with no genderedness in about 5 minutes (and then I stopped, despite having only made it through a rack and a half). I paid $9.23 for them and went home.
It might get more difficult as baby gets bigger - I haven't much gotten out of the teeny tiny 0-3 month catagory. And maybe it helps that I am thrilled to put a girl in a tiny blue romper with a spaceship on it. Or a boy in little blue bloomers and gown (did you know we've only stopped putting under-3 set boys into dresses in about the last 90 years?).
I'm more baffled at the notion that baby's sex matters than in finding awesome things to buy.