More reasons to marry a Swede.
AT the Egalia preschool, staff avoid using words like “him” or “her” and address the 33 kids as “friends” rather than girls and boys.
From the colour and placement of toys to the choice of books, every detail has been carefully planned to make sure the children don’t fall into gender stereotypes.
… At Egalia – the title connotes “equality” – boys and girls play together with a toy kitchen, waving plastic utensils and pretending to cook. One boy hides inside the toy stove, his head popping out through a hole.
Lego bricks and other building blocks are intentionally placed next to the kitchen to make sure the children draw no mental barriers between cooking and construction.
Director Lotta Rajalin notes that Egalia places a special emphasis on fostering an environment tolerant of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. From a bookcase, she pulls out a story about two male giraffes who are sad to be childless – until they come across an abandoned crocodile egg.
Nearly all the children’s books deal with homosexual couples, single parents or adopted children. There are no Snow White, Cinderella or other classic fairy tales seen as cementing stereotypes.
But then…
… Some parents worry things have gone too far. An obsession with obliterating gender roles, they say, could make the children confused and ill-prepared to face the world outside kindergarten.
Yes, I can’t imagine how damaging it will be for these kids to experience a handful of years free from a total and utter immersion in gender binary and bigotry towards difference. Whatever will become of these poor children?
hah, I was actually going to email this to you but then figured you’d probably had enough emails from me. I thought this article was interesting but then also thought that, well, this is basically what my daughter’s nursery does anyway. I am always amazed at how gender neutral they make the environment and this seems to be if not required then strongly encouraged by Ofsted here in the UK ie: they comment on it in their assessment. The boys are often dressed in princess dresses and sparkly shoes and the staff are very nonchalant about it – much more than the parents are.
ps: isn’t it funny how apparently some parents see gender neutrality as “ill-preparing” a child? Like a boy being able to cook or sew and a girl to climb a tree or ride a bike or build a tower is actually going to LIMIT options in life rather than EXPAND them.
I find the argument that protecting children from gender stereotypes for a few years to ultimately be detrimental to be fascinating. Would we ever say that about other toxic environments? In fact we usually feel the longer we can buffer a child from a toxic environment (say substance use) the better chance that child has of thriving. If anything prolonging exposure (not that you truly can) to gender stereotypes will provide children with a chance to develop cognitive functions that can help them recognize and reject them when they are exposed.
They don’t need fairy-tale stories in this school, because the school IS a fairy-tale! I want to send my imaginary kiddos here!
And there I’ve been, subtly correcting the Critter when he calls a woman “he” or a man “she.” That can stop now, yes?
Though it troubles me that to him, most everyone and everything, including my breasts (“the milks”), is a “he.”
I suppose that this comment is a non sequitur, but it’s what I thought of while reading these quotations.
Rachael, how old is he? I’ve been having the same problem with my three-year-old.
My threenager also does the pronoun-dance. He seems to prefer he and him but will sometimes use she and her. I remember my sibings and their friends doing similar at this age.
In real world situations I tend to correct if there’s a known preference, but we play with gender identifiers with characters in books and tv shows and I try to stop myself from referring to all unknowns (visiting plumbers, etc) as “he” – which has been surprisingly tricky.
He’ll be three in September. I don’t really care, and my “correction” has mostly been just to use the accepted pronoun if/when responding to him.
What bothers me most is his apparent use of “he” and “him” as the “generic” pronouns.
I have no idea, though, what (if anything) constitutes male or female to him. A few months ago he was telling us that he was “a little girl” and that his (female) cousin is “a little boy.” We would just say “Oh?” and leave it at that. He never seemed to have anything more to say on the subject.
My three-year-old still seems to be interchanging pronouns pretty randomly, though since starting preschool he seems to have made a connection between the times he wants to be a girl and the times he wants to wear flowers in his hair.
My first comment here, so I first want to say a deeply felt thank you. There was a time – a long time – when I felt there was no space for me within feminism. This blog convinced me otherwise. You’ve wondered before whether any readers became feminists after becoming mothers. I’m one of them.
A few thoughts about the sky falling in Sweden. First, there is a degree of incidental privilege in all this. The grammar of my native language, for example, would preclude any kind of sensible attempt at gender-neutral speech. I suppose you could intentionally address children by selecting a random gender to conjugate with, but that’s more involved and unnatural than avoiding gendered pronouns. Second, I’ll add the observation that at my son’s nonfancy preschool, the boys are often crowded around the play kitchen or doll corner when I come in with not the least bit of judgment from the teachers, which is to say, I think some of the approaches practiced at Egalia could be applied broadly.
Finally, I always wonder about the outcome of cultivated awareness (in this case, focusing the children on issues of gender by careful selection of story books) as opposed to lived reality (adults in the school setting modeling compassion and tolerance with a free selection of story books). I understand that there can be negative consequences to well-intentioned non-engagement, as has been demonstrated in studies of children’s conceptualizations of ethnicity. But isn’t the goal to approach each person for the person they are? If so, does a curricular focus on gender/sexuality/ethnicity issues paradoxically teach children that such differences, while to be respected, are essential? I don’t mean to minimize the impact of gender, sex, sexual orientation, and ethnicity on the individual. What I mean is more like: I’d rather my son think of his friend with, say, two fathers, as that friend who really loves trains, and not as that friend with two fathers.
I don’t think that’s an either/or, TRM – “the friend who loves trains” or “The friend with two dads”. It’s a both/and. What I’ve read about kids and race has me thinking that we don’t have control over how kids “sort” their world and the people in it, and that we’re hard-wired, in some way, to notice exceptions. So if lots of kids love trains, but only one has two dads, it’s the two-dads thing that will stand out.
I hope we model compassion and acceptance and inclusion. Part of that modeling is explicit conversation about what we’re doing, and why we’re doing it. Kids will notice skin color and sex and gender performance, and we have to talk about it to teach about it.
@TRM
The article actually says that the pre-school has adopted the term ‘hen’ which was created by other groups as a non-gendered pronoun, much the same way that ‘zie’ is getting used now on some feminist blogs (and other blogs too, but I read the feminist ones most).
What I aim for is for my children to be aware that some kids have two dads or two mums or two dads and two mums, only one of either, or live with their grandparents or whatever, but not to worry about it, just accept that some kids are different, have different things and it’s not anyone’s concern or anyone’s business. As long as they are happy and cared for.
I do see your perspectives. I’ll have to think through them some more. Mindy, I meant that some languages (two that I use personally) don’t just have gendered pronouns, but verb conjugations and adjective inflections dependent upon the gender of the subject. To be gender neutral in my languages, in which there is no neuter, would mean (1) abandoning either the feminine or the masculine altogether for addressing humans (genders are randomly assigned to nouns), or (2) purposely selecting a gender at random with which to address a human, without regard to their sex.
Well, I wonder if books “dealing with” non-traditional families are always necessarily FOCUSED on those issues. I know many parents who focus on having books that aren’t necessarily ABOUT race or gender or orientation, but rather include diversity in those areas. So, maybe a book about getting a new puppy that includes families with single moms and same sex couples.
Woohoo! My girl has just started at a new daycare this week after dramas with the previous one (ie, it turned out to be terrible) and I noticed that the teachers at the new centre say “come on friends, lets go outside!” etc. I hadn’t consciously thought of this as a gender thing but it makes me very happy
I think this is awesome! And as for the criticism, it’s not as if children don’t experience the world outside kindergarten once they leave and before they arrive and in the weekend. They’re still quite immersed in the binary gender world as far as I can tell.
I’ve noticed in my child’s kindergarten the teachers say “children” rather than “girls and boys”. My child doesn’t talk about boys and girls, she either says “someone” or uses their name. So I suppose that’s pretty good for an english language kindy where we can’t use a gender neutral pronoun.
There’s a big difference between the approaches of the carers at each of my son’s care arrangements.
The long daycare centre is cruddy. The carers have limited training and it shows, when my son said he liked cars the director described him cheerfully as a “real boy” while my partner and I tried to say “and lots of other things”. He genuinely likes cooking and babies, as well as cars and blocks and running around. They seem to buy the idea that these interests are exclusive. His previous childcare centre didn’t (we moved, we had to change, the new one is the only option near our new house).
Because the long daycare centre is cruddy he also goes to a sessional kindergarten, and to occasional care (which is excellent, but only three hours) and to family daycare (which has pros and cons). The kinder and occasional care provide kids with a range of play options and aren’t fussed about whether the boys are in the kitchen or washing the baby dolls. None of them provide books with diverse families far as I can work out. Neither does our library, I’ve asked them to purchase queer friendly picture books but the books that exist are too old to fit into their purchasing policy.
‘Leaf’ is a good gender neutral book for anyone looking.
I have schooled myself to refer to unknown doctors and lawyers etc as ‘she’, but I still find myself using He every single time when I’m talking about an insenct outside, or a stick figure or any animal we see out the window etc.
These things are very ingrained.