We are recycling a lot of Lauca’s baby clothes for Cormac and in doing so I have become aware of two things.
Firstly, we bought quite a lot of clothing from the boys’ section for Lauca, whereas we have bought almost no clothes from the girls’ section for Cormac.
And secondly, Cormac has worn pretty much all of Lauca’s ‘boy’ clothes and very few of her ‘girl’ clothes.
So basically, although we aim for gender neutral a lot of the time in kid clothing it still turns out that we dressed Lauca in a mix of ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ baby clothing, and we dress Cormac almost exclusively in ‘boy’ clothing. It pains my feminist heart to explore this outcome.. why do I think we do this?
You can put all sorts of spin on it as a parent but surely it comes down to this – for a male with his superior status of masculinity it is unacceptable to take on the inferior status of feminine, whereas for a female child, while she still must perform her gender-prescribed role she is welcome to aspire to certain elements of the primary status, which is masculine.
Sucks.
P.S. More from feminist parents on this topic: here from Mistress Mom, here from Chicago Pop, here from Daddy Dialectic, and here from Raising My Boychick.
“The Pink Dress” remains a good article, though it is about a pre-schooler rather than about babies, and I wrote about this whole topic once before, though from another angle, here. Also, I still appreciate this quote from Jeremy Adam Smith in his response to my 10 question about your feminist parenthood:
For instance, he likes to wear dresses to birthday parties, and we let him. The other parents, even here in San Francisco, raise their eyebrows, and I wonder what they’re thinking, and if we’ll be invited to next year’s birthday party, and I wonder how that will affect Liko. And I feel ashamed and cowardly for wondering.
blue milk 
Friends of mine used to dress their boy & girl twins in whatever came to hand, if it was clean and dry it was fair game. They learned very quickly that the trip to the shops would be far less hassle if they agreed with whatever assumptions people made about their kids “Oh, you have twin boys?” “Yes”, “Oh, twin girls, how cute”, “Yes”. Trying to explain why they didn’t think it was a problem for their son to wear pink or their daughter to wear blue was just too too hard when they’d had no sleep. The mother S said her partner had started it, grabbing the first clean thing he could reach and not caring about the gender, and she was shocked at herself for flinching. But then the sky didn’t fall in, and she stopped flinching.
Other people I know wont dress their daughter in any boy clothes at all.
I have 3 kids. Girl – Boy – Girl. I took great pains to dress my number 1 in mostly gender neutral clothes and appreciated it when my boy came along – great handmedowns. I shunned everything that screamed girly for number 1. I didn’t dress my boy in anything outrageously boyboy but a sailor suit here, an argyle sweater there… was pretty hard to resist.
But now – and I have no idea what has caused this change – I can’t help but deck my new baby girl out in the girliest of girl clothes. Pink booties! Frou frou fuzzy hats with kitten ears! Furry everything! I want to celebrate her femininity and say in a not-at-all-understated way, “It’s a girl!”
I was telling a friend this and she suggested that maybe it’s somehow the baby…
Yes, evidently the sky would fall in, and, even worse, certain appendages would wither and drop off should a baby male be dressed in anything remotely seen as feminine. Given that buying anything for a girl which is not pink is extraordinarily difficult, the odds are stacked very much against unisex dressing. I applaud your efforts. ‘Boy’ clothes usually come in fairly nasty colours, unfortunately. All those baby denim clothes look very uncomfortable, too.
When my children were little it was quite easy to get very bright clothes which suited both boys and girls, but it seems the Great Marketer in the Sky has decided that female clothes must be pink, pink or pink – and the uglier the shade, the better. It is all a conspiracy, to help stamp out the evils of feminism. When the revolution comes, the wrong side will win…..and it is very difficult to resist our conditioning. I admit to buying my granddaughter frilly dresses (but not pink). Mea maxima culpa.
I struggle with this one. I agree with everything you’ve said, and yet I feel strongly that I do not want to make it difficult for my children to socialise confidently in their respective peer groups.
So I wouldn’t personally dress my boys in pink dresses. They would flat out refuse anyway.
Also I had my much longed for daughter after having two boys, and I am ashamed to admit that I love dressing her in beautiful clothes. Being girly together promotes a special bond between us. My mother laughs at me and says I am going to go to feminist hell!
I only have two boys, and I’ve never dressed them in anything obviously feminine. Neutral ish yes (not blue, or covered in trucks), but not feminine. At home, they have fairywing dressups, and various pink things, but they don’t wear them going out. Like Gappy, particularly now they have a peer group, I struggle with avoiding teasing on their behalf.
My mother dressed me in very gender neutral clothes, with the result that I was constantly mistaken for a boy until I was about 14 (I always had short hair). It led to a lot of teasing. Some of which I wish I didn’t have to experience.
“for a male with his superior status of masculinity it is unacceptable to take on the inferior status of feminine”- this is exactly right, and as a feminist mother, I don’t know what to do about it!
Great post. I think clothing is just the beginning of the struggle to raise a feminist son. I didn’t think that much about it while I was raising mine but think about it a lot now that I’m done.
So are you going to buy him some girl clothes or what?
Yes, I am going to make an effort to address this. More girl clothes.
Though I won’t be buying him any, we have a truck load of girl clothes left over here from Lauca as it is… and that is not to say that we haven’t dressed him in any of them already (he has been wearing lacey singlets, pink rabbits, pink mice, pink t-shirts, nighties galore), but that I will be a bit more deliberate about it all… because he is a baby and isn’t going to be vulnerable to much in the way of teasing yet. It will be us as his parents who get the teasing, I guess.
I had the same reaction to you. Whilst I was dressing my son in flower prints or pink I had to remind myself that it wasn’t wierd or strange even though it felt a little that way. What I found amazing were the reactions of family. Some found it a joke at first and then became very keen to “convert” him back into boy’s clothing. Other’s made veiled references to how it must be poverty or slack parenting that meant that he sometimes appeared in pink at family gatherings. The atmosphere could sometimes feel very hostile but we have persevered and so far it has meant that both girl and boy have avoided most of the gender segregation peer pressure both in small ways and large.
We have twin baby girls. They often wear their older brother’s hand-me-downs, especially when they were newborns. Even at a year old, people will assume one or both of our girls are boys because our car seat covers are blue and brown. If one of them is not wearing pink, people ask if she’s a boy.
Our older son did wear pink onesies (undershirts) and ballerina onesies because they came as hand-me-downs and they were the style I preferred. Now he’s in to fairies and princesses because the girls got a bunch of fairy and princess themed Christmas and birthday gifts that they aren’t interested in playing with yet. As any 3-year-old would do, he’s adopted them all as his own toys. I’m not going to argue.
Onya Blue Milk. it is a tough moment when you are blindsided by your inner conformist.
80% of our daughters clothes are handmedowns, and this has meant a vast number of very girly clothes, many of which make me feel a little uncomfortable due to the aggressive pinks. Due to my innate laziness they still get to wear them, tho perhaps not in the correct combinations. Some members of our parents group worry about my de-feminising my daughters and they have banded together to provide fairy and ballet clothes which the eldest loves at least as much as her cowboy costume and the rest of her dressups.
i’d love to have a go at your ten questions one day, but not right now as the grumpy teething baby is . . .well teething and its a long way to the shop if you want a sausage roll. ciao
While I don’t have kids yet I feel very strongly about the pink epidemic among girls; but the challenge of dressing a boy in pink/girls clothes is something I don’t know how I would address. I can see how it would be easy to put it in the too hard basket – especially after reading these comments from first hand experiences.
I imagine it is the same with traditionally feminine pursuits, like ballet etc. I read an article recently where the author said that liberal-minded friends had justified not sending sons to ballet b/c there would be no other boys in the class – which is of course perpetuating that particular gender split.
The issue of clothing is so difficult as it becomes an expression of how we feel about ourselves. Dressing a child feels presumptuous, as if we know how our children feel about themselves.
When Eve was about a year old, I was given a gorgeous snowsuit by a friend who wouldn’t put it on her son because it was “girl colors”.
The colors? Squares of navy blue and red. Primary color red, not pink.
Between hand-me-downs from cousins and friends, and the ridiculous number of gifts, the only clothing I bought for Eve for two years were onesies and socks. Since I didn’t choose her clothes, she ended up in lots and lots and lots of frilly pink. To my eyes, she looked best in navy blue and jewel tones. Now she chooses her own clothes and she does love pink, but is starting to venture more in the vibrant darker colors. She will not wear boy clothes. For tap recital one year she had to wear boy-cut jeans and she HATED them.
It’s a journey, and it’s not my journey.
[…] Milk writes about The very gendered baby (found via […]
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I have found (older son, younger daughter) that boys clothes are often of a more generous cut and some things I have bought from the boys section for my daughter, like parkas, because they weren’t in fashion for girls that year. The girls section seems to be more fashion influenced so it’s easier to get the basics from the boys section.
My daughter loves pink, which I hardly ever wear, and has a shoe fetish (from since she wore pre-walkers) which I don’t share. She is also currently adamant that blue is a boys colour (I wear a lot of blue) and pink is a girls colour. I have a lot of work to do with my little pre-feminist.
I don’t dress my son in pink because I can’t cope with the flak, even if he doesn’t notice it. I do think it is weird how small boys can’t wear pink, but suddenly when you are 16 or so it’s okay again, as long as there is a suitably surfy slogan attached, and pink business shirts are fashionable.
MIL kept giving us very pink clothes for our daughter. Then I told her that if we had a boy next he’d be wearing all of her older sister’s baby clothes. After that we received mostly gender neutral clothing.
My nephew used to copy his older sister and wear pink/purple quite a bit, but that stopped once he got to school. Peer pressure works pretty fast.
I have a daughter (6) and a son (4.5). My son knew the names of all the princesses before he discovered ninja turtles or transformers. When asked to select a book it was common for him to choose a story about a “princess”. He headed off to kindy as a 2 year old in a tutu that matched his sister’s. He gets a kick out of wearing his sisters nighties to bed without underwear so he can flash us with a cheeky grin. He loves letting his sister dress him up in her bling. I was sharing this story with a friend who truthfully said to me that she didn’t know whether to acknowledge and congratulate us for letting him express himself or yell at us – are you kidding!!
I knew as a parent that I was never going to say to my daughter – “you can’t do that you’re a girl”..so my sons self expression is not going to be dampened down because of his gender either.
We have the same ordering in the works – a daughter (she’s newly 3) and a baby boy on the way. I think I did a great job buying lots of neutrals and boy items for her but as I go through her bins of clothes to see what I can use for him and admit I feel really really guilty about how like you I am finding I don’t have the same desire to put him in the other gender’s clothing…..BUT I do think I can keep away from the overtly boy stuff like I did with the girl things – save gifts and hand-me-downs of course.
I actually tend to dress Bertie in more “girl” clothes than “boy” clothes, certainly in terms of colours and patterns (so, pinks, flowers, hearts and so on). He just suits them more, as he’s a very pretty kid. Boy clothes, certainly here in the ranges I can afford to buy, seem dominated by navy blues, dark olive greens and khaki type colours. And… he just doesn’t suit them much.
They’re also a bit… well, boring to be honest! He’s two, I think he should be dressed colourfully.
He has recently started to correct people who call him a girl to his face though, so I’m not sure how much longer this will last if he makes a connection between “wearing pink (or whatever)” and “being called a girl” and decides he doesn’t like the latter to happen…
What about a Kilt? Everyone looks great in a kilt. I’ve even known a few women to wear them….
My kid wears mostly gender neutral clothes. More often “girl” colours because I HATE the doom and gloom of “boy” colours.
He’s now two, and starting to express preferences over his clothing choices, and he frequently chooses the bright and cheerful colours that I would choose anyway.
And when he was a wee baby, and we went out with a pink dummy one day? A man questioned me. “Aren’t you worried that he’ll…. You know?”. “Turn out to be gay?”, I asked. “Well, yes”, he stammered. “Don’t be silly”, I replied. “We really wanted a girl anyway”.
Absolute stupidity. My boy wears pink, and his penis hasn’t fallen off.
Yet.
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In my family there is an abundance of girls, 5 too be exact and one boy. So that boy gets spoilt rotten. However when it comes to school time I get shorts for the girls so that the boy can wear them too. All the girls have received hand me downs. By the fifth girl she got hand me downs from the elder 4, nothing was bought new.