Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Pink, pink, pink

My wife and I are pretty idealistic. When we had our first child, we pretty much thought out how we would raise her. She would be well balanced, thoughtful, kind, generous. I would teach her about tools, and how to make things out of wood. We would balance things with life skills like being able to cook so when she is on her own, she can take care of herself. We would teach her about the environment, and to respect animals. We would teach her to be strong, articulate, and assertive. Not mean or nasty.

We would raise her without gender biased stuff. In our idealism, we expected her to play with all sorts of toys, creative playthings that teach rather then drain. We hoped to have her be able to play with boy things as well as girl things. We avoided the “girl” isle in the toy stores, we dressed her in yellow, green, purple, and red.

Where did we go wrong?

Where did all this PINK come from? Why does she want to dress as sleeping beauty - the most passive of all the princesses in the disney cartoon world? Why does she want to play with My Little Pony and not the cars and trains?

1 comment:

Ken Pierce said...

You know, Jim, the problem with Blogger is...no trackbacks.

Anyhow I'm sending anybody who wanders through the Peril, your way on this one. Meant to a while ago but Alexandra has taken up my miniscule amount of free time...