Nature or Nurture

It was a stay in your jammies and be together sort of Sunday. Just the way I like it. Early on, my girl asked if I would please, please, please play cars with her. While I often don't like to start my say playing imaginary sort of games, I consented....because I adore this girl. She set up our little car world and I joined in. The dog and the cat didn't want to be left out, so we all spent a good deal of time on the floor with the cars...our tiny little invisable people....and the giant monster dog and cat that periodically roamed the world. It was fun.

Right before wrapping up our play my girl said, "You know.....girls often like to play boy games, but boys don't play girl games very often." I simply asked her to clarify what she meant. "You know.....like cars.....lot's of girls will play cars, but boys don't want to play princess." I smiled, and said, "yeah...it sure seems like that, huh?" and we left it at that. This has had me thinking though. It was always a goal for me to do my best to not play into the steriotypes.....and gender generalizations. I made it a priority to encourage all types of play and purchased all types of toys. I haven't played into the "my little princess" ideals with my girl. I've tried really hard to let her true interests lead the way. I've failed many times, but on a whole....I think I've done a good job of letting her choose what interests her.

I think this is much easier for parents of girls. I think it is acceptable to encourge our girls to play sports.....and cars....and stomp in mud puddles. I think it's much harder for parents of boys to allow them to dress up in princess dresses......tote around a barbie.....and play fairies. I feel lucky. A "tom-boy" isn't looked upon by our society as all that strange. I doubt anyone would even think twice about my girl playing cars, but if this was a picture of an 8 year old boy playing barbies......without a younger sister by his side.....would some people blink? Would most people blink? It really isn't fair.

A young man in my daughter's class said to me one day at knitting, "My friends think I'm a girl on the inside!" I asked, "why do you think they say that?" He replied, "Because I like to wear bracelets and my favorite colors are pink and purple!" My heart broke for this little guy. I said many things to this sweet young man, but one of those was, "My girl doesn't like to wear bracelets, and her favorite colors are blue and green.....do you think she is a boy on the inside?" He shook his head "no". Why is is to easy to accept the later, but not the former? It isn't fair.

After much thought, I'll be re-addressing this issue my girl brought up today, as I often do. We'll be talking about how I don't really believe it is the boys unwillingness to play "girl games" but the fact that society has lead them to believe they can't. I'll be interested to hear what she thinks. She is often full of interesting insight.