When the weather is nice, I take my 15-month-old toddler to the playground. Ever the daredevils, we usually end up sliding down the big-kid slide, shrieking with delight. Little feet carefully climb the stairs up the play structure, only to take off running across the wobbly bridge—patta-patta-patta—as my heart pounds and I try to remind myself that encouraging my child’s autonomy is a good thing.
Afterward, when we’re settled back on the bench by the stroller (“Babababa,” my little one explains to me, cheeks full of Cheerios, as I nod along) other parents smile at us. “She’s so sweet!” they usually say, sometimes adding, “What a pretty princess! Those eyes are gorgeous.”
I’m not saying this to brag, although I do think that my kid’s eyes are dreamy. He has lashes for days. I get lost in his sweet gaze on a daily basis, and I love it when he gets that mischievous crinkle in his brow—a telltale sign that he’s about to drop something fragile and say, “Uh oh!”
Classification isn’t interesting to us—finding out what makes our kid tick is.
My baby exists in a liminal space—we embrace all his traits without trying to define them as girlish or boyish—and intentionally so. My wife and I made a conscious decision not to gender our child more than absolutely necessary. We use male pronouns to refer to him because we speak Hebrew at home, a language that lacks gender-neutral pronouns. When I write about him in English I continue to use male pronouns, but I try hard to use gender-neutral terms like “kid,” “little one,” and “child” when possible. I prefer all of those terms to “son,” which feels like a limited word. We want to keep the gendering to a minimum.
It’s important to us that our little one feel free to embrace, explore, and develop all of his traits, regardless of how society has decided to classify these characteristics. Classification isn’t interesting to us—finding out what makes our kid tick is.
But I can’t help but notice that the majority of strangers we encounter misgender my kid, even after I’ve referred to him with male pronouns and explained that his name means “male deer” in Hebrew. They do this when he’s wearing pink and ruffles, but also when he’s wearing a blue shirt with trucks. Unless I pointedly correct them, which I don’t often do, they continue to use female pronouns, almost willfully ignoring me.
Is it so hard to believe that, regardless of the genitals my kid has, he can be both pretty and wild and soft and really into fire trucks?
I don’t mind that people call him sweet—believe me, he’s basically made of sugar—I’m just wondering why and what it means about how we think about gender roles in our society.
Why do people keep telling me that my baby is “too pretty to be a boy”? Are boys not meant to be pretty? Is it so hard to believe that, regardless of the genitals my kid has, he can be both pretty and wild and soft and really into fire trucks?
It’s interesting that our society finds it so important to nail down the gender roles of toddlers so early on. Whenever my wife and I have these playground exchanges, all of which are innocent in their intention, it feels almost as though people get uncomfortable if they don’t know how to categorize our kid. I’m extrapolating, of course; I don’t know what people are feeling. I’m just struggling to find another explanation for the phrase “too pretty to be a boy.”
I recently heard someone refer to human beings as “classifiers,” and it’s true—we do enjoy putting things in little boxes with neat labels on them. A 2010 article from Scientific American delved into the idea that humans have evolved to categorize, stating that “our brain’s structure is such that we can distinguish prey and aggressors from other kinds of objects.” If it’s baked right into the structure of our brains to label things, then it makes sense that strangers feel strange when they don’t know what to do with the grinning kid wearing pink ruffled socks and a shirt with trucks. It’s uncomfortable not to have a box.
But let’s follow the logic of these playground conversations to its conclusion. If boys can’t be too pretty, then girls should be “pretty enough” and pretty is a quality that is naturally feminine. In this case, does it detract from a boy’s ability to be a boy if he’s pretty? Is a girl who isn’t pretty enough not a girl enough? Seems like iffy territory to me.
The words we use with our children matter.
The idea that we are beginning to indoctrinate our children into the religion of trying to be enough, to measure up to some imperceptible ideal, at this young age makes me queasy.
The words we use with our children matter. In fact, they probably matter more than we’re able to understand. That being said, I’m not naive. I don’t think we can be aware of what we say 100 percent of the time. If I’m honest, I don’t even remember what I ate for breakfast most days, let alone what I said five minutes ago.
Nevertheless, I think that the things we say when we’re off guard may be the most telling when it comes to implicit biases—those sneaky ideas about the world that have lodged themselves in our subconscious. That’s the stuff we should strive to eradicate before it has a chance to take over. By keeping away from moments in which we define how best to inhabit a gender norm (thereby implying what behaviors or character traits are not appropriate for that gender), we may be keeping our little ones safe from those feelings of failure or not measuring up. At least for now.
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