Parents of Preschoolers  Discussion Forum

Are baby girls inherently attracted to girly things (like beautiful dresses) or is it a result of nurturing? If it is a result of nurturing, should parents and/or society be allowed to dictate to girls what things they can and can't choose or do? Samay replied. Over the last year, I?ve become aware of something about myself that I really didn?t like once I noticed it. I have a daughter. She?s two, now. When we were pregnant with her, we first thought she was a boy. We are major planners and went in as soon as you could to get an ultrasound. Well, it was actually too soon, as sometimes that early? how can I put it? Hamburgers looked like turtles. So we thought our daughter was going to be our son. Then we went in a month later for our next ultrasound and boom. Va-jay-jay. This time, plain as day. There is a sort of mourning that happens when that something like that happens. You?ve been expecting this [vague] baby, but then when you find out the sex, your imagination has a focus and you start truly seeing its little life. Then to find out it is something completely different, not less, but different? well, that?s hard. My ?Whoa? moment lasted until we got out of the room, but Mommy didn?t take it very well. For her, it was almost like her son had died in utero. She was upset about it for a few hours. When we got home, I told her, ?You?re allowed to mourn for the rest of the day, but then you have got to be happy about this girl. We never lost anything. This baby was always a girl, even when it was a boy. You have to love this baby just as much.? She needed the day, and I was worried that it would go on; but after giving her that, she was fine, the most loving mother in the world. For me though, there really wasn?t much loss. My dreams didn?t change that much and what I imagined for my daughter wasn?t that different than what I imagined for my son. I still imagined her going to Harvard and starting a huge company, maybe in robotics or asteroid mining, but my real fantasy was that she would go to Annapolis to become a Marine officer. Either way, this was no different than what I imagined for my son. When she was born I continued raising her with that same mentality, pushing heavy on Science and being tough. One of her first phrases was, ?No victims.? Her first Halloween costume was as an astronaut. I also didn?t encourage her to play with the baby dolls or the kitchen toys or any of the other toys emulating those traditional roles, which truth be told, I looked down upon. It wasn?t so much a hatred of cooking, but a belief that if she focused on those things, maybe somehow she wouldn?t be as powerful or driven later on in life. Basically, I was doing the good work of a modern dad in treating my daughter exactly the same as if she was a boy. And people who know me might be surprised, because I am a deeply conservative traditionalist person. But then I started looking around. When I watched her, really watched her, it didn?t matter what toys I tried to get her to play with. She always wanted to play with her dolls. And from a very young age, she is incredibly nurturing to them. One of her favorite activities is to get her apron that her great-grandmother made for her and climb on a footstool to ?help? mommy bake cookies. She loves getting dressed up in pretty dresses and she loves, loves, loves shoes. My daughter, despite all my efforts, was as girly as they come. And then I had to deal with that. I had to deal with the fact that I was trying to push something on her that she obviously didn?t care for. Why did I care so much, or at all? Now, I really embrace who she is, and love the girly things about her, celebrating them with her when she shows off her clothes or her bows or even how much she cares for her dolls. What I think it came down to was this programming that society puts on us; not on children, but on adults. We?re fed this line of thinking that everything about a person is due to social constructs and that all of society?s ills are due to the institutions that push down ?negative? traditional stereotypes on perfectly pliable minds. So instead of taking that lesson, and just letting our kids raise themselves void of any social frameworks to shape them (which would be a terrible idea, but at least it?s ideologically consistent), what we actually try to do as ?modern? parents is maybe worse. We try to identify the negative traditional norms and then raise our children to the opposite of that, almost in defiance of them to prove how modern we are. I now view that as wrong. My daughter is a very girly girl, and that?s okay. It?s even great because as I grow older, I see the incredible value that traditional roles offer to a society that embraces and celebrates them. What?s hard now is what I mentioned before. Most of who she is already a part of her, but I don?t see her having many role models that match her temperament and personality. As I said, we seem to be more impacted by indoctrination as we get older, than when we are very young. A big part of that is the role models who society provides for us, such as celebrities, politicians, and even fictional characters. It?s getting impossible to find good heroines who are are more complete versions of who she already is. For example, if she were my son and liked the Marine stuff like his dad and wanted to emulate that, I could point to Captain America as a ideal archetype to give him something to align himself with. Even if she were a girl who liked that, I would have a plethora of ?strong female? characters to choose from. But she isn?t, and there just aren?t a lot of traditionally feminine characters for me to point to and say, ?See Gabi? She?s like a super version of you. You should learn more about her and try to be like that when you grow up.? Really, all the examples she has? are men. They are either actually men, or female characters playing in male roles with male characteristics. There?s little about them that makes them distinctly female in the slightest. And I?m not alone. I wrote on this subject recently in a related answer on strong woman archetypes. Several comments came in from women were just as frustrated with this lack of feminine archetypes as I was. On in particular stuck out from Eliza Corder: When all ?strong? and ?acceptable? female characters are exactly like men except with boobs, the message starts to be: women are worthless unless they are like men. Which then means: male traits are inherently superior to female traits. Which in turn, taken to its conclusion, means: men are superior to women. That blew me away, and even on a very liberal platform like Quora, I?ve had many other women approach me voicing similar concerns. Granted, many of them I?ve seen attacked for saying so, which is tragic and ironic, but it says something very important. That traditional feminine roles are filtered out of society. Look at the example of when I did a search for the word, ?Heroine.? The definition provided was that of Wikipedia, which eliminated all distinctions between the masculine hero and the feminine heroine into just the masculine hero, but the image was of a woman in a traditionally male role. There?s some seriously crossed wires here, and Eliza?s comment really makes me worried for my own, very girly daughter. I don?t want her to feel worthless because she?s not manly, or worse, to painfully adopt manly traits just to not feel worthless in modern society. I don?t want her to believe that she can?t be heroic without giving up feeling like a girl. That?s who she is and she should be allowed to have heroines who are like her, rather than just heroines who are like men. Basically, I tried to raise her to be ?strong? thinking that meant to be like men because I had been indoctrinated to think like that. But she showed me better in that she?s very much a girl. But I am afraid that society is going to make her feel like the beautiful traits about her, traits that are extremely vital to society whether it likes them or not, won?t be good enough. I don?t want her to feel like she?s less of a woman for acting in traditional manners. I guess my main fear is that society will finish the job of that I should never have started. Liked this? You might also like my YouTube Channel. You can also connect with The War Elephant on Facebook. If you want to help me make more content like this, please visit my Patreon Page to find out more.