Clothing can signify so much about us - how we like to spend our time, our favourite colour, the communities we identify with. Some children really don't seem to have much opinion about what they wear - although I wonder if this is the case more frequently when children have less autonomy over their clothing choices. A has had very strong clothing preference for the last year at least. His clothes are all accessible to him and he creates his own outfits, sometimes several times a day. In the past I'd bought him clothes that I thought he'd like and that met my criteria (easy to move in/put on, no slogans or corporate logos, no media characters, no black). He never had to wear anything he didn't like but he was fairly easygoing about it all, especially if it had hedgehogs on it.
Recently though, he's developed an intense dislikes of some clothing textures (something I can definitely relate to) so I've let him lead with choosing his winter clothes. We both find shops a bit too overwhelming so we did some online shopping together, and we scoured the ‘boys’ and the ‘girls’ sections to find some things he liked. He picked out some warm jumpers, some thick leggings, and some slippers decorated with cats, and has been enthusiastically wearing them.
Although I don’t believe there are boys’ clothes or girls’ clothes - just as I don't believe there are toys for boys or girls - I don’t promote a ‘gender neutral’ stance on childhood. Children exist in the real world, which is a gendered space where different sex and gender identities are afforded different powers and permissions by culture. They will become aware of gender in much the same way they become aware of race: through their absorbent mind. Although I have never presented dresses or skirts as something for girls only, A has never asked to wear them and I am certain he has already internalised the idea that they aren’t for boys (although he hasn’t yet been exposed to fantastic clothes-norm-disrupting men like Jonathan Van Ness).
Small children are naturally coding and decoding the world, categorising objects, seeking out patterns, trying to understand this complex place where they have landed. It is natural and fine for children to sort themselves and other people by gender - they are observing that in the world around them, gender is important to people. Our job as feminist parents is to provide a filter and a foil for the more harmful and limiting norms around gender that our children are absorbing - that, for instance, boys are supposed like things with scary faces printed on them, and that girls prefer shirts with pictures of flowery horses, and for a boy to like the things designated for ‘girls’ is shameful and wrong. We can give our children language around gender diversity - that most but not all people are either boys or girls, and that it’s OK to ask if someone is a boy or a girl, and that it’s equally OK if the person you are asking doesn’t want to answer. We can talk to them about how they know they are a boy or a girl - whether it’s something they ever think about - and teach them that there is no wrong or right way to be a boy or a girl (or both or neither). We can give them books with characters who disrupt gender norms, boys and girls alike, and question traditional stories when we come across them.
There is gradually - thankfully - more space for girls to challenge limiting narratives about femininity, although of course our work is far from done. But as a mother to boys, I really believe that one of the only ways we can chip away at the toxic masculinity that pervades our culture is to provide children with more expansive notions about gender.
By next winter A may have outgrown his sparkly leggings phase but I am certain that he will continue to have his own ideas about his clothes and about the kind of boy he knows himself to be.
What are some of the ways you talk about gender in your family?