Someone named Jay, guest blogging at Feministe talks about little boys…
Saw a new patient yesterday who apologized for bringing her three-year-old son to the appointment with her. He did pretty well; she brought a bunch of toys and a coloring book and a box of snacks, and she told him in advance that he could have the snacks when I came in the room, so he settled down with his crackers while we talked. It’s never a surprise to me when kids start to wiggle or wander around during Mom’s exam. It’s hard to sit still when you’re three. But it does still surprise me when mothers – whether they’re patients or friends – say the kind of thing this woman said to me:
I’m really sorry about him {child is doing nothing unusual, just climbing on and off the chair} My older one, she’s six, and she’s an angel. But he’s all boy.
Meaning what, exactly? That boys are devils? That being active is somehow evil behavior? I know, I know, she probably didn’t mean that he was evil, but he was sitting right there, listening to this. I have enough trouble with the idea that kids are “good” or “bad” – we don’t use that language with our daughter. Kids are concrete, and they’ll take what they hear very seriously. [Emphasis in bold is mine —fl] But beyond that is this idea of being “such a boy”.
Yeah, and people say it’s “Teh Feminists” that go in for male bashing. Fshyeeah right.
When the ultrasound for our first child came back boy-positive we were a little stunned, since, for some reason, my partner and I both had had vague mental images of having girls. Reaction to the news in our mostly-conservative neighborhood, and even among our more progressive and mostly-childless friends was even more one-sided: “oh poor you.”
That the situation was to be exacerbated by him being a Scorpio boy highlights the deep experiential degree of empirical rationality behind either the boy-problem or the birthday one.)
In fact he came out just fine. Fine enough, in fact, that when we got the ultrasound back on our second child and discovered the next one was going to be a girl we were… once again a bit stunned! And in fact she came out just fine as well. Far more brash and boisterous, and severely less cautious or bookish than her older brother but a natural gymnast, awesomely strong for a child her age, and a natural, scary-smart aptitude for math. In other words, all in all both our children are well within the parameters for normal, healthy, happy, active human children. Stereotyped expectations to the contrary not withstanding.
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Jay also happens to nicely answer the allegedly imponderable question: is it possible for individual or social sexism to oppress men or boys.
My patient thinks she’s struggling with her son because “he’s all boy”. I think she’s struggling because she’s hundreds of miles away from her family and friends with essentially no support, and every message she hears is that her kids have to start NOW, at age 3 and 6, to prepare for competition in the big bad capitalistic world where they will have to make their way alone, just like she and her husband are making their way alone. They need health insurance and housing and money to put the kids through college, and no job is secure, so he works all the time, and because he works all the time, she has to manage all the kid stuff and house stuff herself. So a kid who sits and plays alone is a lot easier than a kid who really wants to get up to the top of the china cabinet and see if he can fly.
I wish she had a real community, a society that supported her family and bridged the isolation. I wish we as a country valued something other than material achievement. Maybe then she could expand her vision of what kids are and enjoy her smart, active, questioning son, and come to see him as an individual who is all himself, and not just all boy. [Emphasis in bold is again mine. —fl]
In other words, yes. And who exactly is oppressing boys and men with these narratives of defectiveness, hyper-activity, indiscipline, immaturity, and so on? Would that be feminists like Jay or her feminist colleagues at Feministe?
Trick question: No.
Instead it’s the same anti-feminists who claim feminists hate men.
Note: Jay, a primary-care physician, usually blogs at Two Women Blogging.
Submitted by 1787 (not verified) on Sun, 2007-12-02 05:11.
Figleaf:
I read this excellent post at Feministe and am glad that you are continuing the discussion here. And I agree that this long accepted belief about "natural" behaviors for boys and girls is the beginning of so many gender-based false expectations.
Both you and Jay make the astute observation that children take what they hear very seriously. And to that I would like to add that children understand what they hear long before they can replicate language. When a child hears her mother lament, Why can't you be nice and play quietly like the other girls? that girl will begin to change her behavior to match her mother's expectation and will feel ashamed when her natural boisterousness reemerges. The little boy, on the other hand, may feel that he should engage in behavior that is more uncontrolled. So I believe that children try to conform to these expectations at a very early age, and as a result, the old gender stereotypes are reinforced for another generation.
This is why I think family values is mere public relations tripe. If we did believe in family values, we would not penalize single mothers on their employment performance evaluations for having too many absences -- for the simple fact that they cannot take a sick child to daycare, and as any parent knows, young children are sick frequently. Upper management may covet membership in the list of the "Best 100 Companies for Working Parents," but the imperial commands for reports and deadlines are not adjusted to allow for the reality of birth and death. We are allowed three days (with pay if we are lucky) to grieve for the loss of a child or a spouse, and we better get over it because our coworkers are resentful when they have to pick up the slack.
Corporate America is not family friendly. And should any consider that this condition is a result of feminism, I would like to remind them that it was the efforts of early feminists such as Jane Addams which made corporate America less family abhorent.
Submitted by 1787 (not verified) on Sun, 2007-12-02 05:06.
I think the point about support is spot on. I've seen it with some friends of mine, as compared to my sister. My sister and her husband have a large active support network through the church they are members of. By contrast, at least one of my friends seems to basically have to make do with her partner but not so much else. Then thinking about when my sister and I grew up in a boring suburban estate, there was a huge network of couples who would do babysitting, and the neighbours would help, and so on. Not to forget the grandparents.
NEedless to say, losing this is bad.
(I'm in Scotland, for reference purposes)
Submitted by 1787 (not verified) on Sun, 2007-12-02 03:46.
You may already know, or it may be something that happens only to me, but when I click on the category links, all I can see is a large black box, after a quick glimpse of the post.
Same here, A, when using Firefox.
Submitted by 1787 (not verified) on Mon, 2007-12-03 15:50.
I have a Scorpio boy... a Leo, too. Stereotypes come from somewhere... archetypes perhaps? :) I love and celebrate differences, wherever I see them...
Submitted by 1787 (not verified) on Sun, 2007-12-02 03:39.
With a boy, a girl and a boy, I hear "Oh, you have two boys? You poor thing ..." murmured at me, in sympathy, rather often.
Feh, I say! My son's are much easier to deal with ... whereas my daughter is feisty (actually, all three are feisty, she's just the feistiest) as all get-out.
Funnily enough, she's a "stereo-typical girl" in the fact that she's into all of the pink and shiny stuff (hehe, no-one can ever say that I forced it on her either, I was one of those little girls everyone mistook for a little boy) ... as are most of her little friends, who are also "feisty".
I don't know where the idea came about that little girls are quiet and mild mannered. I've never seen evidence of it.
Submitted by 1787 (not verified) on Sun, 2007-12-02 02:51.
You may already know, or it may be something that happens only to me, but when I click on the category links, all I can see is a large black box, after a quick glimpse of the post. If I scroll to the bottom, I can see part of your links at the extreme left. One or two of the categoris are OK though, eg Techniques.
Submitted by 1787 (not verified) on Sun, 2007-12-02 02:19.
I imagine it must be all too easy for people to fall unthinkingly into the trap, if they have one child of each sex, to assume any differences are due to the sex of the children. Unless of course they run counter to the stereotypes.
Having been the atypical one of two girls, I had to listen to years of praise being heaped on my sister for playing quietly with dolls, doing needlework and other "appropriate" activities, so I can sympathise with any boy brought up in that atmosphere.
Submitted by 1787 (not verified) on Sun, 2007-12-02 12:13.
If this was a new patient she was seeing, this doctor should know that a lot of doctors are not like her and are absolutely intolerant of small children in their offices, even "good" ones, and that the woman may have been apologizing out of reflex. It took me a while to get out of that habit since people would come in and take my baby out of my arms without my permission. With all the time I have had to spend in doctor's offices over the years, I couldn't always get a family member to watch my child or children, nor could I afford or even get babysitting for every appointment since often I go through long spells of spending 10 hours a week waiting at dr's and specialist's offices, at labs, at radiology, on physical therapy, on procedures. No fun, but much easier when toys or videos or compassion like hers are available.
Fortunately I found people with hearts for doctors since. My doctor and his wife now practically raise their kids in the office, and he's always welcomed anyone in my family I want to bring with me.