I'm about to be the father of a baby girl soon myself and there is no end to the anxiety I hold for the struggles she's going to face simply because she's a girl.
Although if she ever wants to know programming, maths, and how to solder a PCB I intend to be there for her... and perhaps editing hex dumps of games as well. Thanks for the tip!
I don't worry about it so much because I know as a father that I can make sure she has the opportunity and encouragement to pursue traditionally male-oriented interests. I worry more about other little girls whose parents may be the biggest enforcers of these stereotypes.
As someone who is myself about to be the father of a baby girl any day now, congratulations!
I have to admit, it is pretty shocking to realize for myself how gender-normative I am already being. Her room is Tiffany Blue and all her clothes are already pink. I hope I keep it to these superficial things...
It's very easy to encourage and support an outlook where the default gender is female, where heroes are female (even if they are princesses who favour pink). For us, all that was easy and natural. I'm now flummoxed by "Math is hard." And speaking of over-sexualized toys, that cultural norm is also easy to avoid.
It might be that part of our family culture includes a sense of cliquishness, so this all may circle back for ass-chewing later on; but for now it's good.
Congratulations to you both! It's a wonderful journey.
As a completely unscientific experiment I just did some colour searches on Google Images. Pink and blue images make up 65% of the results for the word 'baby'. As you've probably already discovered, a trip down to your local baby shop doesn't offer a huge variation from this in terms of baby clothes.
I'm about to be the father of a baby girl soon myself and there is no end to the anxiety I hold for the struggles she's going to face simply because she's a girl.
Although if she ever wants to know programming, maths, and how to solder a PCB I intend to be there for her... and perhaps editing hex dumps of games as well. Thanks for the tip!