transgender son - same chore expectations as any other son?
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Anonymous
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My daughter came out last year as transgender, changed her name and uses "him, his" type pronouns... so I stopped using the dead name etc.
When I was growing up on Saturdays my dad would always wake me up and say "Son! Time to get to work!" Then we would spend half the day cutting grass or doing some sort of maintenance/repair around the house. While previously I was always happy for my transgender son (before he was a son) to do stuff with me (auto repair/maintenance, yard work, house repairs/maintenance) but it was always when and if he wanted to and the level of involvement wasn't necessarily a concern. That is not the conditions I experienced as a boy growing up because gutting grass or digging post holes, for example, was not optional. My transgender son is spending a lot of time focusing on his transgenderism and not doing anything else. I've started to see him as effectively avoiding "girl"-type issues through being transgender but simultaneously avoiding the boy's plight which includes expectations of physical labor and performance. Its like he has found a way to spend all his time on social media and chatting on the phone with his friends by saying things like "I don't have the upper body strength for that..." when asked to participate in a male activity or "that triggers me" when asked to participate in things which might be considered a female activity. I want to say "I don't care if you are transgender but you can't have it both ways!" I know I'm likely to get slammed and someone is going to misunderstand the above statements and frame it like I'm some sort of overbearing football dad but that isn't want I'm talking about. |
Anonymous
| let me just say I hated my dad forcing me to work around the house on Saturdays. I would have preferred sleeping or watching tv. |
Anonymous
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You are mistaken was making stuff optional, regardless of gender. This has nothing to do with gender.
Offer your child the choice of chores, and he can choose between being triggered by a female identified work or building the body strength for male identified work. This has really nothing to do with gender, since you should have been offering both “kinds” of work all along. Leave the entire transgender question aside. It’s pure red herring. |
Anonymous
| Sons and daughters are required to do chores around the house. There are no “boy” chores or “girl” chores. There is no upper body strength required to push a lawnmower. Your kid is just being lazy. |
Anonymous
| Why don't you just ask your son to do what you expect of a child, no matter what gender. If he gives you issues, say that you expect his of any child. Girls and boys can both cook, learn about cars, study engineering, love fashion and the arts, anything really. I have boys, and frankly, I expect them to do anything taught by my parents to me and my sisters. My father was equal opportunity and I (a female) was expected to cut our lawn weekly. |
Anonymous
Well, duh. But you don’t just get to do what you want to do. |
Anonymous
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Kids should be required to contribute to the household in age-appropriate ways, regardless of gender identity. I don't think most activities are fundamentally gendered, but I agree that they are culturally (e.g. laundry and dishes are more often associated with girls and yardwork and car repair are more often associated with boys).
Since your DS is still navigating this new identity, I would not force any particular activity on him...but I would say that being a contributing member of the house is non-negotiable. Figure out, together, what activities he will contribute to and what household responsibilities he will take on. This is going to be challenging, because coming out as transgender is difficult, even with supportive. You need to find a way to be sensitive to that while still teaching your DS how to become a responsible adult...which includes doing things around the house that you might not "want" to do. But the fact that you are posting and asking about this suggests you are probably doing much better than you think. |
Anonymous
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Same treatment for all!
No trans bs as excuse |
Anonymous
+1 Exactly. Growing up in the 80s, I mowed the grass and changed oil. You don’t need to be a “he” to do any of that. - female |
Anonymous
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We had 5 kids in my family growing up and there were never boy or girl chores. During the week we all had chores in the house (set the table, clean up after dinner, empty dishwasher, clean bathrooms, vaccuum etc) and on weekends we all had outside chores (cut lawn, weed garden, shovel snow, house repairs, clean cars etc). We rotated who did what.
There is no such thing as boy or girl chores unless you make them that way yourself due to your own entrenched gender stereotypes. |
Anonymous
| You should be giving both kids the same chores, girl or boy, trans or not. Don’t let the kid use trans as an excuse as if it’s a disability! |
Anonymous
+1, but it was OP's mistake to make chores gendered early on. Mowing the grass isn't a boy chore, it's a chore. The child isn't "having it both ways" by not doing certain chores. So OP needs to fix his own thinking, first. And, acknowledge to his son that it was a mistake to make certain things optional -- a mistake he's now fixing household-wide. I suggest each child in the house should do his own laundry, help with cooking and dishes on set nights of the week, and a handful of other chores such as trash and yard care and pet care. My house had all female children and we managed a fair chore chart. |
Anonymous
+2 |
Anonymous
| Gender has nothing to do with chores. We had boys and girls in our family and we all did the same chores every day. |
Anonymous
this. |