Tangential Spin-Off from Kitchen Pass thread: " I'm not a feminist"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I posted a couple times earlier on about how I think that we still have a long way to go. On that note, since people on this thread seem to be interested in actual thought provoking discussion (unlike basically all the other hilarious time waster threads that are active right now), how are you ladies all passing along your convictions and beliefs to your children? Are your strategies different with daughters than with sons?

My daughter is still a baby, but I really feel like the gendering of her life started before she was even born, as it always does, with people saying "Oh, it's a girl?" and following that up with either a gift that was some shade of pink or purple or a comment asking if my husband wanted sons or some other thing of that nature. When she was born, the "daddy's little princess" shit started, which really just creeps me out in a very Jon Benet kind of way. She is in daycare now, at 8 months, and she is one of only a handful of girls in the infant room. At daycare, the very nice ladies who care for her all day are forever giving her girly nicknames and playing with her (very small amount of) hair. One of my friends mentioned, in the context of how my daughter was jumping in her jumperoo really vigorously "Oh she's gonna be a ballerina or a gymnast or something!" I know she meant it as a compliment, but I really doubt she would have said anything of the kind if I had a jumping son in the swing instead of a daughter.

These are really superficial examples, probably because my baby is just a baby. My mother is an extremely strong empowered woman. Her mom was the first in her family to go to college, went on to become chair of her department and started a second career as an author when she retired. I have been thinking a lot lately about how to pass on my history and my mother and grandmother's histories and the history of women in general to my daughter as she grows up. I want more than anything else for her to be proud of the work done by the first, second and third wave feminists that made her eventual Nobel Prize winning career possible. (Tongue in cheek grin.)

So how do you teach that sort of thing?

What if your daughter grows up LIKING pink frilly dresses and sparkly things? or actually does want to become a ballerina or gymnast? Will you die? I think it's good to open the doors to non-gender-stereotyped activities and ideas and identities... but you could end up harming your daughter's will and goals by being just as extreme on one side as the other.

[Anonymous]

PP to 14:48

The way you teach that is to let your DD pursue her interests without expressing judgement and encouraging her curiosity.

Be open about toys and clothes: She wants a toy car - get her a car. Buy toys that might be thought of for boys. Buy clothes that are red, green, yellow and not just pink, purple (though it is harder than you think.) Wants to look at bugs and get dirty? Let her. And at some point, I am a strong believer in an all-girls environment: Girl Scouts or school. There is something empowering when girls get to be in charge without subtle male pressure/presence.

I am in a different place than you because I only have a boy: but he wanted a doll when he was 2, so he got one with a bottle and used to feed it on the bus to daycare. It shocked a lot of people, but he was just mimicing his mom and dad, who took care of him. Most people relaxed after the first day and commented that this was good that he was learning how to care for others. I also did not limit other toy choices - he had a kitchen and tea set as a toddler, but of course he also had Ninja Turtles, cars, trains, science kits. We need to stop saying their are boy thing/men's work and girls things/women's work. We should be free to learn and play many things.

[Anonymous]

"What will your company provide to retain those under 35 who have just a great a worth ethic as the older employees. The new generation require work-life balances and the companies that recognize this shift in good talent will be the ones for the better."

Money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"What will your company provide to retain those under 35 who have just a great a worth ethic as the older employees. The new generation require work-life balances and the companies that recognize this shift in good talent will be the ones for the better."

Money.

A lotta companies can offer that if you are in certain fields, and if you aren't in those fields, the companies can't compete on that anyway.

For me, it's the trade off that my company gives me a blackberry and can get hold of me at all times. So if I'm expected to respond to something past 6 at night, the trade off is that I can leave my office at 5:30, get some time with my kid, and still respond at 8.

[Anonymous]

Interesting article in Salon regarding feminism: http://www.salon.com/life/gender_roles/index.html?story=/mwt/feature/2011/01/12/coontz_qa

"Why feminism was good for marriage: Betty Friedan was blamed for killing marital tradition, but Stephanie Coontz says she helped make families stronger"

Excerpt...

"Coontz, the author of "Marriage, a History," uses data available today to show that the changes Friedan and other feminists of her time agitated for have actually been good for marriage. The divorce rate has fallen and actually tends "to be lowest in states where more than 70 percent of married women work outside the home," she reports. What's more, "The specialization into separate gender roles that supposedly stabilized marriages in the 1950s and 1960s actually raises the risk of divorce today." As for happiness in the marital bed: "Whether a woman is a homemaker or works a paid job -- part-time, full-time, or even more than full-time -- does not affect the couple's sexual satisfaction or the frequency of sex. But job satisfaction does."

And another good one:

"I think it's important to note that women are no longer doing the "double day of work." They're putting in a few more hours than men are, but it's no longer a "double day." Men have really stepped up to the plate at home, but our employers and our work system has not stepped up to the plate to make it possible for a man to be a worker without having a full-time wife. Both men and women are spread really, really thin."

[Anonymous]

Guys are the new ball and chain? They always have been and are only realizing it now.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/8135/