The November 19th Saturday Sidebar question was so interesting I couldn’t help but take a deeper look into the whole gender issue, especially from an Indonesian mother’s point of view.
(Disclaimer: it is not easy to characterize the existing patriarchy in Indonesia, as there are more than 200 ethnic groups organized along patrilineal and matrilineal lines. Also, I have no experience raising a girl here in Indonesia–-in fact, I had no experience in child rearing before my son was born. And finally, before I became a mother myself, I never paid much attention to how people raise children here.)
About two years ago, when my son was a toddler, who dearly loved stuffed animals, I took him to a store here in Jakarta. He immediately grabbed a stuffed pig off a bottom shelf and started loving it. The store attendant quickly made a comment that caused my defensive mama-bear mode to jump into action:
“Why are you playing with a doll? That’s for girls. You should be ashamed for playing with a doll.”
A little clarification here, in my language there is no formal Indonesian word that differentiates between a doll and stuffed toys; they’re all ‘boneka,‘ which loosely translates into English as ‘doll’.
I quickly jumped in and defended my little boy. Sheepishly, the girl walked away after apologizing but not after I told her to keep her parenting advice to herself next time.
Gender related toys are popular here in Indonesia. Boys play with cars, airplanes and the likes, while girls play with dolls, princess and anything feminine. So some people still freak out when they see a boy playing with a “girl” toy.
When my son was younger, he had a huge collection of stuffed toys that are now being stored in a box. He loves them and still sometimes plays with them. Does it scare me? No. It’s actually teaching him to be gentle, rather than rough-housing all the time.
The way I feel about him playing with stuffed toys is just the way I feel about letting him experiment with my make-up. Around the age of 3, he got really interested in watching me put my make-up on. He watched with a child’s pure fascination, so one day I let him play with it. Face painting is more fun with Mommy’s blush and lipstick.
Some people weren’t happy about this. They started making comments that no boys should be allowed to play with their mother’s make-up. For me, it was nothing more than the “Monkey see, monkey do” phase that he eventually grew out of.
What I don’t appreciate is when strangers direct their negativity straight at my son. He’s too young, he’s in those precious moments, where he can enjoy life as a pure adventure of discovery, of learning, of being carefree. That is what I want to protect.
Now excuse me while I clean up these scattered train tracks before I step on some of them!
Do you keep your children from playing with opposite gender toys? How does your culture view this?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog from our single-mom of one, Tatter Scoops, in Indonesia.
The photograph used in this post was taken by John Morgan and has a Flicker Creative Commons attribution license.
Maureen
Founder of Single Moms Indonesia, community leader and builder. Deeply passionate about women empowerment.
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My husband really dislikes it when my son plays with his sister’s toys. I don’t see anything wrong with it! The way they play with the same toys is different, anyway. Boys toys definitely encourage rough, noisy play, and there’s only so much of that I can take in our tiny apartment.
My son went through a stage where he liked to play with make-up when he was three or four. He grew out of it. I agree that it is probably a monkey-see, monkey- do thing. Though we did get some interesting looks the day he painted his face blue and had me fix his hair into “horns.”
Now that I have one of each gender I find it interesting when each plays with the other’s toys. My daughter was born with a maternal instinct, so when I bought her her first baby doll (when she turned 1) she hugged it and cuddled it. My son took that same doll and threw it across the room. Since my son is older our apt has a lot more “boy toys” (cars, trains, robots) than “girl toys” (doll strollers, toy purse), but most of them are gender neutral (blocks, legos, puzzles). I encourage both of my children to play with each other’s toys, which they do all the time, although my mother was telling me the other day (yes she was serious) “she is a little girl and needs girl toys. She really loves playing at C’s house because it is filled with girlie things”. I was amazed at that statement, esp since she is such a young, modern, cosmopolitan woman. Kids love to play. Give them a cardboard tube and they will turn it into a dozen things before the day is done, regardless of gender.
This is such an interesting topic (I wrote about myself a while ago: http://worldmomsblog.com/2010/12/02/what-if-your-son-likes-dolls/) My lad is almost two now and he has started to pay attention to his stuffed animals, previously he would just ignore them, but now he will carry them around, try to give them his dummy, and give them a hug (when I ask him to)… Here in Norway there is a lot of talk about how important it is that boys get to play with so called girls toys and the other way around. But my lad is really only interested in his cars, trains and duplo.
I can’t believe that a stranger would come up to you and say that – I find that so rude, and unnessecary – your boy should be allowed to grow up to be whoever he is supposed to be, without having to worry about playing with the ‘right’ toys.
We had a few dolls and other “girl” toys for our boys, but they had absolutely no interest in them. We got rid of them. Then we had our daughter. When she was about two, I kept finding her doing things like cradling a bowling ball and putting a Star Wars action figure to bed under a Kleenex. Now she has lots of babies and Barbies. But she also plays with cars more than her brothers. So for us, we feel like our job is to make the toy choices available and let them choose what interests them. We do live in a community (Minneapolis) that is very accepting however – probably more so than many other places in the US. Thanks for sharing!
My toddler always wants to wear his sisters head bands and my hair clips. He also always wants to wear his brothers hats and any sunglasses he gets his hands on. I have to admit I wouldn’t let him go out or see his friend when he has a “girly” item in his hair because I don’t want him to get teased and I don’t want to have any grown up tell him he’s doing something wrong. I do not let him mess with my makeup like I never let his sister because I don’t want him to get skin irritations. NONE of my children are maternal lol. When we have birthday parties and the kids always get a ridiculous amount of gift when I make them sort through and only keep what they really want or don’t have one of already. The rest are either given away or re-gifted lol. The dolls and anything to go with them are always in the re-gifting pile!
Go mama! My son is currently sporting lovely painted toenails (blue, at his request), so we’re clearly a bit lenient around here. Having boy/girl twins is a really interesting gender experiment. The first doll we bought was for my son, who had shown the most interest early on. He quickly decided that dolls are for his sister (who now adores them) and is primarily a truck-bike-ball kid. Although both kids are free to play with whatever they like, they still gravitate toward typical boy/girl toys, which I find fascinating. Recently I had to laugh…a friend came to play and all of the kids were playing dress-up. When my son eventually got fed up with the girl games — he scooped up his trucks and made a run for it, still wearing a pink sequined dress. 🙂
I loved your response to this. I feel so often that girls are encouraged to be rough and tumble, to like boys toys, to be tough. But the stereotype for boys isn’t gone or even slightly bent. There is such a stigma and fear of boys liking girly things – such a shame. Some of my greatest memories as a child were my brother playing dolls and house with me.
It’s interesting that you wrote about this topic. My husband and I were just talking about this a couple of weeks back! He’s complaining that our boy’s playing with too much ‘girlie’ toys ie. toy food and kitchen set and he almost freaked out when he saw our boy pushing around a doll stroller (with the doll inside) at our friend’s place (the toy to her two daughters). But I see nothing wrong with our son playing with the ‘girlie’ toys. At this age, they don’t know how to differentiate between the “girls’ toys” and the “boys’ toys”, it’s just labels that we adults give them. To begin with, he can’t even really tell the difference between a girl and a boy yet. I think what’s more important for them at this stage is to explore and learn about the world around them, have fun and enjoy life as a kid!
I have 2 sons, and I am ok with them playing with any toys. They gravitate more towards traditional boy toys, but they love to play with all sorts of things. My toddler is getting a toy kitchen for Christmas, so he can stand next to me and make his own dishes. He is always playing with pots and pans and toy food, so I think he will love it. Plus it will keep him out of my hair while I try to make dinner.
I understand that people have different ideas or cutlural norms for gender differences with toys, but at the end of the day, that store attendant is only in charge of making those decisions for her own children, not yours. It is not her right to reprimand your child like that.
My two oldest (now almost 20 and 21) are boys and when they were about 5, I had my parents buy a play kitchen for them. My husband muttered quite a bit about it, (especially since it was pink and blue) but I won.
Now about 15 years later, we still have it and all the kids (especially the boys) have used it and loved it.
I see no harm in it and I really dislike the fact that there are gender specific toys.
Susie, thank you for sharing your ow experience.
My son loves the play kitchen we have at the pediatrician office here and I let him play to his heart content whenever we’re there – unless he’s very sick.
I’m with you on not liking the gender specific toys. Kids should be able to play with any toys without fear of being called out.
Aww your daughter is so cute! Yes, if only people here can be more accepting about the facts that for children toys are toys meant to be play with using their imaginations.
Thanks Diana. Yes, the stereotype are thick here in my country. Ah see…I wish I had that memory with my brothers. All I remembered was the rough housing and playing with their boys toys 😀
I’m with you 100%, they don’t know the different yet and mostly it’s us the adults who freaks out and confused them. I remember it took awhile for my son to identify that he’s a boy. He loved toy foods too but now moved to all boys toys. I can understand where your husband is coming from because I had to ‘ease’ my family not to freaking out and now thankfully they’re cool with it. Thank you for sharing
Oh how fun, a toy kitchen! That’s a win-win solution for you two 😉
I was in total shocked at first when I heard that store attendant – mind you a very young lady who might not even have children of her own.
Wow! I was surprised that the word for doll is almost the same as in Portuguese (boneca). How interesting! Although here there are separate words for stuffed toy (bicho de pelúcia).
Here in Brazil the gender issue has improved but is still present, especially here in the Northeast. I am especially aware of it now that I have a boy AND a girl and how people treat them differently in certain ways.
When my son was around 2 he had a doll phase. The first was an esquimo baby girl that he got as a gift from a Canadian friend; he loved her and would carry her everywhere. I often heard rude comments (even stuff like “aren’t you afraid he’ll turn gay?”) When people asked I responded that, in a way, girls learned how to be mothers by playing will dolls and boys also needed to learn to be fathers. That usually stopped comments short! 🙂