Pink vs. Blue Hand-me-downs

In the last week it struck me: I've got three weeks to go (give or take, I know)... I need to get everything ready! We've been pretty relaxed about getting ready for this baby, as we have most of the stuff we need from last time, or people have loaned/given it to us again. One of the things I'm not so worried about is clothing, as we've got hand-me-downs coming from several little cousins, plus Sprout's old things.

Sunday I spent some time sorting through the smallest of Sprout's little clothes & I was struck with how gendered a lot of it seemed. I tried to find gender-neutral clothes when Sprout was little, but looking at the collection from the perspective of putting it on a girl, it all looks so boy now. There were quite a few white diaper shirts & onesies, plus the neutral beige & yellow sleepers, but the range of colours was mainly in the blues & browns, with a little green & red. Patterns are stripes or plaid or solid. Design motifs included various types of animals, but also sporting equipment, the occasional truck & one shirt with 'Lock up your daughters' on it. Hm.

I found myself questioning whether I would dress a daughter in this stuff. Will I constantly be correcting people's assumptions of her gender if I dress her in blue, black & green all the time? Should this matter?

For those of you with girls AND boys, did you dress your daughters in their brother's clothes or your sons in their older sister's duds? 

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What I've been reading lately

Thought I'd share with you some of the interesting things I've found around the Interwebz in the past few days, including a free ebook download:

The Chessmen of Mars - a novella by Edgar Rice Burroughs, one of his Sci-Fi Barsoom series (free download from Project Gutenberg)

Six ways to avoid harmful gender stereotyping with your kids - worth a read whether you have boys or girls

Marc Jacobs & why we get tattoos  - some interesting perspectives in here & some hawt pics of Marc himself ;)

The Cargo Bike: A Vehicle That Will Change Your Life - don't just take my word for it--check out this Momentum article all about different kinds of cargo bikes & how they make family cycling easier

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Happy Pride: Celebrating Equality & Human Rights

Photo: YVRBCbro, via Flickr. Creative Commons license

If you live in & around Vancouver, as I know many of my readers do, you can't have missed the fact that it's Pride Weekend. From crosswalks to window displays, rainbows are everywhere in this city. Tomorrow's the big parade, where the population of our city more than doubles with the spectators & participants.

Pride in Vancouver has become our Mardi Gras. It's now pretty mainstream, the parade full of politicians of all stripes & city officials. I've heard it criticized as being too commercialized or 'watered down' somehow, but really, isn't that great? It's a big celebration of LGBTQ people & culture, a far cry from its beginnings as a risky political move to come together publicly to declare, "We're here, we're queer, get used to it!".

This weekend, let's raise a glass to our American friends who saw DOMA repealed not long ago. Let's celebrate with all the same-sex couples married here in BC who are toasting ten years of legal marriage.


But. Before you call me a Pollyanna, I'm not saying we're done yet. As we remember how far we've come since Stonewall, let's not forget the LGBTQ people who are still struggling for basic human rights in the rest of the world. Or facing execution for being homosexual in countries like Sudan, Iran, Yemen. Let's keep up the discussion about the Olympics in Sochi & how best to fight the repression in Russia. Let's remember that for the majority of our neighbours to the south, marriage equality is still a dream. Let's keep in mind the horrifying suicide statistics of queer youth in North America & the gay bashings that are still happening.

& when I say let's, I mean ALL of us. This isn't just an LGBTQ issue. Marriage equality (including all the same rules around children & partner benefits) & the right to simply be out & open about our sexuality or gender without fearing bullying, physical violence, or even death at the hands of your own government--these are HUMAN RIGHTS.

So go give your LGBTQ neighbour/sister/cousin/grandpa/coworker a hug or a smile. Slap a rainbow sticker on something. Speak up when you hear someone saying something anti-gay. Add a few books to your kids collection that include same-sex parents. See you at the parade?

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Why does it have to be pink?

Something I've been thinking about a lot lately, particularly because we're having a girl in less than three months, is the gendering of children's toys. When I read this article, it pretty much summed up the great annoyance with stores like Toys R Us or the toy section of Wal-Mart. Why do the aisles & more importantly, the toys themselves, have to be so gender-specific?

Do you remember a time when so-called "girls' toys" (dolls, baby carriers, cooking, etc) came in any colour other than pink? The article has a great visual comparison of how toys have become more gendered in the past four decades. It's bizarre to me that alongside all the strides we've made in gender equality during that time, that toys seem to have returned to the 50s.

This bit from the article really summed it up for me & I have to say, I couldn't agree more:

Let Toys Be Toys believe by making and marketing toys in a more gender neutral way, children will truly have the freedom to develop.

They state: 'This isn’t about political correctness. This is about doing the right thing by our children and giving them a real and varied choice. We believe in equality, but this isn’t about making children the same. It’s about giving children the choice to be individuals.'

Though we seem to be backsliding here, I feel like there's hope. I think parents & grandparents have a lot of power here. We are the ones buying the toys for our children, nieces, nephews & gifts for our kids' friends. We can ask for more colour choices in play kitchens. We can demand baby boy dolls too. We can shop at the stores that don't segregate their toys in this way & support the brands that offer real choice, rather than only pink or blue.

Another easy thing to do? Head over to the Let Toys be Toys website & sign their petition asking toy retailers to stop promoting toys as only for girls or only for boys.

What are your favourite toy stores that DON'T have a pink aisle & a blue aisle? Share them in the comments below!

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It's a...

...girl!

Congrats to Chloe, who guessed right, then got picked by the random number generator. She'll be getting a set of cards soon & we'll donate $50 in her name to BC Women's Hospital this weekend. This baby pool was fun--thanks to everyone who played along.

We're pretty excited to be having a girl. I've always wanted a daughter & it'll be nice not to be 'outnumbered' by a house of boys. As much as I'm not a typical 'girly' gal, I am looking forward to dressing her, too. Boys' clothes are just so boring unless you spend a mint.

Now that we know the gender it'll make the process of naming a little easier. When we were making lists of potential monikers the last time around, it seemed easier to think of female names than male. This time, partly to save myself some work, partly just because I was too busy, we haven't really started the process yet.

I know it's different for everyone & some people still prefer the old-fashioned way of finding out the gender when baby is born, but I feel like it's easier for me to connect with this little fetus knowing whether it's a girl or boy. The downside will be finding room for the avalanche of hand-me-down clothing that I know is coming from her slightly older cousins: Skylar, Kira & Natalie. ;)


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Baby Pool: Is It a Boy or a Girl?

In case you missed the bump pic in my Instagram feed or the hints on Facebook or last week's Wordless Wednesday photo: we're having another baby! I'm about halfway along, as a matter of fact.

We just had the detailed ultrasound today & we're going to find out the gender, so I thought I'd do a quick baby pool for you all. It's just to guess if baby's a boy or a girl--not birthdate or weight or anything (yet).

The prize will be:

• a 10-pack of my hand-made cards (blank inside) plus envelopes
• a donation of $50 to BC Women's Hospital Foundation in your name

BC Women's Hospital is where Sprout was born & where I went when we lost our first baby, Arrow. It's where I've had my detailed ultrasounds the last two pregnancies & where a number of my friends have delivered their babies, some of whom were extremely premature. The support & care I've received there is second to none, so I'd like to give a little back. If you want to read more, visit the BC Women's Hospital website here.

To enter the pool, all you have to do is post a comment below with your guess of 'boy' or 'girl' by 10pm on Friday April 26. If you comment without signing in, please include your name & some way of contacting you if I don't already have it: Twitter handle, Facebook name, email, something... Obviously, you've got a 50-50 chance of getting the answer right, so it's more of a draw--I'll use a random number generator to pick the winner among the people who guessed the right gender.

Good luck, everybody!


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What I've been reading lately

Great article on avoiding gender stereotyping with your children. It's much more than boys wearing blue & girls wearing pink, it's about boys not learning to talk about their emotions & girls learning to be passive.

Since I first wrote about it in my post, Mount Pleasant Pride, I've learned a lot more on Vancouver's Smallest Park, aka, 'Gather Round' & how you can get involved in greening our city further.

Source: amightygirl.com via A Mighty Girl on Pinterest

Some picture book suggestions from A Mighty Girl. Even if you don't have a daughter, don't you want your son to see examples of strong girls too? It's not just girls who need these role models & great characters they can identify with. Boys need to see girls in stories that aren't pathetic princesses. 

A really long, but worthwhile op-ed on the myth of having it all as a working mother. Creating a mythical SuperMom ideal just makes most of us feel like crap because we can't achieve that. We need fundamental change from our workplaces to make work & family more compatible for mothers.

A perspective on how much freedom to allow a toddler. I'm constantly asking myself, "Should I let him do that?" I can't swaddle him in bubble wrap & prevent every single bruise, but where's the line between overprotective too lax?

Not really something I've been reading, but rather watching: a short CBC news story on a few warrior princess type characters in movies marketed at girls. Maybe, just maybe, Hollywood & Disney in particular are getting the message that the passive pink princess types of yesteryear need a serious revamp. Check it out:

What I've been reading lately

Lavery Maiss Auras via Wikimedia Commons

I just came to a realization today. Though I've spent more time reading in the SFU library than any other semester in my loooong academic career, I haven't touched an actual book or journal from that library. I have done a portion of my course reading from three texts, but the lion's share was downloaded copies of articles. One of my courses (LING290--a great intro to all the practical applications of phonetics) had no required text at all: we were given the names of a couple dozen articles & online resources to track down ourselves.

Here's a short roundup of what I've found interesting this week--all of it digital. From my Google Reader feed: balancing work & mothering, sexism in fairy tales & April Fool's a bit late. Plus a couple of eBooks I've read.

Read the full post after the jump...