Father starts saving account for daughter but not son | The Compost Bin | Forums

to overcome gender wage gap, what are your thoughts on this? I think he is coo koo for cocoa puffs

When you have kids, you realize how gender roles are part of the deep structure of the world, and how quickly those roles seep into tiny, growing brains. There's a photo of a little girl on the box that holds my daughter's doll; the toy truck says "back up" in a male voice. The women at day care painted my daughter's toenails and not my son's. He was jealous, so my wife painted his toenails too—and then we worried that the ladies at day care would be upset (they weren't, really).

Sometimes my wife and I discuss what it would take to raise our children with true gender equality, the kind that progressive parents are supposed to achieve, the kind they talked about in the 1970s. I think it would require us to move to the moon.

Plus, my daughter looks so cute in a dress with bows in her hair. Holding hands with my son in a pair of shorts. That's an acceptable happiness, right, taking pleasure in that?

But at the same time my son needs to know that "feminine" things are as important as masculine. Like, I don't know, knitting. We'll have failed as parents if our son rejects knitting as beneath his station. And yet if my son does not want to knit, we must not force him to. Nor will we push our daughter away from knitting, should she wish to take it up. These are the things my wife and I discuss. We are raising children, not statements; the world is what it is. Except….

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