127 | Wu Yuanyuan's column: Gender-neutral parenting in Sweden - "Children are just human beings who happen to be male or female"
Text/Wu Yuanyuan (Graduated from the Chinese Department of National Taiwan University, Master of the East Asian Institute of Lund University, Sweden, Lecturer at the University of Dalarna, Sweden. Now living in Sweden) (Originally published on March 14, 2022)
In the summer vacation a few years ago, my husband's family and I rented an airbnb renovated old house in the countryside. There are a lot of old books on the bookshelf in the living room. We dug out an encyclopedia of parenting published in 1977. When we opened it, a yellowish baby name candidate list floated out. My husband's younger brother and sister-in-law also have children. Seeing such a long-term parenting book, we novice parents in the 21st century are full of curiosity about the content.
Turning to the chapter on toddlers and gender, the book says, "Children are just human beings who happen to be male or female, and by asking them to conform to the character traits of one of the genders, you're also covering up half the child's world." We thought we could laugh at a book written more than 40 years ago, but after reading this paragraph, we couldn't help but lower ourselves.
Sweden has many parents who focus on gender-neutral upbringing (Gender-neutral Upbringing), and in the community where I live, I see boys wearing pink and various skirts playing in the yard park almost every day. There is a secret rule in the neighborhood, that is, don’t judge children’s clothes in particular, skirts or trousers are just pieces of cloth, the important thing is warmth and performance, and no one stipulates which styles can only be worn by girls or boys.
The little red shoes of the neighbor boy. (Provided by Wu Yuanyuan)
My gender neutral upbringing is good, but not particularly obsessive. Because my son likes cars, I naturally bought a lot of children's clothes with various vehicles printed on them. However, due to the atmosphere in the community, if my son wears blue clothes with vehicles printed on it every day, I will inevitably feel a little embarrassed. I remember to occasionally wear a few flower-decorated clothes or small dresses for my son. My son himself has no problem with dressing.
The parents who live on my left side usually take their children to the children's clothing store and let the three sons choose their own clothes. The clothes the little ones choose are actually quite random. The colors and styles are sometimes male and sometimes female, and there are no rules. Arguably. My parents, who live on my right, have their son and my son in kindergarten class. One day I saw them talking to the teacher in the kindergarten, and they looked very serious. After I asked, I found out that they found that in the toy room of the kindergarten, the toys traditionally liked by boys are placed in a corner, and the toys traditionally played by girls are placed in a corner. In another corner, one day their son was going to play in the "girls corner", and an older classmate said, "You are a boy, why are you going there?"
After the teacher learned about it, he immediately stated that he would be more active in assisting the children to get in touch with various games and toys. The teacher said that in fact, they did not deliberately separate the toys, but gradually divided them unknowingly, and this distinction was caused by the nature of boys and girls, or the children's influence by the family and the media. As a preschool teacher , they do have an obligation to detect and make necessary interventions.
My son has been fascinated by dinosaurs from the moment he saw them, and no matter how hard a dad friend of mine tried to guide, his daughter still had no interest in dinosaurs at all. There are innate differences between men and women, which feminists are happy to admit. However, boys need to be scientists, girls need to take care of dolls, boys need to be strong, and girls need to be delicate. There are too many divisions of labor between men and women and the solidification of aesthetics, which has gone far beyond the scope of innate differences between men and women.
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[This article is not finished, see "Walk the World" for the full text: Wu Yuanyuan's column: Gender-neutral parenting in Sweden - "Children are just human beings who happen to be male or female" ]
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