Pretty in pink and cool dudes in blue

‘Pretty in pink’ and ‘Cool dudes in blue’ read two of the three headlines in my first ever mailout from Mamas & Papas. High on excitement about becoming a parent, I had somehow gone and allowed myself to hope that it wouldn’t be like this, that things really can’t be quite as bad as they seem. The mailout, then, came like a slap in the face of my ideas about gender-neutral parenting, and I tweeted Mamas & Papas and told them to grow up and piss off. Needless to say, they didn’t respond.

A friend did respond, though, saying something along the lines of ‘no shit, they’re still playing that stupid colour game’. No shit. And sure, it is hilarious that in 2012 you still can’t go to a kids’ clothes shop without being told that it’s great that you know that it’s a boy so that you can stock up on blues and forget all about the yellows and other in-betweens. It’s laughable that Mothercare, despite having a non-gendered newborn tab in their drop-down menu for baby clothes, feel the need to add a caption below the picture of babygros in pink saying ‘for girls’ – just to make sure you don’t misunderstand and, god forbid, buy pink clothes for your unborn son. But it’s not about the colours, really, is it? I’d happily dress my baby boy in head-to-toe blues, even if it happens to be one of my least favourite colours. Frankly, I think good parenting is about much more than fashion.

But what’s in a colour? ‘Pretty in pink’ and ‘Cool dudes in blue,’ read the headlines. And no, it wasn’t the colours per se that made me explode in a tweet. The colours, of course, are just signifiers for gender stereotypes and the expectations we put on little girls and boys of what they should grow up to be. Dress your girl in pink as much as you like: it’s not until you start telling her how pretty she is that you really start to tell her what matters. When your son is labelled as ‘tough,’ it’s no longer about the colour of his t-shirt. And as Mamas & Papas describe your daughter as ‘precious’ and your little boy’s jeans as ‘durable,’ we’ve gone way beyond fashion as simply a visual experience.

Last year, it was discovered that Lindex, a big Swedish high street chain, produced clothes for boys that were bigger than the same size clothes for girls, despite using ‘centilong,’ a size directly related to the height of the child in centimetres. The rationale, a Lindex staff member explained, was that boys like to mess around more and need loose-fitted clothes. In other words, parents can’t be trusted to know their own children and decide how tight-fitted clothes they need; instead, a boy centimetre was made bigger than a girl centimetre. Pure logic.

So boys need durable, loose-fitted clothes, because they mess around; softer fabrics will tear, and tighter clothes will be restrictive. Girls, the implication becomes, are calm and quiet. And as a friend warned us that boys can be a handful as toddlers, more so than girls, I realised that this is a widespread preconception.

I’ve been told countless times since having my son that boys are more ‘hard work’ than girls, and that may be true – I really don’t know, and frankly I don’t care. I may be of the belief that we are pretty good at living up to society’s expectations of us, and that even kids become a lot like what people tell them they should be, but the thing is that even if I’m wrong, even if the majority of boys are born louder, messier and more active than girls, there will always be exceptions. There will be bold, lively girls and calm, quiet boys – so why the need to tell them to change, to presume that deep down they’re not naturally like that? Why the need to make them feel inadequate only because of their gender?

I don’t know what happens when we tell boys that they are tough and cool, but I can guess. I don’t know how girls respond to being complimented on their looks, but research on body image tells a tale. ‘Pretty in pink’ and ‘Cool dudes in blue’? Grow up and piss off, Mamas & Papas.

Let's talk about having it all

There’s a debate on twitter at the moment around the hashtag #havingitall: about the women who want to have it all, and about whether or not they can.

It’s funny how the having-it-all discussion gets stuck at greedy, career-hungry women who are stupid enough to think that they can do well professionally, lead a good life, and have a family at the same time. No one talks about the greedy, career-hungry men who are stupid enough to think the same thing. And, much more annoyingly, no one gets that, really, the discussion we should be having is about choice as opposed to greed.

Can women really have it all?, people ask. How about we change that to: Why can’t women choose from it all? Or, even better: Who’s allowed to choose what they have?

Arguing for women’s right to the opportunity to create a rewarding career for themselves while also having a family, or for men’s right to decent paternity leave and the opportunity to be a real presence in their children’s lives, is not the same as advocating a rat race kind of lifestyle where more and faster are better. Zen and mindfulness are popular enough at the moment for me to guess that most people have begun to think that less is more. You could almost say that most people probably don’t even want to have it all.

What we should be talking about is how to create a society in which every individual and family can choose for themselves. We should enable careerists to climb the ladder they want to climb and family people to spend a lot of time with their family, whether they’re men or women, while making sure that it’s actually possible to keep a job and do it well without having to neglect your children while you’re at it – if that happens to be what you want, that is.

Let’s not kid ourselves: the way things stand, not even men have that much freedom.

I don't know how he does it

“If you want to have it all, it’s your job to work out how to do it. If you can’t, give something up.” That’s David Cox’s advice to Kate, the high-flying fictitious character in the film I don’t know how she does it.

I suspect we’ll read many a harsh critique of the super-woman film, but I wasn’t quite prepared to read this in the Guardian. I’m not saying that this Hollywood plot doesn’t need some ripping apart – the have-it-all approach to life indeed deserves questioning – but your way of criticising something says a lot about your outlook on life. And I guess, somehow, I keep forgetting that even the most liberal publications in the UK look at parenting as a one-woman job.

Many would agree – and I’m sure I will too if I ever see the film – that the plot is nothing but a boring cliché. My idea of the real world, however, differs quite a bit from Cox’s. He answers the question of how she does it with the accusation that Kate uses her poor husband, a man who wishes to focus on furthering his own career but is forced to bring their injured son to the hospital when selfish mammy is at work. He explains her success by pointing the finger at the way she expects of her employer to be flexible, thereby, he suggests, somehow undermining the efforts of women who don’t need flexibility at work because they don’t have a family: they’ve had to make a sacrifice, means Cox, so why should we let selfish Kate get away with not making one?

“Motherhood is voluntary,” Cox reminds us. But “fulfilling all other aspirations at the same time may or may not be practicable.”

This is where I lose him completely. We’re supposed to look at Kate as a “scumbag” for wanting it all (but, he insinuates, not doing it well enough), yet her husband is described as a victim. Isn’t fatherhood voluntary as well? What does he mean?

Here’s what I think he means. Fatherhood isn’t that demanding, after all. Most fathers manage very well to combine fatherhood with successful careers, thank you very much. And so no one ever says, ‘I don’t know how he does it’. Why? Because parenting is a mother’s job. It’s a mother’s fault when a child is malnourished; the mother is the one who’s neglected a child who doesn’t learn to talk when other kids do. Laundry, school runs, hospital visits – it’s all done while the father’s at work. That’s how he does it: he’s got a wife.

About mothers, Cox writes that “if they can’t work as hard as their childless colleagues to get a seat on the board, they could manage without one.” But of course, a majority of the board members aren’t childless. They’re fathers. And fathers don’t have to make sacrifices, we all know that. Right, Cox?

[All of the above is of course based on yet another of the patriarchy's great myths: the idea that not getting to spend a lot of time with your kids isn't in itself a sacrifice for fathers. But that's another discussion for another post.]