Book #5: Parenting Beyond Pink and Blue

This is a random book that I read in spurts while sitting and watching Dane play at the Barnes and Noble train table. I went over to the parenting section hoping to find something about helping older siblings with new babies, etc., but this was the most interesting thing I could find over there (almost all the parenting books at our BN are about infants or school-age kids). And I thought this had some great information that I wanted to remember. I think this topic is starting go into the zone of being overly politically correct and I think some people might see this as trying to raise gender-neutral kids. I am definitely not interested in doing that, but I think there are lots of harmful (or just stupid) existing stereotypes for both genders that I would love to avoid passing on to my kids (as much as that's possible). Some of the major ones are that girls aren't as good at math and boys aren't as good at reading, or that boys shouldn't cry or show emotion and that they need to be tough and macho. I really do not agree with those assumptions and I don't want my kids to learn those, particularly not (accidentally) from me. Brown is a researcher who's studied this and provides a lot of good thoughts on how to avoid this with your kids. One of the best things you can do is to correct these stereotypes as your kids hear them from other people--like if some well-meaning adult says, "That's okay, girls just aren't as good at math anyways," you should later pull them aside and tell them that's not necessarily true, and provide a specific example of someone who defies that stereotype. It's also helpful to hold open conversations about these stereotypes with your kids--let them know that some people think that boys are supposed to be tough and never cry, but that that's just what they think.

Really, it's just scary to me how much is out there (stuff that is much worse than these stereotypes, even) that you can't 100% protect your kids from learning or being taught. Sometimes I can see why people homeschool their kids (although I really don't think that's the path for me)--just for not having to worry about all those other potentially negative influences. Gahh.