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I have absolutely raised my children this way. My son wore pink and my daughter blue. I remember when I found out I was pregnant with my second child. I bought my son a baby doll to teach him how we would care for the baby. My father FREAKED out. Thinking about it now, that baby doll was the first “gender specific” toy I purchased. Everything before that was learning toys.
I bought my children the toys they wanted. By the time my twins came along we had toys/clothes by the truck load. My older twin wanted to play with the “girl” toys and my younger the “boy” toys. They learned to compromise on their own. They would negotiate on their own. Pumpkin would play trucks for a period of time as long as Peanut played Barbies with him. When Pumpkin got old enough to verbalize what he wanted to wear he’d go and get one of his sister’s outgrown night gowns to play in.
At that time I reminded my father of his reaction to the baby doll and let him know that if he wished to continue to be a part of the kid’s lives he’d LOVEINGLY accept them and he did.
What really pisses me off is how random people feel they have the right to express their opinions on what I let my children wear or play with! When the twins started pre-school, the teacher ACTUALLY had Pumpkin evaluated because he preferred to play with the girls and “girl toys”.
When the original Toy Story came out, all Pumpkin wanted for Christmas that year was a Boo Peep doll. A co-worker over heard a friend and I talking. This is a woman I had not shared more than ten words with in the year I had worked there. She felt the need to pull me aside and tell me: “you have to nip this in the bud!....” I called her a fool. GI Joe and Barbie are both dolls. What difference does it make if my son wants to play with Boo Peep? The oldest one wanted Buzz, my daughter wanted those Martians, Pumpkin Boo Peep, and the youngest Woody. She was SO angry that I dared let my son play with “dolls”.
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I've been married for 24 years and have four wonderful children.
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