I have 2 boys. One is a baby. He’s still pretty much genderless in terms of choices and behavior. The older one is 3, nearly 4 now. He is SUCH a little boy. I am not and have never been a little boy. Therefore, I do not understand and maybe will never understand the obsession with monster trucks. At no point did we encourage our 3-year-old to like monster trucks or imply that he should like “boy things”. We also never told him that a hilarious joke would be to fart on his dad’s pillow and then run away, laughing maniacally. Pretty sure I’ve never done that in front of him. 

Perhaps farting on pillows is not a gendered activity. Maybe LOTS of little girls love monster trucks and farting on pillows. I did not, but I can’t generalize based on my own anecdotal evidence. I can only say that my husband remembered similar activities from his early childhood while I didn’t. Either way, child the elder is learning that there are “boy things” and “girl things” somewhere. I guess I can’t control what he hears at his preschool from other kids. But somewhere, he got the idea that he doesn’t like Frozen, which he has never seen, and that he does like monster, garbage and construction trucks. I mean, he likes what he likes, and we’re not going to try to force him into a box one way or another. 

Once, we were at Target when he was nearly 3. We were in the tool aisle. He pointed at the battery powered screwdrivers and said we should get one for Daddy. Aww that’s sweet, I thought. Then he pointed at the pink and therefore $2 more expensive version of the same tool and said we should get that for me. Oh hell no, I thought. Already? Already, I need to explain to my son that girls and women don’t need feminized tools that cost more? What I said to him was, “No, Mommy can use the same tools Daddy uses.”

What I really want to make sure happens is that these boys grow up respecting women. A common statement I make to my older one is, “Yes because Mommy is very strong.” I have a sticker on my water bottle that says, “Girls can do anything.” He asked me what it said at one point, and when I told him, he said, “And boys can do anything, too.” Yes, child, but that never seems to need to be stated. I coach girls, so the fact that girls can do anything (that boys can) is an important message to me. As an athlete, I resented the assumption that boys were naturally better at sports than girls. I could out-tough and out-last the best of them if I decided to dig my heels in. I want my boys to respect the process before they make assumptions, to view someone as an athlete or an artist or an engineer before adding the context of gender. Maybe that’s naive, or just impossible, but for the future girls and women in my boys’ lives, I need to try.