Pirates and Princesses

Wondering around toy stores nowadays, especially when looking at the 0-3 years age bracket, you’d be forgiven for thinking that there are two types of people in this world: pirates and princesses.

There’s a lot written about ‘princess culture’. But something that strikes me is….why the emphasis on pirates?

My boy wants to be Rapunzel

Actually BabyBoy doesn’t yet know who Rapunzel is. This is a story of a friend’s little boy, as told by her:

“So, the kids had to dress up for school. Friend’sSon, 3 years old, wanted to go as a princess, Rapunzel to be exact. There was no way Friend’sHusband was having that. In the end he bargained with Friend’sSon to go as Spider-Man.”

Dear son, don’t let Robin Thicke be a lesson to you

I imagine that I’ll be sharing this with BabyBoy in the future. Well said.

Dear son,

Don’t let Robin Thicke be a lesson to you.

Don’t let any of these pigs and perverts you see on TV be a lesson to you. They treat women like garbage; they possess no chivalry, no self control; they are disloyal and dishonest; they spend all day pursuing pleasure at the expense of others, and they encourage you to do the same. You might be tempted to follow suit. In fact, you WILL be tempted. These male pop stars and celebrities, look at them, you’ll think. They take advantage of emotionally broken, self loathing, confused young women, and they are rewarded handsomely for it. Look at their nice clothes and their nice cars. Look how they are admired and loved. Look, they treat women like trash and other women fawn all over them because of it. This must be how real men behave, you’ll think.

And you’ll be wrong.

Come on, you’re a boy…

My kids are only 18 months old and, as is normal around this age, they sometimes experience separation anxiety, and are sometimes a bit clingy to mummy.

Not that they are incapable of playing on their own, or even being left with the one or two people that I and Multidaddy trust to look after them in our absence. And they often toddle off and explore things by themselves at playgroups and on playdates.

But sometimes, sometimes all they want is the reassurance of a mummy hug.

Boys, Body Image and Sexualization

Recently, the subject of raising boys has come to the forefront of my mind. After all, now I have BabyBoy to bring up.

However, with no brothers and relatively few younger male cousins, I am painfully aware that my experience of raising boys has been limited.

So now I’m learning…and the interesting extracts below from Shaping Youth indicate that while objectification of women has been around for what seems like forever, it is now causing more of an issue for men too.

Increasingly, boys’ body image has gotten hammered by PhotoShop assists, iconic “Taylor Lautner abs” and muscular physiques resembling The Incredible Hulk more than healthy fitness, so it’s no surprise that teen boys are joining girls in socioemotional sidewinders impacting their health at ever-earlier ages in adolescence…

Raising sons as daughters?

There’s a lot written about raising strong, independent, educated girls. However, now I have both BabyBoy and BabyGirl. And the article extracted below raises an interesting question – we spend a lot of time raising our daughters to be more ‘like men’, but are there attributes of raising daughters that we are neglecting to pass on to our sons?