Comment by codekilla | Hacker News Reader

Comment by codekilla | Hacker News Reader

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This is a pretty charged topic, and it's difficult to make the case unequivocally. In our family, it got to the point where people were emailing research papers(academics and doctors in the family) back and forth and Christmas was ruined. I don't have time to cite all the papers on both sides of this, but for us(my wife feels even more strongly about this than I do), it came down to the realization that AT BEST all the girl's toys and clothes could do no harm to their psyche. AT WORST, it could possibly instill in them a type of inferiority with respect to boys in terms of technical ability, and a diminished sense of their place in the world with respect to boys. As a scientist, I have to consider all the evidence, and as a parent, I have to make the decisions I think will help make my children stronger. My wife and I basically came to the conclusion that "girl's toys" and "girl's clothes" were bullshit, and an unnecessary risk to their psyche. Unfortunately pink is collateral damage in this war, as it is so ubiquitously used in our culture to demarcate girl from boy. I can in no way say that we are right, not in a scientific sense, I can only say that after spending hours and hours in toy and clothes aisles, I would say as a culture it's time to rethink gender neutrality, and the way we are separating boys and girls with clothes and toys from a very young age.

Don’t like pink or princess stuff for my daughter, but a few minor things slipped through the cracks. Should I get rid of them?

We struggled quite a bit with this question. I think our initial instinct was to be a bit militant about it, but the reality is there is so much of this in our society that unless you're willing to go full Captain Fantastic they will inevitably be exposed to these types of things growing up. It happens through relatives, well-meaning friends, birthday parties, school, media, etc, it's impossible to try and weed it all out. I guess now we take the approach where if someone gives them something we wouldn't, we don't make a big deal about it, especially not in front of the kids. Kids are very malleable and fickle, and as soon as they forget about it(maybe an hour, a day, whatever), we just throw it away. We do make it clear to our immediate family what we don't find appropriate, but at the same time, we're fully conscious of the culture we are a part of. It's not necessarily an easy line to walk, and there isn't really much guidance out there, but we feel it's important to be strong in our course, without being so inflexible given the realities.

What are your thoughts on Captain Fantastic?

I think it is tapping into the concerns of some, like for instance Alan Kay, that television, apps, screens, media, etc have successfully captured a good portion of the attention span of a very wide swath of our population. It questions whether or not this is a good thing, especially for kids, and whether they would be better served removed from this exposure, or if isolation in itself presents risks..ie social development. I guess I agree with the sentiment, but I don't think people need to go to the extremes. The 'extreme' thing I did was get rid of the T.V., so basically I'm the only person with kids that I know that does not have one in their living room...I guess that's weird enough?

I like your take, we also don’t have TV and limited device time, and as a result the kid loves to read.

I hope all of my kids are avid readers, I would count that as success.

In my experiences growing up, if something was fully restricted, it made me: a) really want that thing (happened a lot with tech) b) develop really unnatural aversions to it (a religious upbringing made this rear it's head in a lot of plays)

So my (completely amateur) opinion is to have a policy like you're doing, but only enforce it like 80% of the time. 100% is where you start to get into giving people complexes territory.

You might cause backslash in other direction if you are too militant. Ultimately, kids want the same as other kids have once they go to preschool.

Also, the association between apparently girly and bad or dumb is not healthy if you happen to be girl.

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