[gurkendoktor]

> The harder we make it for them as a kid to express preferences the more repressed they will be

I am obviously a parenting newbie, but what I don't understand is, why can't we just teach children to ignore/combat the repression? Is that something that only works at age >1x? Wouldn't that be a much longer-lasting solution?

If humans were single-gendered, we would certainly find other ways to feel threatened about our identity. I just don't see how removing all stereotypes from everything is a battle that we can win.

(I have been "gender-weird" when I was young, otherwise I wouldn't even dare to post this :))

[user24]

> why can't we just teach children to...

This is something I used to ask until very recently; why can't I just teach my kids not to care about brands, not to be racist, not to be sexist, etc etc.

This would work, if my kids only learned from me. As long as there are sexists, racists, brand-bunnies, violent kids, etc around, my kids will learn from them too.

[saraid216]

The key is to teach children to question tribalism, and to do it calmly and rationally. If you do that, and they trust your capacity to judge fairly, they'll come back to you for extra perspectives whenever they aren't sure about anything.

Parenting is deceptively simple. Everything comes down to building enough mutual trust that an adult relationship is possible fifteen, twenty years down the line. Everything else is either there to make that possible, or built off that fundamental.

[emmapersky]

Teaching kids to ignore / combat that is just one part of what we need to do. Sadly not all parents are as forward thinking as this, and are quite happy to subconsciously nudge their children into gendered roles.

If we combat this at the systemic level we stand a much better chance of bringing up successive generations in a less biased way, and maybe one day society will look back and think of our time as barbaric in the field of gender equality.

I don't think this is fight we can totally win now, or even in 20 years, but that doesn't mean we should give up. If we help just a single child become comfortable with their own identity, without fear of crossing gender stereotype lines I think we might get there.

[breakyerself]

I would prefer to fight the battle on both of those fronts. Certainly the loving support of an understanding family will go a long way towards strengthening a child's ability to be themselves in a culture that will ridicule them for it, but what of those children who have neither a supportive family nor an inclusive culture. Don't we owe it to them to support advancement towards inclusiveness?