*Raises hand* I was one of those boys. More specifically, my favourite colour was pink, I loved long hair, my voice was always higher than most people my age, and I basically hated everything boys are supposed to like (save for cars).

I know! It creeps me out. When reading the article they mentioned a little boy who liked to wear his Spiderman costume. And I kept thinking, what if a little girl wants to wear a Spiderman costume? I feel for all the little girls who are forcibly dressed in pink dresses and pigtails.  How stiffling!

It was a huge fear I had going into it until we visited and a little boy approached me with a baby doll and a teacher told him what a good job he was doing caring for it.  It was a big concern.  It’s a forest preschool so the kids are outside all day when the weather makes it possible.  They encourage lots of physical…

Strangely enough, I’ve had people tell me that boys are “easier” than girls. Come to think of it, it was a woman who had only daughters, and one grandson.... Maybe raising kids is just hard.

Yes! There’s nothing guaranteeing a daughter wants a pink room in the first place — or that a son wouldn’t! Forcing gendered expectations in both directions is unfair to that kid’s individuality.

I am fascinated by parent-of-boys / parent-of-girls identity because it’s something we have no control over. Like obviously we have control over whether we turn it into a hashtag and a whole Brand for ourselves and shit, but if you’re one of those Not Like Other Girls girls, you don’t get to choose to only have little…

Or “I don’t know, girls just don’t seem to like me!”

I commented above about this, but to me this seems like overcompensating to cover the fact that these women are disappointed at not having girls. 

Insecurity with a dash of harmful stereotyping! I like it.

To me that quote sounds like it stems from insecurity. The person who said it sounds like they secretly feel they're lacking something in not having a daughter or they're uncomfortable with other people viewing them as lacking.

Weird. Every time I say that I want girls, moms are always like “well you will definitely have your hands full.” 

And there’s NOTHING inherently wrong with pigtails and pink! Nothing wrong with dinosaurs and trucks either! A parent doesn’t have to resign him/herself to a “lifetime of XYZ” because of their kids’ genitals!

THANK YOU! I was coming to the comments to see if other people made the COOL GIRL™ connection.

Not to any parents of daughters I know. Boys are labelled as more difficult from the start. There have been tons of experiments where researchers have dressed infants in girly clothes or boyish clothes and tracked how people respond to them. Babies in boy clothes are told they’re angry when their crying, babies in…

LITERALLY exactly what I was going to say. I talk shit about the #boymom hashtag nonstop. Its especially pervasive in the evangelical community where gender-norms are particularly strong. Half the women I went to church with had #boymom as part of their insta handles.

And then the weird part is that a lot of people say that about girls too. So its almost like babies in general will cause you to have “your hands full.”

This is nauseating and I cringed while reading this entire (well-written) article.

“I don’t need pigtails and pink rooms. I’m happy being the proud mom of two healthy little men,”

Not to mention babies in general are hard work. Of course you had your hands full - you were keeping a tiny, helpless human alive.

Yikes.