I wanted to share something with you that been playing on my mind for months if not years, and that was brought to the fore again with a recent experience at my youngest sons 5 year health screening. It’s the first time we’ve used the the community child health services in Queensland. We did so on recommendation from an acquaintance who was hearing some concerns of mine regarding my son’s readiness for school, especially given the greater focus on comparison of capabilities of children against their peers once kids move in to the school system.

Firstly, I want to be clear that there is no criticism of the individual ‘conducting’ the screening and various tests with in it. I have many thoughts about the sometimes arbitrary approach to determine whether a child is meeting ‘milestones’ or not. I’m not tackling that today. What I want to talk about specifically is the unnecessary and unhelpful use and reinforcement of gender stereotyping as a specific part of the set of tests that are done.

The story goes as such….

During the element of the appointment when my son was being asked to look at flash cards and comment or answer questions on specific elements like ‘what might you use a xxx for’ and can you point to the smallest kitten etc, we came to a series of pictures with a boy and a girl. In the series of pictures they were either holding toys or pets (cats and dogs) and the questions were roughly as follows:

“can you point to the boys cat?” or “what colour are the girls socks?”

At this point my son, who had been happily answering the previous questions, hesitated…..and understandably so, in my opinion. I too felt some discomfort. You see, what he was seeing in the picture was a young person with long hair and a dress and a young person with short hair and trousers. From that he was expected to assume the gender stereotypes that boys have trousers and short hair and that girls wear dresses and have long hair. I can’t remember al of the details but I vaguely recall the ‘girl’ may have been wearing pink and the ‘boy’ wearing some other colour, further reinforcing gender norms.

The woman repeated the question….emphasising the word BOY or GIRL….presumably hoping this would make a difference. My son made guesses, some he got ‘right’, some he clearly got ‘wrong’ because the woman then repeated the question again slightly louder in the hope that would help him work it out (we’d already established prior to this that my sons hearing was fine).

At this point I gathered myself and explained what I was observing. Which was, that the questions were being asked with an assumption that children would assume people with long hair and/or dresses were girls and that people with short hair and trousers were boys. Beyond those assumptions I asked if there were any other factors I had missed that indicated whether the picture was of a male or female?

The woman hesitated.

I continued “because you see, we haven’t taught our children that only girls have long hair, or that boys can’t wear dresses. In fact his brother has long hair and until recently so did my 5 year old. In addition, both have worn dresses and his brothers favourite colour is pink, so it doesn’t surprise me that my son is struggling with these questions."

“I see the point you are making’ said the women, before continuing with her questions.

My son continued to have a go at guessing the answers (bless him) and she continued to push the gender stereotypes. Meanwhile I was getting a little frustrated and feeling unheard. My subtle attempt at getting her to move on hadn’t worked.Time for a more direct approach. “I think we should skip past these questions actually as see no value in this day and age continuing to reinforce these unhelpful messages.” I said as calmly as I could. Inside I was ready to go on a complete tirade but I checked myself. “I understand you are just going through the process, I understand you did not devise the questions. I do however think the system is flawed. Let’s move on”

She got the message and moved on. We made our way through the rest of the visit and left.

Yet a week later and the experience is still playing on my mind. And here’s some of the why.

Because this isn’t an isolated incident.

It’s indicative of the culture we live in, which drives, from a very young age, the behaviours and choices that are okay for boys, and those that are okay for girls.

You only have to walk in to most toy shops or kids clothes shops to see that, these days, girls have pink and sparkly rammed down their throat and to witness the opposite is true for boys.

You only have to walk down the street with your long haired boys and engage with someone you don’t know, to be reminded of the rule of thumb that long hair must = girls.

You only have to watch in a playground after school to see, when girls get a bit physical with each other, how quickly parents jump in to stop them, yet how long boys are left before they are called to account (for the record they are usually left until one of the boys is crying or very obviously hurt).

I’m not saying that this is true in every instance, but it is certainly, on balance and in my experience, the norm.

Because, as a parent,

I do all I can for my kids to feel that they can be themselves and be accepted as themselves.

I do all I can to ensure that they know they are just fine exactly as they are,

I do everything within my power to protect their true essence…and not feel they have to live up to the expectations of others (myself included)

and I’ll admit, some days I fall way short, some days I do better than others, but I’m consciously trying.

Yet I do so in a culture that continuously, overtly or not, sends messages about what we should and shouldn’t be, what we should and shouldn’t do, what we should and shouldn’t feel. These messages are not the same for boys and girls. Far from it.

And let’s not pretend, even as a parent conscious of all of this, that I’m immune to inadvertently reinforcing those messages. After all, I grew up exposed to the same messages. It’s a lifetimes work to deconstruct all of the social conditioning we are subjected to during our life time. But as Maya Angelou said "When you know better, you do better”

So this is my attempt at doing better. I’m sure plenty of people would read this and think I’m over reacting. But if writing this makes one person question how we are, as a society, creating a false set of rules of what it means to be a boy and what it means to be a girl, then my job is at least started.

I hesitated about writing this because this is not my ‘area of expertise’. I have not ‘finessed’ my 'argument'. But this piece is not about that. It’s not about my role as a birth and postpartum professional, as a yoga teacher or as a trainee psychotherapist. It’s about saying, as a woman, as a parent, as a human, THIS IS NOT OKAY. THIS IS HARMFUL AND THIS HAS TO STOP. We have to be okay with being in the area of in-between rather than needing to define and compartmentalise everyone and everything for our own comfort, and that includes how we define and what we expect of boys and girls.

I will be writing to the ‘powers that be’ in Child Health to formally express my concern over that specific element of the screening, but I’m starting here, because it feels like the right place to start.

I’d love to hear you thoughts.

image thanks to Sharon McCutcheon @ Pexels