Because it's not the stuff you know you're doing that you need to worry about.

I don't remember ever playing with dolls. I must have, I had dolls, but I don't remember playing with them. It didn't register in the long-term memory ganglia or whatever neural part it is they reside in.

I had a cabbage patch doll. My Mom bought me one for Christmas the year they were all the rage--remember that? Parents trampling each other to buy one for their kids for Christmas?--and she bought it just before they took off, when there were plenty on the shelves, and watched in amazement as it became the It Toy of the year. Her name was Frederica and she had two fat brown braids, and my Mom made her an entire little wardrobe of Cabbage Patch Clothes so she would have outfits.

She made me another doll, too, that I named after the Little Matchstick Girl because we learned about her in school that year. She was long and thin and had long, straw-coloured yarn hair and a long blue print dress.

I had a little puppet baby doll that had a blanket sewn to her so that when you put your hand inside you could wrap the blanket around her and it would look like a baby, sleeping.

I had a dollhouse that my father made; the second floor was removable and it was vaguely patterned after my childhood home. It had doors and windows and white stucco paint on the outside, black sandpaper shingles; when I was a teenager I took to redecorating it as a hobby and it has a few nice pieces in it now. The house itself, though, is a shambles, because in my early twenties my pet ferret took up residence in it and could not be evicted.

I had Barbies. I know this because I have found their headless, limbless torsos, blond plastic hair knotted and ratty, at the bottom of toy bins.

I must have played with them in the regular fashion at some point; but the only games I remember playing with the Barbies were the ones where I paired them up with my brother's GI Joes and sent them off to battle evil and save the world.

I remember lego. I remember my brother's construx and his transformers. I remember constructing elaborate role-playing games complete with hand-drawn currency, rulebooks and manuals that centred, again, on battling evil and saving the world. I do not remember playing with dolls. My parents tell me I did, and treasured them. They have no reason to lie. But the doll-playing wasn't formative.

I didn't grow up believing that I had to be a mother.

I did grow up believing that I had to save the world.

~~~~~

My bedroom in the new house was blue, sky-blue, and it had one of those wallpaper murals on one wall. I think it was a rainbow. Girly, but not pink. My brother's room was painted grey and black and his mural was a moonscape. Cool, but I had the same aversion to black as a decorating scheme at that age as I do now.

I had a microscope somewhere in there. It came with glass slides and solutions and tweezers and a little black scalpel.

My parents signed me up for jazz dance when I was little, I can't remember the age. I can remember wearing leotards and dance shoes, and learning to sashay. I took it until I was allowed to quit, sometime late in elementary school.

My parents signed my brother up for football. I can't remember the age. I can remember his yellow and black uniform. He took it until he was allowed to quit.

I can remember lots and lots of crafty projects from a young age. I had a toy singer sewing machine that really sewed, and knitting tubes that I used to make little round rugs for my dollhouse, and a sewing kit with a pattern for a tiny tiny felt teddy bear smaller than my thumb. I had an easybake oven and used up all the little mixes quick. I had books, of course; reams and reams of books. Narnia and Anne and tons ordered from Scholastic through the school.

I love making things, and I love knowing how to do things, now as then; this applies equally well to hanging shelves with a cordless drill, stripping and refinishing furniture, painting, as well as baking, sewing, knitting, etc. But I'll let you guess which were sitting under the tree at Christmas.

I'm not saying I didn't ask for these things (except the dance lessons). Maybe I did. But who (knowing the adult I turned into) could argue this was innate?

~~~~~

I remember having two favourite colours in elementary school: red and blue.

I remember loving Anne and Narnia and all the rest of my childhood library, until I discovered my father's science fiction and fantasy books in senior public school. And even though The Coming of the Quantum Cats opened up a whole other universe to me, I dropped science after grade 10 and I don't remember anyone complaining.

Now I read astrophysics for fun.

Now, according to my job classification, I am a professional scientist.

~~~~~

When I visited my parents over the holidays the conversation turned to one of our favourite topics of conversation: Frances. How adorable, how sweet, how loving, how kind, how active, how bright, how thoughtful, how funny. How generally perfect.

Also--how girly.

How she loves to play with dolls (this is brought out as evidence of girlishness, but her love of lego is not).

How caring and nurturing she is of all her little toys.

How she loves pink. How she adores to be beautiful in her party clothes. How she thrives on being admired in her party shoes.

Not how she loves to try to scare people with tales of the bloodthirsty T Rex.

Not how she, too, structures so much of her roleplaying games around saving people or animals.

But there it was, that conversation. Frances is such a little girl.

"Just like you," said my Dad.

(I'll let those of you who've fainted wake up before I continue. Take your time.)

"We tried to raise you gender-neutrally, but you just always wanted dolls and your brother wanted trucks."

All I could do was stare.

~~~~~

It's not the stuff you know you're doing that you need to watch out for.

It's the stuff you don't know you're doing, the stuff you would swear you weren't doing but are doing anyway, because you can't help it, it's unconscious.

I don't think my dad is unusually clueless. I think he's normal. Most of you probably have similar tales about your own parents.

Our kids will have the same stories to tell about us one day. One day, Frances will be telling her friends how I practically programmed her to love pink and baking and never take the driver's seat when she can avoid it.

I hope, when it happens, that I'm not sitting around telling my friends about how hard I tried to be gender-neutral in parenting Frances, but she loved dolls and pink anyway, I guess that stuff is just innate.

Posted by Andrea at February 26, 2008 7:10 AM under Female Trouble , Mothers and Anti-Mothers

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