‘PC’ Parenting is Straight Garbage

irateMD · 2016-02-18T18:25:42+00:00

There is a difference between having a gender neutral approach to a child and pushing a child toward a different or more neutral gender role to which they are not predisposed.

When my son was two, he liked to play with his sister's Barbie dolls like his older sister. IDGAF. Within a few months, with no prompting or guidance from me, his play with those dolls changed. Instead of tea party, he'd pick up a Barbie, hand one to me, and say, "Wanna fight?" I didn't know he even knew the word - must've picked it up at school. No enforcement of masculine or neutral roles required.

When my daughter dressed up like Elsa, he wanted to dress like Anna. IDGAF. Now, when my daughter dresses like Elsa, he dresses like Spider-Man. No prompting from me. No correction when he put on the dress. He doesn't want to wear the dress now because he identifies with male characters and role models.

Same goes for my daughter. She loves to watch Batman shows. IDGAF. A few months into her love of Batman, she tells me that she wants a Batgirl watch, wants to be Batgirl, and wants to marry Batman.

My five year old daughter loves to join me in the gym when I'm lifting, imitates the moves, and loves push-ups. IDGAF. With no prompting from me or my wife, she says that she wants to be strong so she can be a ballerina on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Batgirl on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. (Saturday and Sunday are home days.)

mrpCamper · 2016-02-18T18:47:52+00:00

Nice write up Hunter. While I agree with you, there are some issues that creep up into the folds of this theory that I am struggling with when putting things into practice. Basically, I am asking myself this question all the time "Where is the line between encouraging and forcing?"

First of all, I have 4 girls and no boys but I will start with questions about boys. I have nephews and close neighbor boys.

When you let a boy be himself, you may have to deal with "what if he isn't a more masculine boy?" Are you letting him be himself by being more feminine. I'm not talking about wearing makeup and a dress necessarily. What if you're boy isn't into sports but you recognize the kid is a really good athlete? Where is the line between encouraging and forcing? Now, this does fuck with PC/gender norms issues because it is PC to let boys be more feminine.

For either gender, what about musical instruments? Many parents consider playing a musical instrument to be something every child should do. Maybe you think they should play an instrument but the 10 year old kid just doesn't want to. Or worse is willing to and says so. Seems to like it but doesn't practice it often enough? Do you follow their natural inclination to be lazy about it? This applies for any example where you "believe" you are doing something they'll appreciate later on in life and be glad you did it for them. Where is the line between encouraging and forcing?

What if your kid is always saying, I'm not good at math. But has an "A" in regular math and has to choose between doing regular again next year or taking honors math. She's a girl. You see her falling into "boys do math, I want to do art". Where is the line between encouraging and forcing?

Personally, I feel I am doing well navigating this but part of doing well is reflecting and seeing what others are doing better. I think the key to some things is exposure. Your kid will do anything "with you". So, have a catch if you want to encourage sports. Or build a rocket if you want to encourage STEM interest. If you are doing it from a perspective of trying to make that kid the best version of himself he can be then do it. But be careful not to do it for the wrong reasons.

il-est-ressuscite · 2016-02-18T22:31:15+00:00

This is one of my favorite topics. Very glad that you posted this. There are so many people who produce children and then don't bother parenting them so the encouragement you provide is very much needed. I think especially so to men who may be having trouble in other areas of their lives.

The key is to expose your children to as many enriching experiences as you can and watch which ones THEY choose as this helps them flourish into what they are meant to be.

I find all four of my children to be things of great beauty. By this I mean that at times I was awestruck to witness their development and to participate in their journey to adulthood. All four of my children participated in sports and arts related activities and they all four developed interests which surprised me.

My super athlete son also really liked doing pottery and painting with my wife.(And by the way, we never pushed him to compete at the college, or any level, that all came from him!)

My youngest daughter, who from an early age could beat the rest of us at chess, announced one day that she wanted to be a cheerleader. My wife and I dutifully went to A LOT of high school football and basketball games to watch her cheer. Nobody was more surprised than us.

We tried to focus always on fostering in our children a sense of personal responsibilty, love of learning, and gratitude for their good fortune. This is accomplished through accountability for one's actions, encouraging intellectual inquiry, and participation in volunteer work.

In my experience, the gender issues you address were evident more for my daughters than my sons. I agree that some behaviors are innate in females. However, I told my daughters as often as I told my sons "crying is not a problem solving skill."

If you are the father of a daughter do whatever you can to develop the type of relationship with her that is necessary so that she can talk with you about anything. They will really, really need you in middle and high school.

Tell me to fuck off if you must, but I believe that there are many fathers, at least partially to blame, for the girls who turn themselves into monsters with the help of Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat.

qwertyuiop111222 · 2016-02-18T19:49:04+00:00

This seems relevant:

In experiments, male adolescent monkeys also prefer to play with wheeled vehicles while the females prefer dolls — and their societies say nothing on the matter.

and

"boys with more male-typical digit ratios showed greater visual interest in a ball compared to a doll...At just 3 months old, the newborn boys already fixed their eyes on the toys associated with their gender"

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/24/gender-toys-children-toy-preferences-hormones_n_1827727.html

For those more scientifically inclined:

Sex differences in rhesus monkey toy preferences parallel those of children...Male monkeys, like boys, showed consistent and strong preferences for wheeled toys, while female monkeys, like girls, showed greater variability in preferences. Thus, the magnitude of preference for wheeled over plush toys differed significantly between males and females. The similarities to human findings demonstrate that such preferences can develop without explicit gendered socialization.

(emphasis added)

Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/

I can dig out more studies if you'd like that, but IMO this is considered fairly common knowledge among biologists and anthropologists. If you have kids, treat boys like boys, and girls like girls, unless you see evidence that they have different preferences. If so, go with that.

MRPCowboy · 2016-02-18T21:30:50+00:00

Here’s an idea, let your kid choose. Let your girl tell you if she is in to science or glitter and support her either way. Same thing with boys, my son is into sports – if he was into the clarinet I’d support that too.

You can really take that way, way too far. Gender roles are not genetic. Kids don't know things, your job is to provide them with environment and stimulation. You work to expose them to new experiences and challenge them to grow. Sometimes they don't know until they've tried, sometimes they make decisions that just mirror your approval not innate or organic desires of their own. Why science OR glitter and not science AND glitter? Sports AND clarinet? Don't be ADHD but kids thrive with challenge. Otherwise they turn into entitled twats.

Example: It makes me so damn mad that balsa wood airplanes are now painted to look so extremely like boy's only toys. All I had to do was spray paint it pink and my girls love building and flying planes.

Aechzen · 2016-02-21T00:22:16+00:00

If your son was into clarinet, teach him about Benny Goodman. That dude was awesome.

NiftyDolphin · 2016-02-22T17:43:59+00:00

I'll be honest and say that I feel shame that my daughter has historically displayed better trigger-discipline than my son.

Kids are little learning machines. I let them get into whatever they want as long as they are having fun.

About the only time I step in is when one of my wife's social circle tries to interdict my son. Most of them only have girls, so they're not used to the behaviors of a little boy.

My wife, raised in a matriarchal household and surrounded by women, used to be freaked out, but now steps in to defend her own, "No, that's normal. Just take the matches away. That never ends well."

TheDesireAble · 2016-03-02T02:50:47+00:00

I agree with this.

As a father of 2, a boy and girl, I can't honestly think of a time when I pushed or persuaded him one way or another. But I always supported him. He wanted to buy Frozen dolls and play with make up. Why? Because I was gone on a deployment and his mother was the only model he was around. Now that I'm here, again, through no persuasion, he started liking Star Wars, the hulk, and wanting to constantly fight me hand to hand. Why? Actually, I don't really know. I am not raising my kids gender neutral. He has a penis, therefore, he is male. But his life is his, and I'm not going to strip away his fun just because I think it might be wrong. He's still a toddler. Innocent. He is, in a sense, finding hisself. And I will do my best to let him learn from his actions, and be a guiding hand, constantly disciplining his young mind. But I will not punish or strike him because he wants to ride a pink pony instead of the red one. My daughter is only 8 months. But I can't even begin to grasp what will happen as she ages. And I don't even want to think about it right now.

Edit: words

Archwinger · 2016-02-18T22:35:43+00:00

I'd take this even one step farther:

If your child is young and asks you, in ignorance, to do something gender-abnormal (like your son wanting to play princess dress-up), it's shitty parenting to let that slide.

Hey, if your son is 16, knows what sex is, knows what sexual orientation is, knows what he likes, and understands the judgment and consequences he's going to face, but he wants to buck social gender norms anyway? Good for him.

But if your son is 4, he's not asking to wear a princess dress to explore his masculinity or his sexual orientation. He barely knows that boys and girls are different and doesn't know what sex is. It's your job at that age to tell him fuck no, and teach him the rigid, expected gender norms, rather than letting him "express himself".

If your four-year-old grows up and doesn't know what boys are supposed to do, because he made a bunch of ignorant choices as a kid that you let him make and never learned better because you never taught him, and he's unhappy for it, that's on you. You fucked up as a parent.

I'm also sick of hearing about how girls are so marginalized while young boys get all the perks. The fact is, you can put your girl in to every sport and martial art under the sun, AND have her play with dolls and learn ballet, and the world high-fives you for it. You don't have that same leeway with boys. The people who want you to put your boy in a dress as some kind of political statement that reflects their values and not your boy's don't understand that they're a radical minority. In the real world, your boy can't do girl things without getting shit on.

over60_stupid_loner · 2016-02-18T20:57:47+00:00

Thought provoking post.

Rhetorical Question: If gender Neutral is real, why does there seem to be more gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender people, GLBT, than ever before?

I have no issue with GLBT, but my belief is that PC has unintended side effects.

MeatCurtainRod · 2016-02-19T16:29:30+00:00

Unfortunately, feminists realize the only way to push their narrative onto young feeble minds is to literally use the iron-fist-dictator method that we have always seen from them. I can't count how many times that a 2-8 year old boy is playing in an extremely politically correct environment like a daycare or indoor playground or such, being forced to play the way the girls do, and get devastatingly reprimanded when they just want to play the way they naturally choose to. And the idea behind social or parental influence on kids identifying with a gender is complete bullshit. Only a feminist mind is weak enough to accept mass media and social media as factual data.

assured_destruction · 2016-02-19T01:02:08+00:00

whats the difference between hating other genders, or races, and hating your own? Nothing that's what. They are both wrong. That's feminism. Forcing a child to do something they don't want to do shows them their thoughts are wrong and bad. A sure way to Fuck the child up.

It IS important however to encourage children to try new things, and even push them when / where they need it. But if they don't like it, they can do something else.

Children need to be shown to be tolerant and understanding, but not weak and easily intimidated. Children need to be taught to do things because they want to do them not to get approval from others. Children need to be taught to be moral and truthful, not selfish and deceitful.

Do this and your kids will be rock stars ( I have 2 adult rock stars )

adamalan · 2016-02-19T03:50:55+00:00

This gender neutral garbage is like all the other clap-trap they've dumped on parents the last 60 years along with feminism and all that; designed for nothing more than to destroy the family and through that, our society.

UnluckyPenguin · 2016-02-19T01:20:35+00:00

Story 1:

While I was working at certain company, an old fat Jabba-the-Hutt looking woman became obsessed with me just because I would actually say hi to her and smile.

Turns out this lady and her entire life was screwed up. She had twins, a boy and a girl. But they BOTH turned out gay... and unattractive - fat daughter, twig beta-looking son. Also, when that lady told me she was desperate to hook up with me, I threw up and immediately quit after reporting to her to HR.

I think PC parenting is a case of the typical unattractive parent making a mountain out of a mole hill.

Story 2:

Some guy I personally know grew up with their parents always cracking down on them to do well in school when in reality being successful in life has more to do with social skills.

It blows my mind that I can tell those types of PC parents about how my parents not only ignored my grades completely but I didn't even care about studying. Yet I currently have a higher income than 98% of people in the US.

If my wife turned out to be an unattractive socially-awkward freak like that guy I know, she would have never ended up with a successful guy like me.

These PC parents are a bunch of short-sighted micro-managing destroyers of life.

Title	‘PC’ Parenting is Straight Garbage
Author	[deleted]
Upvotes	43
Comments	65
Date	February 18, 2016 5:57 PM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MarriedRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/marriedredpill/comments/46g0jx/pc_parenting_is_straight_garbage/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MarriedRedPill/pc-parenting-is-straight-garbage.200325 https://theredarchive.com/post/200325

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