Globally, a growing number of parents, teachers and experts, are choosing to break free of traditional gender stereotypes by adopting a “gender neutral” approach to raising their kids.  The trend, though still fairly new in Nigeria, is also gradually being embraced by some new generation parents. But what really is gender-neutral parenting and could it be a path towards  achieving gender equilibrium? Woman’s Own writes.

By Josephine Agbonkhese & Anino Aganbi

Strict gender segregation in  clothing colours, toys and activities might be a relatively recent phenomenon, but  so popular is the trend, that it’s now the norm.

So entrenched is it today that the categories of boy and girl seem to have become as rigid as those of horse and cow.

Consequently, most people have been raised to believe blue is for boys and pink is for girls. In fact, purple (for girls) and green (for boys) have also been added to such segregations.

Like Tsolaye Inone, a Calabar-based mother of four –all boys, puts it, “I would never be caught buying anything pink for my boys. When I shop for their things, I buy different shades of blue. For instance, you won’t catch me buying a pink school bag for my sons. So yes, there are colours that are strictly for boys while girls have theirs.”

But times are changing and globally -including here in Nigeria, some parents are taking the opposite approach to parenting by choosing to raise their children gender neutral.

What’s gender-neutral parenting?

Gender-neutral parenting is when you raise a child without explicitly forcing preconceived gender norms onto them.

Although there are different degrees of this style of parenting, most parents who want to practice it might simply encourage their children to play with both “boy” and “girl” toys, keep clothing and room décor neutral, and allow their children to pick their own clothes–even if that means their daughter goes out dressed as Spider-Man.

This approach, experts argue, isn’t about making space for those children who will grow up trans, but about encouraging imaginative play and helping children explore available choices.

More subtly, gender neutral parenting also means being careful about language and behavior. So, for example, boys are given the same amount of attention as girls when they are upset, to counteract the assumption that girls are more emotional and boys are naturally braver. This, experts say, is the way to stop women being too “nice” to ask for equal pay in the workplace and men from being too stoical to ask for help when they need it.

Trend in Nigeria: “For me I never thought of gender when it came to toys. My first child is a boy and most of the toys he had, his sister used when she came along. But aside from dolls, both sexes  use the same toys. Back when I started having children, gender toys were not rampant, so, there was no issue of buying a cooking set for girls and a train set for boys,” Mrs Toyin Olubo told Woman’s Own.

Although, her style however tends to differ in the area of colours where she appears to remain stereotypical.

“I’m still very picky about colours. Personally, I tell my children specific colours for boys and girls. We grew up to know that pink is for girls and blue for boys. It was something that was inbuilt in us and we tend to follow it up,” she said.

Another is Mrs Dolapo Elumade, a mother of one.

“When I was shopping for baby clothings, I already knew I was expecting a girl. But I did not do colours. Instead, I just bought dresses and skirts. I even painted her nursery a neutral colour,” Elumade explained.

Bosede Olusola-Obasa, CEO, Royal Characters and Values Limited, RCV, a social capital development and management company, and the convener, National Character Parenting Summit, is also raising her kids in her own version of gender-neutral parenting. “I definitely avoid stereotypes about mom doing the dishes and dad watching TV or playing football. Everybody does domestic chores in my house. Both my son and daughter stand beside me in the kitchen to learn how to cook. And I let my girl go to play football too,” she said.

Gendered world of toys: Amazingly, one of the areas where children have been most popularly fed with gender stereotypical ideas happens to be in the world of toys.

In the real sense, toys are supposed to be for fun, for learning, for stoking the imagination and encouraging creativity. But most children appear to have been long discouraged from learning through the widest possible range of play experiences due to toy segregation.  Action, construction and technology toys are predominantly marketed to boys while social role play and arts and crafts toys are predominantly marketed to girls.

“The stereotypes we see in toy marketing connect with the inequalities we see in adult life,” says a Nigerian mother of two and an online supporter of the Let Toys Be Toys campaign that’s fast gaining global presence.

Research shows that by the age of four, children have very clear ideas about the jobs that are suitable for boys and girls,  ideas that are very hard to shake later on, due to stereotypes they’ve been fed with.

A couple of years ago, the ‘Let Toys Be Toys’ campaign birthed in the UK, inspired by a heated Mumsnet discussion which predominantly argued that both boys and girls need the chance to develop in all areas.

So far, over fourteen national British retailers, including M&S, Boots and Debenhams, have agreed to the group’s calls to stop using “girls” and “boys” signs.

The gender-neutral movement is also growing in the world of game apps.  In fact, Toca Boca, a game  company in the United States for example, now makes gender-neutral game apps for children. It has had 70 million downloads in 169 countries, including Nigeria.

Each time the team creates a new game, they ask themselves, “Are characters of different genders able to perform the same actions in the app?” They are painstaking in their attention to gender bias in colour schemes, too.

Possible benefits: A major pro to raising a gender-neutral baby, Mrs Adigun, a Lagos-based educationist and sociologist says, is that you will be allowing your child to develop without the artificially created limitations that society has placed around gender.

Socialisation into gender roles

“Gender norms are too limiting. Our socialisation into gender roles limits our children’s potential to discover unhindered who they are and what they’re interested in. Hence, both boys and girls might be equally gifted naturally, but boys become far more active as they grow older because parents, for instance, encourage their sons to be sporty while girls are urged to be patient and quiet.

“Whatever the truth, these are bad times for gender equality in the world. Women make up a declining percentage of the workforce in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and maths) despite the boom in these sectors and our parenting style has a lot to do with this,” she said.

Governments taking a stand: Different governments too are taking a stand on the issue of gender-neutrality. For example, France has imposed sex-equality lessons in primary schools and gender equality training for all student teachers. Irish politicians are calling for an update to the primary school rulebook, which currently explicitly dictates that cookery, laundry and domestic economy are girls’ subjects, while manual instruction classes are listed as being “for boys only”.

But Sweden is the still the Promised Land of the “gender-neutral” movement. Sweden’s war on gender discrimination started in 1998, when it published its national curriculum for preschools. It requires nurseries to “counteract traditional gender patterns and gender roles”.

In Swedish shops today, toys are grouped by category of play, and the colours are bright and varied. You could even find a princess dress on display accessorised with a pirate hat.

Clothing companies in Sweden are doing away with designated boys’ and girls’ sections to become a gender-neutral outlet, and a toy catalog in the same country recently featured a boy in a Spider-Man costume pushing a ‘pink’ baby carriage.

Going the gender-neutral way

This parenting style is still largely controversial among people who argue that the female brain is built for empathy, whereas the male brain is hardwired for building systems. But just as many studies suggest, these differences are wildly overstated – and that, where they exist, they are learned, not innate. Nurture rather than nature.

However, according to experts’ advice, any parent considering raising a child in a gender-neutral way, should endeavour to make sure the child enjoys his or her childhood. If a girl likes dolls, that’s absolutely fine as long as she doesn’t feel it’s her only option. This is on the basis that a range of experience is healthy for all children.