bringing up boys

I look about me and see how women--sadly, sometimes the same ones who deplore men's behaviour--expect their daughters to help out in the kitchen while their sons get to hang out on the computer.


Slowly that's changing, but not fast enough!

Seriously, people! Cleaning the toilet is not gender-specific. Nor taking out the garbage. I am *not* agog when a dad changes his baby's diaper--and I grind my teeth when I hear people coo and nudge each other that he's being so sweet about it.

Do people notice when a woman does it?

We recently spent a week with friends who have four boys. I told the boys I wanted to take pics of their bedrooms and was given permission.
They look like boys' bedrooms, though they could equally have been girls'. I suspect the interest in knitting was an early, still unrealized obsession with knotting fishing lures. It's the eldest, not the youngest, who reads comics.

Both parents work. Both parents cook. (Someone comes in to clean.) The boys all have assigned household tasks. I'm happy and relieved to say I know of other families like this.

If we want the society of the future to be more equally weighted with regards to gender (for a start), then it's in the present that we need to establish expectations.


While we were visiting, R and father of said boys cooked a few great meals. That's what kids need to see: men can and do.