Are you letting your child play with gender neutral toys?

No gender allowed at preschool; ‘Him’ and ‘her’ nixed to keep boys and girls equal. This was the title of an article published earlier this year by the Associated Press. In it, the AP staff writer describes a Swedish preschool called “Egalia”.

Critics point out that “different gender roles aren’t problematic as long as they are equally valued”. Proponents argue that by creating a gender neutral environment in a sense, you are setting the groundwork for the way kids think. Recently someone pointed out to me that, for example, 90% of the children’s books have male main characters, even when they are animals. Another common example is that most people will refer to stuffed animals or any animal they see as a “he”. For some reason that’s the way we have been programmed. That is not to say that by having male characters in books, boys are somehow better than girls, it’s that kids need to be able to see themselves in the characters they admire. It’s important for girls to see girls and women in books doing things that they would want to do.