It Runs in the Family (12 page)

Sex, gender, and children have gotten a lot of media attention in recent years. A couple in Sweden is raising Pop, a child whose sex is known only to immediate family. Pop wears all kinds of clothes and plays with all kinds of toys. As Pop grows and becomes articulate, Pop will identify Pop’s self to the world.

The Toronto parents of Storm are doing something similar. In their birth announcement, they wrote to friends and family that “We’ve decided not to share Storm’s sex for now—a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm’s lifetime (a more progressive place?…).”

The
New York Times Magazine
did a long profile of “gender-variant” kids and their parents. The thing that struck me most in the article was how hard the parents were working to create a space in the world for their kids.

One father of a boy who wore dresses and had long hair reflected: “He’s just this very brave person. My son showed me this is part of core identity, not something people just put on or take off. And it’s not their job to make sure we’re all comfortable.” A preschool in Sweden is working to inculcate the next generation with that same kind of sensitivity and appreciation for the breadth of human expression. They have done away with the pronouns “him,” “her,” “he,” and “she.” The kids are called by their names or referred to as “friends.” Toys are not gendered and neither are activities.

The move came after a 1998 law requiring equal opportunities for girls and boys in school. Teachers then filmed their interactions with the kids. The director said that they found caregivers were responding really differently to boys and girls: “If a boy was crying because he hurt himself, he was consoled, but for a shorter time, while girls were held and soothed much longer. With a boy it was, ‘Go on, it’s not so bad!’”

Our society is fast and ruthless in its enforcement of gender norms. It is not just the clothes, it’s everything. From the kinds of toys that babies and children are given—doll babies and kitchens for girls, matchbox cars and fire trucks for boys—to the kinds of activities that are sanctioned—sports and tree climbing for boys, playing house and picking flowers for girls—it is no surprise that this impulse also manifests in how parents and caregivers respond to injuries and tantrums.

Kids do it to each other too. When Rosena was in kindergarten, she came home from school complaining that kids on the playground said that her jacket was for a boy and she must be a boy if she’s wearing a red and blue jacket with a hood.

She was hurt and upset, but she was also indignant. “Who did they think they were?” It was not too hard to convince her that she had a nice warm fall jacket and that she should keep wearing it. But it happened again at summer camp.

It was probably my fault. I cut her bangs and bungled it badly. She was just happy to have the hair out of her face, but it was a bit of a hatchet job. Kids called her a boy and it hurt her feelings. But then the next day, she picked out an outfit of shorts and a T-shirt, nothing pink or girly. She was going to be who she was—comfortable and ready for fun. I was proud of her but I also made an appointment for her to get a real haircut later that week.

All of this made me consider my own gender education. I was often mistaken for a boy because of my homemade haircuts, oversized clothes, and generally grubby appearance. I didn’t really mind it most of the time. I either relished the opportunity to correct people for getting it wrong or I subtly revealed my femininity in their presence by taking my hair down or doing something unmistakably girlish to see how they reacted.

In some ways, my mom and dad had a traditionally gendered relationship within the completely nontraditional context of a nonviolent resistance community. There was something archetypal about both of them. My mom was a peacemaker, a negotiator, a finagler. She asked questions. She listened, she was patient, she conceded, and she gave second chances. She sought solutions that worked for everyone, and she softened my dad’s hard edges. My dad was the tough guy. He did not suffer fools. He was sharp, abrupt, spoke in declaratives, and made hard choices. He followed his conscience, which seemed to speak to him in clear, easily understood sentences. He made determinations, he judged, he warmed slowly, he held onto things.

Despite her maternal and feminine role within the community, my mom is almost free of girlish flourishes. No makeup, no hair style, no gussying up. Her mom was a pillbox-hat-and-white-glove kind of lady who put my hair in rags to give me nice curls for church on Sunday morning when we were visiting. When I complained, she told me that one had to suffer for beauty.

But my mother did not suffer for beauty and she encouraged me not to either. Grandma McAlister gave me a set of nail polishes for my birthday when I was 8 or 9. Mom told me to write a thank you note and then got rid of them.

When we were growing up, my mom bathed once a week, ran a comb through her hair, kept her clothes neat and practical. She worked just as hard as my dad on the house painting crew. She was afraid of heights, but she climbed ladders and cleaned out gutters just like everyone else. She also, like most women, did a second shift at home, cooking meals, cleaning, and staying on top of the kids. Mom had a few feminine rituals. She shaved her legs and loved Jean Naté after-bath splash. The scent would linger in the bathroom long after her weekly scrubbing ritual. These were deeply incongruous behaviors, left over, I imagine, from her days as a middle-class Catholic girl and as a young, well-dressed, post-Vatican II nun. I tried shaving my legs for a while in high school, but after a few months of bloody shin bones, I gave it up for good.

Looking back, I think my mom taught me to be myself, and to parent from that position of strength. In parenting Rosena and Seamus and Madeline, I try to parent the kids, not their genders. We encourage Rosena to run and climb, to dig and discover, to push herself physically and mentally. We hold her when she cries. We hold her responsible when she acts out.

It’s the same with Seamus. We hold him when he cries. We do not ignore his pain. We do not tell him to shake it off. We dress Madeline in blue and stripes, she looks great in Seamus’s hand me downs. We do not try to pin big bows on her head.

Seamus has a little kitchen and can occupy himself for long stretches by putting Velcro wooden fruit and veggies together, by stacking pots, and handling rolling pins and tea pots. We taught him sign language. More. Please. Nurse. The sign for gentle is one of my favorites: your left hand is straight out with the thumb turned skyward, forming an L-shape. Then the right hand gently traces the shape. Seamus gives the “gentle” sign to other babies, to cats and dogs, to his stressed-out mother. He has his own sign for gentle: he rubs his hands together vigorously. He reaches out to smaller babies to touch them, but he does not grab. He pets cats, though he is still justifiably nervous around dogs. He is a little boy, at least for now. We’ll see what the future brings and we will always love him fiercely.

IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE A MATERIAL WORLD

E
very month, I get a magazine called
American Baby
. I do not subscribe. The mail carrier drops it off at our house every month regardless, each new cover featuring a different perfectly coiffed, perfectly dressed, and perfectly happy baby. The inside has articles about their perfectly color-coordinated, constantly exercising mothers. The magazine seems to exist just to make me feel inadequate.

When Seamus turned a year old, that month’s issue featured ideas for one-year birthday parties. The first thing that got me was the picture of a baby in a beautifully handcrafted birthday hat with her name on it ($25 on Etsy) in front of a big frosted cake. Should one-year-olds be eating cake? Probably not. I want my baby to hold on to his hard-won teeth for a while before they all rot out of his head.

“Every good kid’s party starts with a theme,” the magazine says, suggesting themes such as pennants, rainbows, and cardboard boxes. Each one involves intricate invitations, elaborate welcome signs, color-coordinated party accessories, and theme-appropriate games that would necessitate hours at Michaels, AC Moore, or the Dollar Store. More than one of the featured parties had a photo booth.

Who is all of this for? It can’t really be for the birthday girl or boy. I know my son is brilliant, but he would not remember his birthday party the next day (or even a few hours later). Even if we decided on an Arabian Nights theme and hired dozens of belly dancers, he still would not remember it.

These perfect parties support a multi-billion dollar industry in this country. Fueled by the mayhem of places like Chuck E. Cheese and Bounceland, the kids birthday party industrial complex is doing its part to keep our economy humming along.

We have gone to quite a few kids’ birthday parties with Rosena lately, and so I have a newfound appreciation/dread of the undertaking. One party was a pretty simple affair with snacks, some arts and crafts projects, and cupcakes with candles. Rosena brought a nice gift and took home a swag bag full of bubbles and baubles. The birthday girl sent her a thank-you card in the mail the next week, which was very sweet. And I thought, “Oh, these parties are about teaching manners and etiquette and appreciation. I love it.” I wanted Rosena to send a thank you letter for the thank you letter, but then decided that was a little much.

The next party kicked it up a notch with a Moon Bounce and a Star Wars cake featuring a Jabba the Hutt made out of ganache (it was way more delicious than you would think gray cake could be). We didn’t know any of the parents at this one, but we made conversation for a few hours while the kids bounced and slid. Another mom talked me into going into the Moon Bounce and in that moment everything made sense. It was glorious fun. “Okay, I get it,” I thought.

Then we attended a blowout bash with a Moon Bounce, a snow cone machine, a cotton candy maker, a professional face painter, a professional air brusher, pizza for everyone, an hour-long magic show, and a drop-in appearance by Tinker Bell. Rosena had a blast and she wore her face paint for the rest of the weekend.

Including renting the venue, the event must have cost the parents a couple grand. I have no right to judge how parents spend their money. Better they spend it on snow cone machine rentals and local magicians than handing it all over to FAO Schwartz or the American Girl Store, for instance.

At the American Girl Store, parents can arrange for their birthday girl and her friends to have a Deluxe Birthday Celebration, complete with a meal which includes a “signature pink-and-white cake and ice cream, special goody bags, and doll tiaras for each girl, a commemorative keepsake for the birthday girl, a fun table activity, and a craft—all in a private dining room. You can make her day even more memorable by adding a Doll Hair Salon service or party photo to the experience.” Here was the line that got me though: “Parties last 90 minutes.”

My husband and I wonder how to relate to all of these birthday parties as Rosena gets older. Do we buy girl and boy presents in bulk to save money? Do we RSVP “no” on principle? Do we make a point of leaving the “swag bag” behind? Do we organize the parents at our school against birthday parties?

The Department of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota actually has a website called “Birthdays Without Pressure” that is trying to tone down out-of-control kids’ parties by getting parents to talk to one another and approach birthdays differently. They say that the current approach helps create a broader culture of entitlement, envy, and thoughtless consumption. The website also has lots of ideas for how families can build a culture of celebration, appreciation, and fun without putting on the Ritz or breaking the bank.

For Rosena’s seventh birthday, we rented a room in our church, made the cake and most of the food, and invited her whole kindergarten class. It was a three-hour affair. Rosena’s birthday is right after Christmas, so we asked that no one bring gifts, and they mostly complied. There was no theme, no color palette, no party favors, and no swag bags. The kids bobbed for donuts and did three-legged races. I worried that we did not have enough activities, but it turns out that in January, kids are starved for physical activity and they just want to run around. Rosena had so much fun and she was a great host. It took some work and it did cost a little money, but it was worth it: Rosena still talks about how happy she was that so many kids came, how much fun she had, and how cool the cake was. Plus, no presents means no thank-you letters to write, which she appreciated.

Even this scaled-down approach was way more than I had as a kid. Our birthdays were simple family affairs with a homemade cake—often decorated with plastic horses or matchbox cars or whatever we were most enthusiastic about at the time. My sister’s third birthday cake was festooned with a garlic bulb, because for months she wanted to participate in dad’s morning ritual of eating sliced raw garlic with his cereal. “When you are three,” he would say, putting her off. She tried it when she turned three and that was the last time she had raw garlic for many, many years.

My birthday is in April, which means that as a kid I regularly shared a birthday with Good Friday or Easter. I remember lots of birthdays in the cavernous basement of the Community for Creative Nonviolence—a shelter for the homeless and a center for activism in Washington, DC—where my family, the Jonah House community, and an extended network of friends would hold a retreat every Holy Week. We shared the space with dozens of Catholic college students from the Midwest who were in town for an alternative Spring Break—homeless immersions and peace activism instead of Jell-O shots and sunburns. Someone would make a big cake for my birthday and I served cake to everyone, mumbling thanks as the college kids—all hungover from the liberation Passover Seder the night before—said happy birthday and took cake from me.

This is a vivid and strange memory. Another birthday was celebrated with a giant cookie shared with my mom, brother, sister, and friends on the plaza outside the Denver courthouse where our friends were on trial. More than one birthday was spent worrying about my dad trekking through the woods to get onto a military base for an action. I don’t recall a real birthday party until late in high school, and that one was all about peach schnapps and Jagermeister.