Mother's Day | parenting myth: I wanted to be a relaxed parenting mother

Before the birth of the child, my teammates and I had vowed never to let the child become the center of our lives. What now? I gave him at least five hours a day, in the two and a half years since he grew up, I needed to respond to his needs almost all the time, my child was only two and a half years old, he already had countless picture books, toys... In order to better raise him, I read no less than a dozen parenting books.

Even so, I found that I had stepped on a lot of pits in parenting, and the biggest reason behind this was that I believed too much in the "power of parenting".

My belief in the "power of parenting" was first and foremost reflected in my desire to raise a son who was both "masculine" and "feminine." Because I'm a feminist and have always believed in "gender constructivism," I've always wanted to observe and influence his preferences for colors, toys, etc. as he grows up.

This idea can be traced back to when I was studying in the "Gender Studies" course in the master's program of the University of Chinese in Hong Kong, "gender constructivism" is almost the general existence of truth in that course, completely negating "physiological determinism", for example, "gender constructivism" will think that those typical masculinities, such as aggression, masculinity, dominance are the result of acquired cultivation, and those typical femininity such as obedience, weakness, care, etc. are also the same. For example, it is precisely because parents always buy blue clothes for boys, so they prefer blue, and it is precisely because adults always buy toys for children according to this presupposition - boys like cars, girls like plush toys, etc., so children have these men and women have other choices.

I used to think deeply of such "gender constructivism", and then I thought that if I changed my parenting style, I intentionally provided my child with plush toys such as dolls, rabbits, giraffes, etc., and even put on a small pink skirt and a braided wig, I wanted to experiment to see if "gender temperament" could be constructed? Will my child be both "masculine" and "feminine"? But reality proved me wrong, he still showed an obvious obsession with cars, or more fond of those "boyish" toys, such as when he was 23 months old, he could clearly express that he liked tractors, so that the two-birthday party I threw for him was "tractor-themed". Now that he is 30 months old, he has also entered a "sensitive period of order", and will line up all his cars, such as police cars, fire trucks, ambulances, Thomas trains, etc., and his favorite thing every day is to fiddle with these cars, making up stories in his mouth.

Kids cars

As a mother, the process of raising boys, let me begin to doubt the "gender constructivism", once, I saw a small game of early education punch card on the parenting app "Pro Baby", which is to let the child imitate the adult to take care of a doll, I also did this, I picked up the prepared bottle to feed the doll, I was excited to show Man (my son's name), but he was not interested in feeding the doll, fiddled with it twice, and then went to play with the car again. I was very discouraged: "Don't we all say that it is constructed?" Don't they all say that children are blank sheets of paper? Then I taught him to take care of such qualities, how come he is not interested? Doesn't it say that liking cars is an acquired construction? How do I think he was born? ”

Communicating with the mothers of the girls around me, they also further deepened my suspicions about "gender constructivism", and Yiyi's mother told me that one day, Yiyi's mother bought her a new pink dress, and yiyi especially liked her soft and sticky new skirt, and after receiving it, she would let every plush toy come to feel the softness of the skirt. This contrast is simply too obvious, my boys have not shown any concern for "relationships", almost no relationship with these plush toys, and there is no one-size-fits-all of the "caregiver" traits and beauty-loving traits, one by one often asking their mothers "Mommy am I pretty?" And my son never asks, "Mom, am I handsome?" ”

Maybe I'm too eager to prove the existence of "gender constructivism", in order to prove that as a feminist, I can raise a "gender-diverse" child, I put this expectation on the child, I want him to like pink (but he will still choose blue out of a bunch of colors), I want him to like plush toys, and even want to "take care" of this temperament to instill him. But isn't that very narrow?

What's so bad about the book 1,000 Vehicles that he just prefers cars, if he loves to queue them up, if he likes to tell them the name of each car in the book 1,000 Vehicles? All along, I have fallen into the gender bias of boys, and even the depreciation of "masculinity".

With this confusion, I read the well-known American psychologist Judith Harris's "The Myth of Parenting- Can Parenting's Parenting Style Determine the Personality Development of Children?" 》。 The book challenged traditional perceptions and caused great shock and reverberation in the academic community. It says that our parents' indoctrination of the "gender concept" of the baby and child has little impact, but the influence of his peers in childhood will be relatively large, and he will choose to identify with the boy group, learn the behavior in the boy group, and distinguish it from the girl group, that is, the socialization of gender.

Experiments have found that the human male "impulse to dominate his companions" can be detected at the age of two and a half, and my child has indeed proved that "men are more dominant" This view, he is now exactly two and a half years old, and he has begun to arrange for me and my father to do things for him, such as my mother lying down, and my father going to "make milk powder".

So "The Myth of Parenting" satirizes me as a "parent who wants to raise his child into a male and female characteristics": either to join a hunter-gatherer group or to move to the most remote place in the world, where there are not enough children to form a boy group and a girl group. And as long as there are enough boys and girls to distinguish between two groups, it is almost impossible to raise children to be both "masculine and feminine", because they themselves will definitely choose a side and choose a group to identify with gender.

"In the formation stage of children's personality, girls are more like other girls, boys are more like other boys, girls who scare will become quiet, timid boys will become braver, the differences between children of both sexes are getting bigger and bigger, the two curves that originally overlapped are gradually separated, and the overlapping parts become smaller and smaller." The Myth of Parenting argues that these changes are caused by children themselves, and that they choose to identify with them not with their parents, but with other children of the same gender as them. That said, so far, no study has been able to blame parents for differences in gender development.

It is this specific experience that makes me find that as a parent, the influence that may be able to exert on the child is very limited, frankly, when the elders or friends around me comment that my child is smart because his father and mother have a doctorate and a master's degree respectively, so he is smart, I will be somewhat sensitive to think that such a statement underestimates the role of my child's parenting education, because I have been trying to create a loving parent-child relationship, and provide children with toys, picture books and so on. In other words, I would love to flaunt my "power of upbringing." - I have put in so much time and effort, can't I just flaunt it? But at the end of the day, isn't this a kind of narcissism as a parent?

Although the book "The Myth of Parenting" still receives many doubts to this day, it still loosens the shackles of my old mother, and it at least reminds me that as a parent, of course, it is useful for the parenting of children, but its usefulness is limited. Parents will give their children some influence, but it may end up just those basic concepts of right and wrong and values. But in the future, his other behavior and attitude depends on what kind of companions he has.

Once upon a time, I did not reflect on the fact that my original family was not good enough, so I insisted on raising my next generation to a higher standard, but Freud's spell of "anything can blame the original family" can also be broken - the parenting of mothers and fathers is not the key factor that determines a person's life. They also learn socialization from their peers and form personality in the process of group identity. Parents are helped by genetic inheritance and whether they provide an economic foundation and a stable growth environment.

At the end of the day, raising children should be as natural as sex, because evolution itself is a process of both carrots and sticks. Nature makes us happy to do what she wants us to do, and if parenthood is a chore, do you think chimpanzees will do it? Parenting means enjoying the joy of parenthood, and if you don't feel happy, you're overdoing it. As a mother, it is really unnecessary to think too far and too much for your children, and to be too anxious, because there are many, many things that are not within the control of you and me.