Children's jackets. Photo: Uwe Anspach/DPA/PA Images. All rights reserved.My son’s first favourite colour was pink. He loved pink flowers, eating with pink spoons and playing with pink cars. But it wasn’t long before social norms steered him towards other colours, more ‘appropriate’ for boys.
More recently, he’s talked about how his younger sister cannot do certain activities simply “because she’s a girl.” My son is five years old, and my daughter is two.
How do I respond to this? Sometimes, my own internalised sense of what it means to be male, and what it should mean to be female, gets in the way. Mental barriers occasionally raise their ugly heads to prevent me from fully embracing the truly fluid nature of gender.
