Nearly 3-Year Old Maeve on Girl’s Roles

First page of Oliver Button Is A Sissy – photo via Where the Bear Rugs Are Still Growling

This morning I was reading Tomie diPaola’s book Oliver Button Is A Sissy with my nearly 3-year old daughter Maeve. It’s a sweet poignant 1979 kids book that takes on some gender roles. We’ve read it dozens of times. The opening page states that “Oliver… didn’t like to things that boys are supposed to do.”

I asked Maeve what thought little girls are supposed to do. She thought about it a bit, then responded that little girls are supposed to “sit up straight” especially “when watching Madagascar” (one of her preferred videos these days.)

So it would seem that she’s not all that consciously aware of gender roles. She knows that she and mommy are girls, and that daddy and Silvio, next door, are boys. But, mercifully, she’s not so clear on outdated ideas of what girls are supposed to do.

The neighborhood posse: Silvio, Maeve and Juliana playing cardboard swords earlier this month

(I haven’t posted many daddy blogs lately – apologies. I was trying to think about doing big updates like 2015 in review, but then I don’t get around to it. So I think it’s going to be easier to post short stuff like this, hopefully more frequently… we’ll see.)

Tags: dad, dadblog, gender, Maeve_Margaret_Linton_Lincourt, Oliver_Button_Is_A_Sissy