I have been meaning to write a review of Peggy Drexler’s Raising Boys Without Men, but I never seem to have the time.  So here’s some thoughts on a somewhat tangentially related topic…  

In an ultimately futile attempt to distract myself from my most recent bout of adoption anxiety, I decided to go out and purchase the last few items we needed to bring with us on our upcoming visit trip.  My baby clothes rules are relatively simple – or so I thought.

  1. Cannot cost more than the average weekly income in my son’s country of origin what I would spend on a t-shirt here. Sadly those amounts are equivalent. 
  2. Cannot be emblazoned with advertising slogans – my kid is not a billboard for 0ld Navy or Baby G*p.
  3. No branded characters (I’m sure I’ll flex on this one once he’s old enough to start asking for them, but for now, them’s the rules)
  4. No extreme gender stereotypical imagery or language: “Future chick magnet?” “Football Star”? Monster trucks?

Ideals, which tend to be thrown out of the water by rule #1:

5. I’d like to know that a child or a grossly exploited worker didn’t make the clothes for my child.
6. It would be nice if said clothes were made from organic materials & natural fibers (ha!) & in an environmentally sensitive way.

I went to Marsha11s, 0ld Navy, T*rget, K-M*rt and the Sa1vation Army.  And it was surprisingly hard to find clothes that even satisfied the first four rules. Bright colors are nice. Why is everything blue, pink, pastel yellow, or mint green? Why must all the nice red shirts have monster trucks on them? Why is our animal vocabulary limited to puppies (marketed at boy children), dinosaurs (ditto), ducks (girl children), kittens (ditto), and giraffes (the most neutral I’ve seen)?

Higher-end baby stores seem to have less grossly gendered clothing, which makes me wonder whether there’s a relationship between social class and the desire for gender-neutral clothing.  Even so, my cousin, who works for a kid’s clothing line I can’t afford to buy from even at her wholesale discount, tells me that retailers tell her that they regularly get returns – “I’m sorry, but my husband didn’t want his son in this!”  Is there truly less demand among discount/big-box store shoppers for non-gendered clothing, or does the selection and set-up in these stores condition consumers to expect to buy gendered clothing? Is the physical layout of the store into the girl-infant section and boy-infant section consumer-driven or retailer-assumption driven?

Why is it so frightening for parents when the cashier in the supermarket can’t tell if your two month old is a boy or a girl? Is it the end of the world if someone says your son is beautiful, rather than handsome?  And yet, here’s what I wound up buying.

Tiger  Look at the cute little tiger feet! Tiger close up

Cows and Cat  Make yourself at home, why doncha, kitty?

Harmless Stripes Inoffensive stripes.

Circus Star  King Sleeper  King Detail

These two came as a set. I didn’t notice the writing on the second one until I got home.  It doesn’t make sense to me: leave the word “king” off and you’ve got a cute sleeper that could be worn by anyone.  Put “king” on there, and you reduce your potential market by 50%.  Or at least 25%, assuming that there are people who won’t buy blue for their girls even if it’s otherwise neutral. 

Nonetheless, my purchases are certainly dominated by the color blue, aren’t they? (Gives weak, sheepish grin.)  Believe me, though, when I say this is the best of a very sorry lot.

As part of a two-mom family, I think I’m a little less comfortable bending gender rules and dressing my son in pink than I might be if people weren’t likely to read that as using my child to push the infamous “homosexual agenda.”  I’m also more cautious for this upcoming visit trip – from what I’ve seen in pictures so far, gender-normative clothes are the rule here, and I’m less likely to push limits abroad than I am at home.   

How do you all handle the clothing conundrum?