Friday, February 8, 2013

My Baby Cousin

My cousin anthony just had a baby boy AJ in november. My cousin and his wife are very protective over the baby. On wednesday night, I went to go visit the baby and it was the first time I ever saw him. My mom and I where sitting there feeding the baby when something very interesting happened. I had on a pink scarf, AJ kept pulling on my scarf. My cousin took my scarf away from him and handed him a very similar scarf but something was different, the scarf was blue. My cousin said "no pink, AJ take the blue." My cousin then continued to talk about how when he gets older he wants him to play hockey and football. Basically planning out the rest of his life according to what the gender stereotype is of boys today.

I thought this was very puzzling because i couldn't believe my cousin was so protective about the baby just holding my pink scarf. It is an article of clothing and if he keeps telling him that he can't touch anything that girls touch he is going to create a massive problem. I think AJ should be able to touch and play with whatever he wants to. If he doesn't open himself up to letting AJ play with all types of toys he will not be open to trying other things when he gets older.

1 comment:

  1. I find your post very interesting, I can't believe that your cousin was SO protective and stern on the fact that AJ should play with the blue scarf instead of the pink one. I feel that you cousin is just following the norm that society give us, boys play with blue boy toys and girls play with pink girly stuff. If society wasn't so keen on gender stereotypes i think the situation would've been handled differently. Although, I can't blame your cousin for just doing what he knows and trying to follow the norm, he probably did it subconsciously just because it's what hes supposed to do.

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