Blue for Boys, Pink for Girls?

There have been plenty of stories over the last few years of parents declining to give their children defined gender roles at an early age. These range from the entirely reasonable - mothers turned away from the 'blonde housewife' message that certain dolls and play sets subliminally sent to their daughters - to the decidedly eccentric - American couples who not only withheld from giving their children gender-specific names, but also kept from their children anything which might suggest any gender-specific traits at all.

So, what of this? Are we to disregard the wide range of approaches, simply remarking that each parent may bring their children up as they see fit, and society has little right to moralise on what form this should take? Or are we to take sides, to declare one mode of parenting progressive and another regressive? Certainly anyone with feminist or even egalitarian leanings will tell you that the sight of many old dolls and toy sets confronts children with the nauseating message that 'girls stay at home, boys go to work', an anachronistic and overtly sexist subliminal education which we, as a society, are now far beyond.

On the other end of the spectrum, traditional families recoil in horror as 'wayward' parents instill in their helpless children a confusion about their own sex which would complicate them in years to come. Pyjamas for children, many parents argue, are not about making grandiose political statements or putting the world to right. They are about keeping our children warm and giving something to wear that they like wearing. It just so happens - some may go on - that girls like pink and boys like blue….

So perhaps it is impossible to avoid the politics after all. For children pyjamas are nothing more that their garments and nothing less than the designs that they wear with pride. It is incredible to see - whilst parents are polemicising over gender norms and the direction of society - the intensity with which a little boy prides himself in his dinosaur-embroided PJs, or a little girl in her brightly coloured Disney characters. One can imagine them looking up, thinking, "I know the grown ups are interested in my PJs, because they've been talking about them for hours, but they've missed the crucial point that mine have Bob the Builder on the front!"

And perhaps this quirky relationship between parent and child gives more away than it seems to. If kids can be so passionate about the designs of their garments - which, believe me, they can - then surely what is on their garments matters. The fact that the wider politics of this design or that one doesn't enter into the mind of a child suggests that we do have some responsibility to direct the inevitable subliminal education of our children towards sensible, reasonable messages.

But we needn't take it too seriously. While refusing to answer young Hermaphra's questions on her/his gender might be taking things a little far, so might five hours a day of 1920s cartoons drumming into little boys and girls the importance of their respective, predetermined gender roles. A sensible medium is what we need to find. That being said, it will only be a matter of time before we are informed by our young madams and sirs that, no, you're completely misunderstood, the important thing is that it has a picture of an aeroplane on it.