I was apprehensive when my wife Leisa and I found out three years ago that our first child, Beatrix, was going to be a girl. For a week or so after the birth, I kept asking my wife for reassurance that I was cleaning Bea’s bits right. Two years later, when we found out our second child, Felicity, was also a girl, I was relieved. I felt like I’d got this. Still, it’s been a learning curve.
As a former style editor for GQ and Men’s Health, I’m no stranger to fashion, but dresses, tights and hair bobbles were alien concepts. Morning styling duty normally falls to me and I confess that I dress Bea boyishly, because boys’ joggers are more robust than girls’ leggings. They’re designed for doing stuff, not just looking pretty. That isn’t the only early gender imbalance I’ve noticed. Watching Paw Patrol with Bea, I’ve wondered why, in a team of six pups, is there only one (small, pink) girl? And while Nella The Princess Knight is all very woke, why does she have to be a princess at all? Can’t she just be a knight?
Toy adverts are more blatant. For boys, it’s all cars and action figures; for girls, it’s dolls, kitchens and vacuum cleaners. The message is that boys can do and be anything; girls can do childcare and housework. I’m conscious of not wanting to be the kind of dad who inflicts his love of football on his daughter in lieu of a son, but, at the same time, why shouldn’t a girl be into football? What does that say about my own regressive attitudes? I’m also aware that my daughters’ attitudes will be shaped by my relationship with my wife and our division of labour, emotional and otherwise. It helps that I can work flexible hours, while my wife does a corporate eight to four – and earns more – but I want our girls to see that men can care for children, cook and hire cleaners (ahem).
Of course, the true scope of male privilege is hard for me as a man to fully comprehend, having never experienced the discrimination. But if I wasn’t a card-carrying feminist before my daughters were born, I am now.