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Perhaps this woman should not be trying to raise a son?

I’m fine with dinosaurs (how can you not be?) but I refuse to buy him anything with trucks on it, or worse, diggers. I don’t even really understand what heavy plant machinery has to do with children, who are quite rightly forbidden from its operation.

Sheesh. Rhiannon might not be the best person to be raising a Y chromosome. Many little boys – and some little girls, to be fair – just love big growling machinery. Dumpster trucks, rockets, steam engines. It’s part of that being small and yet still having some agency over the world around. There really is a reason that bloody cartoon with the “Yes, We Can!” phrase was such a hit. Because – largely – children cannot so it’s an essential part of that little fantasy life.

Still, that kid’s got some fun before him. Rhiannon has clearly decided that the feminist career before her is to retell her fertility for the rest of her life. She’ll be recycling this column in 30 years – that few years after the one bewailing the late arrival of grandchildren – and we’re all looking forward to that one in a decade where she wonders just what the hell it is that teenage boys do with so many pairs of tube socks.

9 thoughts on “Perhaps this woman should not be trying to raise a son?”

  1. Many little boys – and some little girls, to be fair – just love big growling machinery. Dumpster trucks, rockets, steam engines. It’s part of that being small and yet still having some agency over the world around.

    Yarp, there’s an age when little boys are very small, where the bin men are real life superheroes, and a friendly wave from a bus driver can make their little day.

    Nobody is telling male toddlers to be obsessed with bin lorries, fire engines and buses, we certainly didn’t. It wasn’t our idea to end up with plastic crates full of toy vehicles.

    It’s just a part of the world that delights small children. And they are right. Diesel engines are amazing, lorries are great, and bin men are Big Damn Heroes (when they can be bothered).

  2. It does amuse that the Guardian banner which urges me to subscribe tells me that quality journalism doesn’t come cheap.

    Also that so far VIZ has not caricatured Rhiannon yet.

  3. Bloke in North Dorset

    Mrs BiND was adamant that master BiND was not having toy guns when he was a toddler. Being a reception/year 1 she should have known not to take on the imagination of a child. Everything became guns, twigs, Lego, wooden spoons etc.

  4. So, model trains, toy cars, toy shop tills, knowledge of sex, civics and the concept and results of voting? Play-acting of any sort. Concepts of trading resources, ie paid work. All verboten.

    In fact the last one is particularly significant, we are seeing millions having been brought up this way and expecting – nay, DEMANDING – that they should recive stuff Just Because. Brought up with not just no concept of the reality of having to provide stuff for somebody else in order for them to provide stuff for you, ie “working for a living”, but with an inculcated expectation? belief? that resources should just be handed to them just because, and that it’s some sort of existential hate crime if it doesn’t happen.

  5. Your life must be going pretty well if you have so few problems that you have to invent imaginary ones. You little son is going to be irretrievably corrupted by pictures of trucks and diggers? Seriously?

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