Suck It Humphrey: Why Gender Role Brainwashing For Babies Is Bad

"Humphrey has 1 red car. Humphrey goes on an adventure to see Daddy in the shed at the bottom of the yard. Humphrey looks after his little car very well.
Humphrey's Daddy has 2 big shoes. When Humphrey grows up he wants to be just like Daddy. Bye-bye Mommy, I'm off to work."

(Learn with Humphrey, 1,2,3, Sally Hunter, Hothouse Press, 2012)


Dear Humphrey; Are you for real?

Humphrey pretty much annoyed the hell out of me, before I'd even had my second cup of coffee this morning. I see no reason to brain wash children with gender roles and stereotypes, before they are old enough to count 1,2,3. But as a society, this is what we do and it's harmful, not just to women, but to men as well.

Bye-bye Humphrey. You can drive your little red car right to the dumpster, as far as I'm concerned. I don't want your bad ideas about the roles of men and women in society to infect one year old Ella, teaching her that Mommy stays home with the babies while Daddy goes off to work. That's not the reality of her life. In her world Mommy and Daddy both go to work, and they both change her diapers, they both feed her and bathe her and play with her. Sometimes Mommy works and Daddy stays home. Sometimes Daddy cooks dinner while Mommy goes out to the shed.

It's hard to imagine that Humphrey was written in the year 2012, or that in the year 2014, I got stuck reading Humphrey to two year old Oden, before I had my second cup of coffee. Considering he's being raised by a single dad, Humphrey really doesn't belong in our world. The only good Humphrey has done for our family is inspire this blog post, which is going to be about how brainwashing kids to fulfill gender roles is both harmful and anti-Christian.


Most people at least get why gender stereotyping is bad for girls and women. Even the hardest right man, if he is worth a grain of salt, will somehow become more of a feminist the first time he holds his new born daughter in his arms. But very few people address why the feminist movement is as much about boys and men as it is about women and girls.


Raising boys to be the provider and the strong, alpha male, is totally setting them up for failure. At some point in his life, nearly every man will fail to fulfill those roles. Life is full of circumstances that we cannot control. What happens to men when they lose their jobs, when they become sick, injured or disabled, when they can't find work or any one of a hundred other things beyond their control happens in their lives? They become depressed, self loathing, angry, disappointed, even suicidal. How can they not? They've been raised since birth to believe that their worth is based on their ability to provide and protect. When they fail at this, as they certainly will at some point in their lives, it isn't just their job or their health or their physical ability that they lose, it's their entire sense of self worth.

I'm tired of listening to our society's justifications for what we do to our boys and men. I tend to believe that our patriarchal society is harder on men than it is on women. All of the burdens are placed on their shoulders and when they fail to live up to social expectations, it's devastating. For some men it happens early in life, for others it's during middle age or later, when they become too old to do work that is 'of value' to society. Those who believe that it's God that places such heavy burdens on the shoulders of our sons are just flat out wrong. Jesus said "Come to me all you who are burdened and heavy laden and I will give you rest." It's not Him that places burdens on the shoulders of our children, it's US.


It's hard to believe that in 2014 we still have parents who are gender stereotyping their children from the day the are born. But girls rooms are still traditional pink and boys are still traditional blue. Newborn girls get the pink layette and boys get the blue, and precious few parents would dare to cross those lines, or swap it out, even for a single day. Heaven forbid our baby boys should wear pink or our girls should wear something blue with trucks and planes on it. What if they did? Would that really be a crime and would it have the mental and emotional affect of causing them to break free from their gender roles?

Of course society tells us that this is what's normal and that's what's normal. Anything different is horrible, earth shattering and, according to some, anti-God. It seems to me what is anti-God is forcing people into the roles we determine that they should fill. It's anti-God to insist that girls wear dresses, when they want to want to wear jeans, to demand they play with dolls, when they want to catch bugs, to give them the toy kitchen, when they want the tool bench. And to do the opposite with boys. It's anti-God to take what God has made and spend so much time and energy trying to mold it into something else.

It's not God's will our children are fulfilling when they conform to the gender stereotypes we lay out for them, It's our own and that of our patriarchal society. If we were allowing children to grow up as God intended, there would be no need to force them into any gender or social roles. They could grow up to be whatever God intended them to be.

Galatians 3:28 says "there is no male or female." Look it up. Society says otherwise, and far too many religious leaders are way too hung up on 'traditional' gender roles. Roles that aren't based on anything Jesus said. Gender roles are not the 'very foundation of our society', as some on the right are still teaching. If this is the foundation of our society, then our society really needs a new foundation. Perhaps it should even be built on something less superficial...

Maybe if we as a society stop raising boys to be 'boys' and girls to be 'girls', we could start raising people who would grow up to be the people they were really born to be. It's unbelievable to me that in the year 2014 we're still publishing books that are filled with gender stereotypes for children who can't even count yet. It's unbelievable to me that 60 and 70 and 80 year old men are still preaching sermons based on their ideological ideals about social norms, and people are still listening to that drivel. They claim that if women are not feminized and men are not forced into roles of provider and protector, society as we know it will collapse. Get real.

It's as if there's some superficial God up in heaven worrying about what we wear and what gender roles we're fulfilling, rather than a God who is concerned with our spiritual life and our inner self. It's society that tells boys they have to be strong and manly, not God. It's society that tells girls they have to be weak and feminine, not God. Those of us who challenge the traditional stereotypes and gender roles that are forced on children are not anti-God, we're just pro-human.

So suck it Humphrey.

image credit somewhereinbetweenblog