Tuesday, February 19, 2008

All Learning is for Everyone


My son loves to cook. He loves food. In order to get him to eat baby food, we had to grind up what we were eating because the boy needs flavor. If I'm in the kitchen, he's right there wearing his little chef's hat. So, why do the cookbooks for little people feature girls on the cover? The above cookbook is one of the best I've seen for a child his age, but couldn't they have put a boy on there too? My girls like to cook too, but none of them has been as keen on the whole thing as our boy. If ever there was an area where gender doesn't matter it's cooking. I'm a tad frustrated, and not just with this. Some of my daughters have inherited their father's interest in chess and engineering. Why are the books and kits about those subjects inclined to feature boys in the pictures? It isn't my son who is pressuring dad to make time to build the jet engine kit. I'm not saying that everything is genderless--Kurt won't be giving birth to this baby, but do we need to separate areas of inquiry and interest by gender starting in the toddler years?

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