Boys in Blue and Girls in Pink

When babies are born, boys should wear blue baby-suits and girls should wear pink shoes. When babies become two or three years old, boys play with tank and airplane toys, while girls play with Barbie and princess dolls.

I have been to a baby shower of a girl in the United States. The whole room was decorated in pink and presents from other people were almost always pink. For another example, my friend has a boy, three years old, and his room is decorated with blue and green. I thought the blue and pink for kids are a kind of formula for American parents.

Well, is it different in Korea? No. Absolutely, No. If a pregnant woman goes to a doctor to ask which sex her baby will have, the doctor probably tells a mom the baby would like a pink color as a metaphor. And then, parents should prepare pink stuff for their new baby-girl. If you would present a blue baby-suit, maybe you could get some reputation you have a poor sense. It looks like there is a strict rule where baby-girls should like pink and baby-boys should like blue in the whole world.

In my memory, I played with Barbie dolls when I was a kid. My younger brother played with mini cars. Surprisingly, these days, kids also play like my brother and me. I do not remember any lesson from my parents or teachers to play with dolls not cars or airplanes. My parents gave me dolls and doll houses and they gave cars to my brother. That was it. Of course, my girl friends did not play with cars but dolls and some cute stuff. I think I learned invisible rules about the difference between boys and girls. 

I watched a video on YouTube two months ago. Let’s watch this video.

The cute girl is raising a question about pink and superhero marketing. How smart! She recognized that girls do not have to like pink stuff and boys have more options. According to Susan D. Witt (1997) in "Parental influence on children’s socialization to gender roles," children are influenced by family members, friends, school and media to learn gender stereotyped behavior. In other words, boys and girls grow up as "immovable gender stereotype." I think that our kids should allow to get various chances in their taste regardless their gender.