The Swedish Way to Parent and Play

by Kristina Henkel

  —micke, parent of a three-year-old

  “We’ll often tell a girl, ‘What a pretty dress,’ if she’s wearing something nice. But we also really try to remember to tell the boys that they’re wearing cool pants.”

  —zam, teacher

  A few years ago, skulls were very popular on kids’ clothes. In the beginning, the skulls were mainly featured on clothes intended for boys, but after a while they showed up in the girls’ section, too. However, those skulls included ponytails and ribbons and bows. Apparently, the original skull and bones just wouldn’t do. Clothes for boys often have a superhero theme or scary animals, or text that says Boom!, Vroom!, or Bang! The prints show action, something breaking or moving really fast. The images on girls’ clothes are very different. There are cats and dogs, teddy bears and other animals that look nice and friendly, butterflies, hearts, flowers, and glitter. The images themselves are not the gender trap, here. Instead, the trap is how the two worlds are so very clearly separated, and how our children are being told they should be different from each other.

  SYNONYMS

  TOUGH – sturdy, hard, healthy, resilient, tenacious, rough, fierce, harsh, resolute, severe, merciless, demanding

  SWEET – beautiful, kind, adorable, lovely, gentle, pleasant, sugary, appealing, ingratiating

  NICE – likeable, friendly, good, neat, dainty, pleasant, polite, graceful

  COOL – calm, cold, relaxed, level-headed, collected, reserved, tough, unmoved, awesome

  Different things happen to children depending on whether they wear a cute cat shirt or a shirt that has fire and monsters on it. Other children and adults approach them entirely differently in the two cases. It’s not surprising that the responses to two distinct images would diverge. As adults, we know that clothes can evoke emotions, and that we can use clothes to blend in, to challenge, to get affirmation, or to be seen. Children with cats on their shirts are likely told that they look nice and that the cat is cute and cuddly, while children wearing monster shirts are likely told that they look cool and that the monster is scary. Children are assigned distinct characteristics based on the images on their chests. Boys are often dressed up for the part of being tough and cool, and girls are decked out to play nice and cuddly. A whole host of expectations are generated, and they’re not always easy to live up to.

  Suggestions

  Switch back and forth between “tough” clothes and “sweet” or “soft” clothes, so that the expectations aren’t so lopsided. This gives children a chance to be approached by others in more varied ways, too.

  Combine traditionally gender-coded clothes in new ways. Match a pink dress with a pair of dark jeans or a scary T-shirt with a pair of tights with flowers.

  Interpret the prints in new ways:

  • How does it feel to have a glitter dog on your tummy? Does this dog bite?

  • How many skulls are there on your shirt?

  • Batman looks pretty angry on your shirt, what happened?

  Use all the words—sweet, nice, tough, pretty, and cool—with all children. Mix it up.

  When children are young, set aside the clothes that are most extremely gender coded. Children don’t have ways of responding on their own to all the comments and appraisals made by adults and other children. When they’re a bit older, they can object in an entirely different way if they feel that what’s being said isn’t right.

  “You look so pretty in your dress.”

  “I’m not pretty. This is my superpower-dress.”

  “What a scary hat with that spider!”

  “It’s not scary. This is my warm-and-cozy hat!”

  Awww, Look How Pretty You Are!

  “Our daughter is always told she looks so nice when she wears a dress or has her hair up. By both of her grandmothers as well as other adults. Sure, our son gets to hear that, too, when he wears a dress and barrettes, but never otherwise.”

  —angelica, parent of a three-year-old and a six-year-old

  “She’s already started trying to look nice and pick out clothes that she knows will get her the most attention.”

  —linda, parent of a two-year-old

  “My daughter received a board book as a present; it was called My First Princess Book. Almost every page asked the reader if the princess was pretty and whether her dress looked nice.”

  —fredrik, parent of a one-year-old

  “One cold day, my daughter had a total breakdown when I said she couldn’t wear her dress. Gigantic tears rolled down her cheeks as she screamed, ‘I want my dress because my teachers say I look nice in it!’”

  —emilia, parent of a three-year-old

  People respond to a girl in a dress. She gets to hear that she looks nice, pretty, and beautiful. The same thing happens when her hair is in braids or put up with barrettes, or if she wears a necklace. There’s nothing strange about this. Dresses and jewelry are made in appealing colors and materials that attract attention. Adults are subject to this, too, of course. From the Nobel ceremony to the block party, dresses, not tuxes or suits, are discussed and assessed. The overall consequence is that girls, from when they’re really young, receive a lot of affirmation about their appearance. Looking nice is linked to something positive; a pretty girl is a successful girl. Not being pretty and nice is, for many, the opposite, namely failure. Children who wear jeans and a shirt aren’t subjected to the same kind of focus on their appearance as children who wear dresses. The crux is that children can’t realize that the attention they get depends on what the person looking at them is feeling. They can’t know that the positive attention associated with the clothes is not about them—nor do they understand that if they’re not getting that attention, that isn’t about them, either.

  At the Opening Ceremonies for the Olympic Games in 2008, the organizers decided that the seven-year-old girl, Yang, who was supposed to sing, was not sufficiently pretty to make an appearance. Nine-year-old Ling was considered sufficiently pretty but not a great singer. The solution? Have the prettier girl lip-sync the better singer’s beautiful singing.

  Clothes and appearance become important parts of girls’ identities. The idea that a girl is successful if she is pretty makes many girls and women live with a constant feeling that they need to change something about themselves. This means that a fair amount of their time and energy is devoted to how they look. This obsession with looks teaches both boys and girls that girls are objects, things that are supposed to be nice to look at. Becoming an object to be assessed by others generates stress, which in turn can lead to illnesses, like anorexia and bulimia. By objectifying girls and giving them tight, fitted clothes to wear, we are also contributing to the early sexualization of girls’ bodies. In 2008, the Swedish clothing chain Ellos tried to market a bikini for two-month-olds. Parents were quick to protest, and Ellos pulled the item.

  Boys are not exposed to the obsession with looks or sexualization to the same degree. As of yet, no one has tried to market minimal, shiny Speedos for babies. Rather, boys receive attention no matter what they do about their looks. They are allowed to be active subjects. That said, satisfying expectations about being cool or tough or acting like a superhero is no walk in the park. If you’re a boy, you might want to be cute every now and then, and have the niceness of your appearance affirmed.

  Suggestions

  Try to focus on how clothes work rather than how they look. Do the clothes feel good? Are they good for climbing in, soft to sleep in, good for sneaking around in, easy to run fast in?

  Give all children opportunities to make themselves look fancy and play dress-up with glitter, gold, tulle, and loads of gorgeous colors.

  Pay attention to other things about children—especially girls—than their clothes and how they look.

  • It’s so nice to see you!

  • How are you doing today?

  Take a STEM approach to the clothes children wear or how they have their hair. This shifts the focus from appearances and encourages children to think:


  • How long are those braids?

  • How many dots are there on those socks? Should we count them?

  • Is that the kind of scrunchy that can glow in the dark? How can we tell?

  • How is that shirt put together? How are the sleeves attached to the rest of it?

  He Gets to Be a Little Bit Different

  “I like the dress because it’s so very nice.”

  —daniel, age three

  “My younger son loves dresses. Both adults and other children react, but it’s been pretty easy. People accept him but also make excuses for him, feeling the need to say that it’s okay, it’ll soon pass.”

  —jolie, parent of a four-year-old and a six-year-old

  “Lucas, hurry up and take off the dress. You know how angry your daddy gets when he finds you wearing it.”

  —anna, teacher

  “At preschool, the teachers tucked my son’s dress into his pants. They said it was getting in the way when he was playing.”

  —kajsa, parent of a four-year-old

  “My son wants to have the same dress as his big sister. But I’m worried other children will tease him, and I don’t know how to prepare him for this.”

  —allan, parent of a two-year-old and a three-year-old

  Today, no one bats an eye when they see a woman in pants, but 100 years ago, it was considered highly questionable. Meanwhile, both boys and girls wore dresses. Today, skirts and dresses are almost taboo for many boys and men.

  Dresses evoke emotions, whether the person wearing the dress is a boy or a girl. Many parents reject dresses and glitter and flower patterns for their sons. They may be worried about their child being rejected, teased, or being called a “wuss” or a “sissy.” Those words are sometimes used when boys transgress against gender codes and adopt something that, traditionally, is considered girly. Boys who want to wear dresses are more likely to be accepted while they’re very young, because it can be seen as adorable. But as time passes, the pressure builds: boys should be boys and be dressed in clothes from the boys’ department. Buying a shirt or a pair of pants for a girl in the boys’ department is not at all as controversial. Being a tomboy is, for many, considered cool, something positive, linked to taking action. There’s no equivalent term for boys.

  At a deeper level, the fear of dresses and other traditionally “girly” clothes on boys is a fear of homosexuality. Stores that have tried to feature dresses or tunics in the boys’ section have had to deal with upset shoppers, mainly angry dads. Some of them are concerned about expected sexual orientation, that a boy who wears a dress or wants to have hair ties or similar objects will be gay. But, of course, dresses have nothing to do with sexual orientation, and their orientation should not affect how we treat our children.

  Suggestions

  Let all children try wearing dresses. It’s fun to dance in a dress, and they’re nice to wear when it’s hot.

  Give dresses new meanings. There can be strong dresses, brave dresses, sneaky dresses, fluffy dresses, and dresses for running.

  Remember not to joke about children’s clothes when they break traditional gender patterns.

  Talk about cultures and places where boys and men wear dresses and skirts: caftans and kilts, for example.

  Support your child if anyone is teasing them. Talk about how different people can have different ideas. Offer your child role models to lean on. This can be effective for all kinds of ways in which children can be challenged:

  “That’s for girls!”

  “No, my dad has one.”

  “Only girls wear dresses.”

  “That’s not true. Lots of boys wear caftans.”

  Affirm children’s choices, letting them know that their choices are good and they are allowed to make them. Helping children be less dependent on what others think creates a more comfortable place in the world for them and gives them better self-esteem.

  He Only Wants to Wear Scary Clothes

  “He says he only wants to wear cool clothes. Black clothes or other dark colors. He likes shirts with scary animals, monsters, and skulls.”

  —adil, parent of a five-year-old

  “We try to mix it up, but she only wants to wear dresses. It’s a battle we’ve just given up on.”

  —tobias, parent of a two-year-old and a four-year-old

  “I usually bring my kids with me to the department store. I’ll bring them right in between the boys’ section and the girls’ section, and then they can choose the clothes they want.”

  —johanna, parent of a two-year-old and a five-year-old

  If children could choose freely, what clothes, colors, and other items would they wear? Do boys fundamentally dislike bright colors and red hearts, and do girls always want pink and glitter? Or can they ever actually freely choose? Children learn rapidly that clothes generate reactions, and that they can be key to positive attention. They know that they’ll be told they look nice if they wear that special shirt. They learn that their friends will behave in a certain way if they wear those pants. Clothes can be a security blanket, a coping mechanism, an armor. Our clothes can let us feel a certain way or give us the attention we want. But it’s not straightforward. If we pick the wrong armor, we could get left out. This makes most of us err on the safe side.

  Different clothes let us explore different roles. It can be easier to feel bold and secure in dark colors and heavy fabrics, and it may be easier to feel small and fragile in light colors and thin fabrics. Learning to move in and out of roles, feelings, and characteristics is good practice for life. It helps us understand and feel empathy for other people and is a way for children to explore and understand what they encounter in their everyday lives.

  Suggestions

  Let children discover new clothes and new roles by trying on each other’s clothes.

  Make a dress-up box with old clothes, filled with pants, suit jackets, dresses, skirts, necklaces, and all kinds of shoes that children can wear when playing.

  Introduce Playful Clothes Days by shifting the focus from the category of item to their color or some other feature: a red day, yellow day, monster day, or soft day.

  One good way of cutting down on the drama surrounding gender-coded clothes is to let more children have access to them. Let all children try the color pink, for example.

  Introduce a Hairstyle Day at preschool and let everyone try hair clips and fun scrunchies. Or a Mechanic’s Day when everyone gets to try on blue overalls and use a wrench.

  A Sock Is More Than Just a Sock

  Most clothing stores for children are divided into a girls’ section and a boys’ section. This is either clearly marked or else it’s implicitly clear through various color combinations or styles of clothing. This separation exists even for the youngest babies. A few years ago, in Sweden, the labels in clothes would also say “Girls” or “Boys,” but most manufacturers have stopped doing that. When we talked to the stores, it became clear that they see the categories as something the customers want. Store representatives insist that customers are frustrated if stores aren’t organized in this way.

  Other incentives could include higher profits. When clothes are gender coded with colors, shapes, and prints, two customer groups are created instead of one, increasing demand. Fewer children can pass down their clothes to younger siblings than if clothes are not gender coded.

  Dividing clothes up into clothes for girls and clothes for boys, and displaying them in different departments in stores, reinforces the idea that boys and girls are, and ought to be, different. These days, there’s a lot of talk about corporate social responsibility, which most companies take seriously. Social responsibility can pertain to how products are manufactured and transported, that dangerous chemicals aren’t used, and that working conditions are good. Many manufacturers have added environmentally friendly or organic items.

  In 2018, singer Céline Dion launched a line of gender-neutral children’s clothing.

  But gender equality for children a
nd children’s equal access to colors, movement, and clothes that fit comfortably are not currently conceived of as part of corporate social responsibility. Many stores do offer gender-neutral collections in addition to their ordinary products. Gender-neutral products are a small share of the market but an important step in the right direction. A few manufacturers and stores promote gender-neutral clothing as a niche as part of their business plans. Hopefully more will follow suit. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to simply have children’s clothing, instead of boys’ clothes and girls’ clothes!

  Suggestions

  Make your voice heard. A conversation or an email from a customer can have a big impact. Stores are eager to please their customers. You can find contact information online.

  Have young children stay at home when it’s time to go shopping for clothes. When the children are a little older, they will have an easier time seeing how clothes are displayed and gender coded in stores.

  If a store employee asks if an item is for a boy or a girl, you can ask why it matters and how the items differ.

  Ask for ribbons in a mix of colors if you don’t know the child’s favorite color.

  Look beyond the large chains. Many smaller stores and online stores offer gender-neutral clothing.

  Would You Have a Look at Her!

  “I just don’t understand how they can dress like that! That’s unbelievable!”

  —parent, watching the eurovision song contest

  “She’s almost naked! She looks, like, so trashy!”

  —six-year-old, watching the eurovision song contest

  When we feel free to comment on others or dismiss them by sighing or rolling our eyes, we are teaching children something. By constantly voicing negative opinions and derogatory comments about everything and everybody, we are judging people who aren’t like us. Maybe we’re relaxing on the couch, on our phones, and we’ll say something negative about what someone has done or said, or, while reading the paper, we’ll ridicule someone whose opinions are different from ours. We do this while we tell children that it’s good to be a nice and kind friend. The negative comments made about girls and women are often about their looks. Over time, all children, boys and girls, learn that it’s okay to judge girls and women by their looks.