Memories

Our girl appears to be learning to read. 

Well, to put it more accurately, she is in the early pre-reading stages. That is, she is learning to remember the stories that she hears over and over and can remember what lines go with which picture in which book. She has taken to sitting still - for a few minutes only, mind - open book on her lap saying to herself something like ‘On Monday he ate through one apple’ or "‘Don’t worry,’ cried Stickman. ‘I’ll soon set you free.”. She appears to remember things that happened in the previous days and weeks, but needs prompting for any longer time-period.

She is also approaching the age where she may well remember things that happen to her now in later life, particularly if they were outstanding or traumatic for some reason. Autobiographical memories sustained over a long time-period, though, are not thought to develop until around pre-school-age. Memory is not just one process, then, but a range. Various types of memory include declarative memory (such as facts or knowledge that can be consciously recalled), procedural memory (unconsciously retained skills such as holding a fork, drinking from a cup, getting dressed, going to the toilet), and episodic memory (specific personal memories organised cohesively into a narrative). Children are thought to have a dense amnesia for the first few years of life, and then a period of relatively sparse memories for a few years after that.

Some of the multiple explanations for the development - and, importantly, the retention - of memories include the development of fluent language skills and the development of a concept of self-hood. Of course, these processes are inter-linked. Subjectivity - a person’s sense of self - is defined in language. A subject is a person who speaks and says ‘I’, inhabiting that ‘I’ as their own real and discrete self. At the moment, our girl uses the variants of her name, ‘me’ and ‘my’ to describe herself. She is increasingly starting to use the pronoun ‘I’ now too, notably in the phrase ‘I want it.’ 

Very young children do remember things, then, but the things they remember don’t often become memories. What they forget - a process called childhood amnesia - also becomes part of the process of creating subjectivity. One of the processes that they forget - or, rather, it becomes unconscious to the point of seeming natural - is the process of becoming gendered.  This is why what children learn and experience when they are very young is so important to their subsequent development, as neuroscientist Lise Eliot has identified.

Memories can also be unreliable. Neuroscientist Karim Nader think this may be due to something called ‘reconsolidation’ or the recasting of early memories in the light of everything that has happened since. Editing in this way is part of the process of learning life lessons: remembering a difficult time in the past is tempered by the knowledge that things worked out all right in the end, for example. 

Memories are not only individual, but also collective. ‘Collective memory’ is sometimes used as another name for history, giving the later a sheen of naturalism. Collective memory becomes ‘common knowledge’, by which individuals - some individuals, at any rate - create social bonds and a sense of shared identity. Conventional histories, for example, have focussed on ‘great men’ and significant political events, rendering, for example, the domestic lives of ordinary people little more than a backdrop to the great concerns of the age. 

Since the middle of the twentieth century,  however, in response to the political concerns of a wide range of previously marginalised groups, historians (including feminist and post-colonial historians) started to dig deeper into these lives. One technique used to uncover previously excluded lives and pre-occupations is called ‘memory-work’. Memory-work actively seeks to question established narratives of the past, often by employing non-traditional methods, particularly oral histories, to re-establish the voices of those who have been excluded from traditional histories. Sue Kedgley’s account of the lives of Pākehā mothers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is one example of making visible the concerns and preoccupations of white settler colonialism from the point of view of women in the family.

As our girl increasingly displays her rapidly expanding feats of memory, she is consolidating her self-hood, a self that is anchored in a particular place in a particular time, with a particular cultural, linguistic, and historical inheritance. It is a self that is already gendered, and, as she becomes increasingly aware of how other people differ from herself, this process of becoming-feminine will intensify. The desire of other little girls in her class at kindergarten or school to exclusively dress in pink, for example, could well erase the memories that currently constitute her sense of self: that her favourite T-shirt is a grey one with a picture of a mountain on it, and that one of her favourite toys is a Thomas train set.  

But the memory process of reconsolidation means that she will also likely outgrow and revise her own past: in their turn, pink fairy princesses will become passé and baby-dolls will only be fit for babies. Memories might be the things that we remember from our pasts, but, in recasting them, they also might be what keeps us from living in the past, both individually and collectively.

another brick in the wall?

This week we went to an early Christmas party, with  lots of other children and parents. A good time was had by all, and Santa even put in a pre-Christmas visit (question from a child to Santa: ‘why are you giving us presents now - aren’t you meant to come on Christmas Eve?’). But, after the party food had been devoured and the wine-glasses drained, a couple of (admittedly minor) instances stuck in my mind. The first involved the distribution of coloured bottles of soapy bubble mixture, and the second involved taking turns in the vegetable garden. 

In the first instance, the hostess of the party had thoughtfully laid in a store of bottles of bubble mixture with which the children - ranging in ages from 15 months to seven years - could amuse themselves. The mixture in each bottle was the same, the only difference was the colour of the plastic bottle that contained it, which were green, blue, red, purple and pink. Most of the parents had given their children the first bottle that came to hand out of the bag, although one had made a conscious effort to find a pink bottle for her ‘pink-obsessed’ daughter. We had given our girl a pink bottle because it was the nearest to hand, but shortly rescued it off her when it became apparent her still-developing fine motor skills meant that she couldn’t easily blow a bubble while simultaneously holding it. As she was content to chase the bubbles blown by others, we put the bottle back on the table for an older, more co-ordinated, child to enjoy. 

Shortly afterwards, such a child - a boy - appeared at the table looking for some bubble mixture of his very own. Unaware that there was a bag containing other bottles, we pointed out the pink bottle on the table and said he could have that one. Just as he reached out for it, one of the mothers (not his) actively prevented him from taking it, loudly asking where the bag was so that she could give the boy another bottle that wasn’t pink. At which point, a few other people, who had been milling around but until then hadn’t taken a blind bit of notice of the colour of the bottles, chimed in with jokey remarks such as ‘what were you thinking?’ (aimed at the boy) and ‘we can’t be having that’. They then took it upon themselves to help the woman find the boy a suitably masculine blue bottle of bubbles. It all happened in a low-key and light-hearted way, but nonetheless this minor incident can be considered an example of the shaming and policing of gender. 

The boy was three.

Afterwards, this incident got me thinking about other (also minor) instances that I’ve witnessed in the past weeks and months that also amount to gender policing. A boy who pushed my girl out of the way and was not reprimanded by his parent, who had clearly seen what happened. A girl being told to stand back from the slide at the playground, when a boy pushed in, to keep her ‘out of harm’s way.’ A boy being told not to cry, when he fell over and started wailing, clearly in some distress. A girl being praised for being cute. A boy being congratulated for ‘taking charge’. A girl admonished for being ‘bossy’. 

All of these instances are small. But small instances multiply. They may not amount to much in themselves, but constant repetition of such minor instances solidifies how children understand acceptable and unacceptable gender behaviour in a given place and time. That goes for both the children that such opprobrium or approval is directed at, and those who are merely bystanders. Pink-bubblegate wasn’t directed at my girl, for example, but being in the room when it occurred, she surely registered that something unusual was going on.

As my baby gets older, I am increasingly sensitised to the small moments that amount to bricks in the wall of stereotypically gendered behaviour. I acknowledge that we can’t escape gendered cultural scripts, and I am conscious that I don’t want to denigrate conventionally feminine things - hence giving her a pink bottle of bubbles in the first place, because pink is a colour just like any other with no intrinsic gender value (or so I keep telling myself through gritted teeth). This becomes even more important if we accept the findings of neuroscientists that nurture - i.e. what we learn - effectively becomes nature - i.e. what we are.  Neuroscientist Lise Eliot comments:

Think about language. Babies are born ready to absorb the sounds and grammar and intonation of any language, but then the brain wires itself up to only perceive and produce a specific language. After puberty, it's possible to learn another language, but it's far more difficult. I think of gender differences similarly: the ones that exist become amplified by the two different cultures that boys and girls are immersed in from birth. That contributes to the way their emotional and cognitive circuits get wired. (Eliot quoted in the Guardian)

To return to the scene of the family Christmas party and the second instance I mentioned. This one was also low-key and involved the children taking turns to run up and down a narrow piece of sacking in the middle of the vege garden (the strangest things seem to float their boats, huh?) After being told not to step in the actual vege patch, which contained newly-planted lettuces that would not benefit from the nurture of enthusiastic toddlers, the children - a boy and our girl - ran up to the opposite ends of the sacking and then started running towards each other, like cliched lovers in a romantic comedy ... or jumbo jets on a collision course. At some point, both children would meet in the middle with no room to pass. Would one of them yield or would mediation be required? 

I have to confess that my first impulse was to pull our girl out of the way and let the boy pass. A split-second later, my feminist consciousness kicked in and I checked myself. After all, I reasoned, why should it automatically be the girl who gives way? Wouldn’t that just be a brick in the wall of the idea that girls (and women) should defer to boys (and men)? Not to mention that it might also communicate to the boy that his will takes precedence over a girl’s. Instead, I chose not to intervene to see what the children did when they met in the middle. 

What I saw provided a salutary lesson.

Toe to toe, the children looked at each other, looked down at their feet, looked around at the sacking and the garden. Who, if anyone, would prevail? After thoughtful consideration, and without any discernible words, they then turned on their sides and passed each other back to back. They both remained on the sacking with only perhaps a couple of toes venturing into the garden, and the little lettuces remained intact. I felt proud of both of them for their equitable - and apparently telepathic - approach to problem-solving. It meant neither of them lost face, both got want they wanted, and neither was ‘forced’ to learn a lesson about gendered behaviour from an interfering adult (i.e. me!)

It also made me realise that unless I am conscious about the meaning of my actions then, all in all, I have the potential to be just another brick in the wall.

La vie en rose?

This morning, the baby - or the toddler, as I should henceforth call her - made a beeline for her one pink top and insisted on putting it on. ‘Oh dear,’ I thought, trying my best not to make it seem like a big deal. ‘It’s started. She’s about to cheerfully undo all my attempts to give her a life in technicolour.’ Teenagers with a penchant for black have nothing on the monochromatic world little girls are encouraged to inhabit these days.

On the way to the supermarket, we stopped at a second-hand toy and book sale. The community hall was bursting at the seams: parents tried to stop their kids running off with toys before they’d paid for them, kids tried to wheedle their parents into just one more toy, and everyone frowned at those foolish enough to wheel strollers through the narrow lanes either side of the trestle tables. Wading through this sea of humanity, toddler long since abandoned somewhere behind me, I couldn’t help but notice by the meerest of glances which stalls had stuff for girls and which didn’t. Three guesses how I managed this feat of deduction? Yep, they contained items that were predominantly pink and glittery. There were pink dolls-houses and wands. Pink tea-sets and vacuum cleaners. Pink phones and tiaras. Gender-stereotyping, what’s that?! 

‘To the books,’ I thought. ‘They won’t let me down!’

I finally found a table that mainly sold books and started thumbing through them. One box was full of ‘girls’ books’.  Without exception, every one was about fairies or princesses or fairy princesses. I felt depressed and, remembering the pink shirt preference of the morning, a little worried. Of course, no-one was forcing me to buy these books, but the fact that there were so many of them all together, clearly intended for another little girl just to love really bothered me. 

It was not always the case that books aimed at little girls so blatantly inhabited the role of fantasy (and not the Tolkien-kind either). ‘When I was a kid’, to wheel out a hackneyed phrase, stories for girls seemed to be dominated by horses and ballet. If you had two X chromosones, you were apparently pre-programmed to dream of Follyfoot or Sadler's Wells. Of course, these were manufactured gender preferences too, but at least they were a bit more real and, more importantly, active. The girls in them had to work hard to succeed at their dreams, they had to do stuff in order to try and be successful - and they didn’t always succeed either. 

Now, it may well be the case that these fairy princess stories are about the one fairy princess who rebels against her royal fairy upbringing and redefines what it means to be a fairy princess - I feel ridiculous even writing that - but, here's my issue, why are they fairy princesses at all? Can’t a girl be rebellious or ambitious or whatever other defence is usually given for stuff like this without first being represented as either an ephemeral imaginary creature or an ephemeral technically-real-but-totally-Disneyfied-to-the-point-of-unreality creature?

I’m starting to get worked up again just thinking about it.

You may well think, ‘where’s the harm’?  It’s only toys and books, no-one’s forcing you to buy them, and your daughter may well totally love these kinds of books when she gets older and then what will you do? And, anyway, it’s it only natural for little girls to like this stuff?

Well, no, it isn’t. And that’s the problem.

Recent research by neuroscientists such as Cordelia Fine and Lise Eliot has shown that there are some small sex differences in children’s brains, but that they are not as great nor as 'hardwired' as we are led to believe. Eliot, for example, found after an exhaustive search that there was ‘surprisingly little solid evidence of sex differences in children’s brains.’ In fact, she found only two that had been reliably proven: boys‘ brains are larger than girls by around 8 to 11 per cent, and that this difference shows up around the onset of puberty when girls‘ brains finish growing about one to two years earlier than boys’.  Before the jokes start coming, she considers this difference to be on a par with boys‘ greater height and weight at birth and in adulthood (Pink Brain, Blue Brain, p 5).

So little girls aren’t pre-progammed to like fairy princesses after all? Woohoo! But then why do so many of them seem to gravitate towards it?

The obvious answer is money. Pink items are aggressively marketed at young girls who then use their pester power to wear down even the most intransigent of parents. How cunningly simple to gender everything so parents will have to shell out twice if they have children of each sex. In Cinderella Ate My Daughter, journalist Peggy Orenstein describes the sheer magnitude of gendered merchandise on offer: 

The annual toy fair at New York's Javits Center is the industry's largest trade show, with 100,000 products spread over 350,000ft of exhibition space. And I swear, at least 75,000 of those items were pink. I lost count of the myriad pink wands and crowns (feathered, sequined and otherwise bedazzled) and infinite permutations of pink poodles in purses. The Disney Princesses reigned over a new pink royal interactive kitchen with accompanying pink royal appliances and pink royal pot-and-pan sets (though I would have thought one of the perks of monarchy would be that someone else did the cooking). There were pink dinnerware sets emblazoned with the word princess, pink fun-fur stoles and boas, pink golf clubs, sleds, tricycles, bicycles, scooters, and motorcycles and even a pink tractor. Oh, and one pink neon bar sign flashing "live nudes" .... "Is all this pink really necessary?" I asked a bored-looking sales rep hawking something called Cast and Paint Princess Party. "Only if you want to make money," he said, chuckling. (Read more here) 

Fine, but I’ve also seen plenty of hand-knitted, hand-carved and hand-painted things to think that this isn’t only about the dollar. It seems a bit of a coincidence that the profusion of pink fairy princess products exploded in the 1980s, around ... oh ... the same time as mainstream culture mounted a backlash against second-wave feminism (detailed magnificently by Susan Faludi in Backlash: the Undeclared War Against Women way back in 1991 and, more recently, picked up in respect of the ideology of intensive mothering in Douglas and Michaels’ The Mommy Myth).

Eliot’s research offers insight here too. Her main field of study is plasticity, which is premised on the fact that the brain actually changes in response to its environment:

Simply put, your brain is what you do with it ... Learning and practice rewire the human brain, and considering the very different ways boys and girls spend their time while growing up, as well as the special potency of early experience in moulding neuronal connections, it would be shocking if the two sexes’ brains didn’t work differently by the time they were adults. So it’s all biology, whether the cause is nature or nurture (Pink Brain, Blue Brain, p 6).  

Putting on my best conspiracy theory hat, I can’t help but think then that there’s something going on when little girls are being bombarded with fairy princesses and pink irons and glittery plastic high heels with precious little else to relieve it. Namely, that patriarchy is insidiously working to disempower women from birth. And when people shrug and say it doesn’t matter, or it’s only natural, it’s sending a message loud and clear - whether it’s meant intentionally or not - that this is what little girls should like and be like. And, that one day, not too far away, this is what they will as women become (well, not actual fairy princesses, but you get the idea). Pinkification of girls can also be considered potentially damaging to little boys as well, as it defines extremely narrow notions of femininity and the ways in which girls and women should be treated because that’s what they like / are like. 

And yet ... what about agency? After all, nobody has to totally follow the cultural script that is written for them, and that applies to both parents and children.

As with most things these days, my toddler is showing me the way. She may have opted for a pink t-shirt this morning (maybe she was sick of getting mistaken for a boy too), but once we got to the sale she made a bee-line for the first thing that grabbed her attention: a blue wind-up car.

Maybe we’ve got a little while to go yet before Cinderella comes knocking.