Gender Neutral

So I've always planned on raising my children in a gender neutral environment. It's very important to me that they aren't forced to follow specific stereotypes simply because they were born male or female. I touted this philosophy to anyone who would listen before I had children and worked at integrating the philosophy after CJ was born. Recently, however, I've begun to realize how difficult that philosophy is to maintain. In some cases choices I made for toys or clothing colors or books were made simply because I liked them not because they "follow" my philosophy.

I've also noticed that when many people, myself included in some instances, talk of gender neutrality they really mean it more for girls than boys. I caught myself in this conundrum the other day and my reaction blew me away. We were at Kmart dropping in quickly to pick up a pail and shovel on our way down to the beach. We stopped by the clothing section to get a few things for CJ that could carry him until he's ready for spring/summer clothes as he just hit a huge growth spurt. CJ was running around, showing me things, and half paying attention. I was hurried because I wanted us to get the beach before sunset. He grabs a shirt, hugs it to him, and says something like, "Oh, Mama! This is my favorite. I love yellow. I really want it." I glance up from my rummaging through sales racks and say- "That's a girl shirt. Put it back." Then I stopped and thought what have I just said? Does that blow my whole philosophy out the window? I would never tell Ceirnan she couldn't have a shirt out of the boys section. I've been wearing boys clothes all my life. It would never cross my mind to say that to her, yet I'm telling CJ he can't have a girls shirt.

I honestly haven't been able to reconcile it yet or to decide whether to accept that now that he's in school I will be doing things differently or to go back and buy him the yellow shirt. I just know that my reaction surprised me and disappointed me a bit. In other aspects, we make decisions that we didn't even knew were gender neutral. We bought CJ a "Cleaning Caddy" and a little kitchen one Christmas. It never dawned on me that other people would think of these things as girls toys until a friend commented on them to that affect. I should have realized it when they were located in the "girls" section at Toys R Us.

The hard part is as much as we may want to make a difference and raise our children differently, the fact of the matter is they have to function in this society. Is imparting my believes that go against the mainstream going to jeopardize his or her happiness in the end or is imparting those beliefs going to make him or her grow into a self-sustaining, strong individual? Maybe it'll do both. I guess the best thing I can do is keep trying to balance out my kids' lives and try to hold myself accountable to my philosophy.