[et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.0.72″][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.0.72″ background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left” border_style=”solid”]
This year’s Baby and Family Expo will include a reading and book signing by the author’s of Baby Feminist.
Before she rose to the
Supreme Court, Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was. . .
from Baby Feminists,
illustrated by Jessica Walker)
All babies are feminist. Babies don’t have a concept of systematic oppression and cannot possibly grasp why anyone would not be considered equal by social and cultural forces, laws, or thousands of years of religious sanctioned oppression. We know that they pick up very early that pink is for girls, yet to them it is simply a color, not a loaded social construct.
Enter a series of new books aimed at younger and younger kids (they all are designed for girls and boys (or gender unidentified) naturally). One such book, Franny’s Father is a Feminist, is a favorite of bookstores and librarians but never made a lot of sense to me. Either the reader’s dad supports her and then this is just a portrait of a normal dad to her or the reader’s dad doesn’t and she isn’t old enough to process the complex feelings that might invoke.
But most of these books more focused on the future..
Now in Board Book Form, BABY FEMINISTS Arrives
Author Libby Babbott-Klein and illustrator Jessica Walker, both of them young mothers, believe it’s never too early to start talking to kids about feminism. This lift-the-flap book shows what Dr. Mae Jemison, Michelle Obama, Malala and other change-making women might have looked like as babies. Each page shows a different accomplished woman and drives home the idea that they were all once babies too. The book does have one man, shown with Michelle is her husband Barack, a self-identified feminist. The authors say, “We both felt very strongly about including men in a book about feminism. In the same way you can’t maintain a patriarchy without the support of women, you can’t smash the patriarchy without the support of men. Men and women do live together and we need to be on the same team.”
Our Experience with Reading BABY FEMINISTS
Since my daughter was born, we have changed the pronouns in our classic children’s books, most of her animals are “she”, and given her mostly un-gendered toys or a balanced mix of commercially gendered toys. This is the exact advice exposed by the authors of Baby Feminists (and most other feminists). My daughter has no concept that girls would have any gender-based barrier to doing anything at all. The question is, when and how should we introduce the concept that some people may believe girls should have limitations or may have inherent limitations?
As explained in the brilliant book Nurture Shock as well as other research I have read, introducing negative concepts in early kids books and shows often results in the child only remembering the negative element. For example, if a kid behaves badly in a show and then learns that this is bad and promises not to do it again, most kids just remember the acting bad part and don’t understand the resolution. The counter argument, also in Nurture Shock, is related to race discussions. If you wait too long to talk about race or pretend it doesn’t exist, kids will make up their own ideas about it and they are often not the best. You can’t hide the race issue from kids, just like you can’t hide gender expectations, but that probably doesn’t come into play until they are a bit older.
So, we read Baby Feminists
My daughter loved lifting the flaps and looking at the babies. She wanted to do it again and again. She was not interested in the descriptions of the specific women and what they had done. She was more interested in them as pictures of babies.
My attempt to explain the concept of feminism was probably a mistake as she cannot envision a world where women don’t do all of these things. She can’t see a world where women don’t win at tennis as much as or more than men or where women don’t do anything they want when they grow up. Just like she has a hard time understanding why anyone is mean to another person. I’m reminded of the incredulous stance of the book reviewer at the end of The Power (definitely not a kid’s book- very adult, warning, maybe too adult for a lot of people), “How could men have ever been in charge of society? That is just too absurd to believe. (not a direct quote from the book, just my paraphrase).”
but then… my daughter is reading the book aloud to herself…”grow up to be a tennis player”…”baby grows up to be an artist”…and suddenly none of this matters.
We can never tell our kids enough that they have choices about what they want to do with their lives and we will support them. She is reading the book not as a catalog of feminists, but as a catalog of choices for herself and that is even better. It may be years before she knows any of these women’s names or what they did, but it doesn’t matter. That’s for the parents. What matters is that she sees herself.
_________
*Note, we were given a review copy of this book but it did not impact opinions expressed in this article.
Also, this post contains Amazon affiliate links, but we actually encourage you to visit your local bookstore or library instead when you can.
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]