Document Type
Cause and Effect Essay
Publication Date
1994
Excerpt
I suppose it all started innocently enough that day I was taking care of Marty and Paul, two of my cousins. At the time, Marty was two-and-a-half and Paul was just over a year old. I was sent with Marty by my Aunt Laura to go to Wal-Mart and buy him one of the cheap, ten dollar, plastic pools that only last one summer. On the way there I asked Marty what color pool he wanted. Being a two year old who is just beginning to make sense with words, he quickly replied, "I want a boo pool" obviously meaning a blue pool. But being the little two year old that he was, he promptly changed his choice to purple, and then finally green, or so I thought. As it turned out, when we finally arrived at Wal-Mart he saw that they also had pink pools and, without hesitation, let it be known that he wanted a pink pool. Being the dutiful cousin that I was I told him, "You don't want a pink pool; pink is for girls. You want a blue pool; blue is for boys." He did not put up much of a fight but as soon as we returned home and Aunt Laura found out what had happened, she corrected me and said, "We are trying to bring these boys up in a gender-neutral environment." I madly apologized for my narrow-mindedness, because before that point I had never really given much thought to the fact that it might be possible to raise a child in a gender-neutral environment.
Recommended Citation
Bennett, John, "Max, Marty, Paul, and Me (1994)" (1994). The Valpo Core Reader. 288.
http://scholar.valpo.edu/core_reader/288