Should Little Boys Play With Kitchens?

Filed under: Kitchen, Your Home, News & Trends, Furniture

Friends teased our writer when she said she was buying her toddler a toy kitchen for Christmas. Here's why she did anyway.

From the outside looking in, there's nothing extraordinary about my kitchen. In fact, I already wrote about its lackluster design sense. But the woefully outdated cabinets and ugly countertops are unimportant to my two-and-a-half year old, Max. The only thing he's interested in is that daddy is in the kitchen cooking, and anything daddy does, Max wants to do.

When my husband, Allen -- a stay at home dad who does 99 percent of the cooking at our house -- heads into the kitchen to start dinner, little feet are often close behind. "Need to cook, too!" Max will say, grabbing potholders, a wooden spoon and the old egg poacher he's appropriated as his pot. "I make gumbo!" he'll say, practicing his ever expanding food vocabulary, which now includes words like paprika, black beans and onions.

The boy loves everything about the kitchen: the clang of pots, the sound of food sizzling, the many buttons that need pressing and things that need measuring. So this Christmas, we decided it was time to get him his own kitchen. About a month ago, I started searching for play kitchens. What I discovered is that the majority of them were clearly geared toward little girls. If they weren't pink and purple, then they showed girls playing at them. Not only that, we've endured some teasing from people; it's more in-fun than mean-spirited, but still, it's enough to bring home the fact that we're traipsing on the hallowed ground of masculine identity in America. I'm sure the toy store is happy to take our money either way, but the overriding message in the world of toy marketing still seems to be that boys should get bats, bikes and big honkin' trucks -- better to leave the cooking and playhouses to the girls.

I came across a story in the UK's DailyMail about a survey from Red Tractor beef and lamb that found that a third of men won't do any cooking at all in the kitchen during the holiday season. According to the company's press release, about half of the women surveyed say they wish they had more help in the kitchen. I know that most of my memories of holiday meals involve the women cloistered in the kitchen cooking and then later cleaning up, while the men watched TV.

But are we seriously still here, clutching to this division of labor that's been with us for years? As my household illustrates, many of us have evolved beyond such traditional understandings. Still, our messages to boys haven't quite caught up.

Consider the fact that a little boy is interested in many things: The way a basketball bounces, cuddling with a baby doll, figuring out how things are put together, watching onions sauté, helping put away laundry, racing his toy car and getting messy decorating cupcakes. As he gets older, he's more encouraged to pursue the "boy" interests, and less encouraged to pursue interests related to domesticity. Parents of boys get the message too: After all, if the kitchens are pink and the doll clothes are frilly, parents will pass them over and opt instead for the stuff they can more easily imagine their boys playing with.


There's a theory about boys: If, as they grow into men, nothing is expected of them around the house, they begin to lack confidence in spaces like the kitchen (about one-third of the men in the survey say they lack cooking confidence). I definitely see that. I've heard some of my girlfriends complaining about how their husbands struggle with basic things, like knowing what to feed their toddlers for lunch. But here's my question: Do you give them the chance to figure it out on their own or just fall back on the same old "husbands are just useless in the kitchen and with childcare" soundtrack?

And if it's just a matter of confidence, how do we account for the rise of the professional (and super masculine) male chef, as evidenced by the myriad of shows on TV? Does anyone doubt that Bobby Flay is confident in the kitchen? Does anyone doubt he is masculine?

How can we have testosterone-overdrive characters like Gordon Ramsay in the same world as gender stereotypical pink play kitchens? The same activities mean different things once gender gets factored in, says John Alberti, Ph.D., English professor at Northern Kentucky University, a former professor of mine who follows cultural trends and thinks about this complicated gender business a lot (and loves cooking shows). With the Food Network (and other) shows that revolve around macho competition, there's a great divide. "We have 'professional', out in the world cooking, which is much more culturally valued than 'just' cooking for the family," Alberti says. "Bottom line: Men cook for money; women cook for free (or, as it's sometimes called, 'love')."

So how do we send a different message to boys? Restructuring the roles, as my husband and I have done, is surely one way. I work and support the family, and my husband is the primary caregiver/cook/housekeeper. He knows more about how to calm a crying baby, season a casserole, get a stain out of piece of clothing and load the dishwasher for optimally clean dishes than most men in suburban America would ever dream. But he's also such a guy in so many ways. Domestic work doesn't take the guy out of the guy, or the boy out of the boy. It just opens up the possibilities for everyone. Our situation wouldn't be right for a lot of families, but it's made everything we think about gender roles in this culture way more transparent. It's also made me realize that our paranoia about emasculating boys is just, well, dumb. And it winds up short-changing them -- and short-changing women in the end.

So after the thrill of his Little Tikes Cookin' Creations Kitchen wears off, Max may decide he hates cooking. He may decide to be a bounty hunter, or a stockbroker, or an elementary school teacher. Maybe he'll be a stay-at-home dad just like his own dad. We want our girls to get the message that they can do anything. Let's send that message to our boys, too. And let's make sure to emphasize that "anything" starts at home.

Judi Ketteler is the author of "Sew Retro: A Stylish History of the Sewing Revolution + 25 Vintage-Inspired Projects for the Modern Girl."


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For more great stories on ShelterPop, don't miss:
My Nook Will Never Replace My Bookshelf
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The Case Against Cleaning
Always the Writer, Never the Client

 

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