Well, this may be one of the very obvious questions I am asking you today, and I assume most of you would answer “No” to it. But if I change my question a bit and ask, “Would you gift a kitchen set to a girl?”
Then many of you might change answers, some may say, “yes”, some would say, “may be”, and very few might say “no”.
So, you see the difference here!
Gifting a “kitchen set” to a kid whether a girl or a boy, is not bad, its healthy, as everyone needs to learn to cook and be able to prepare their own food when they grow up, even if its not necessary, one must know as a skill to survive.
Now, in our society, many of you might agree with me, that this is one of the most common and often neglected area of parenting, that we miss. We fail to realize that we need to treat our girls and boys equal from their childhood itself.
Although, it may happen that in general “girls” are inclined to a particular type of toys, and “boys” are inclined to some other type of toys. But its upto us to inculcate in them, the understanding and importance of various small things in life. Be it an skill as simple as “cooking” or be it a complex something “creating mobile apps” etc., we have to ensure that the next generation is well aware of its capabilities, and is equally sensitive to the other person’s ambitions. Hence, we must not limit their thoughts and orient them to a particular type of notion just based on their gender.
Many girls might like to play with robots, toy guns and cars, while many boys may like soft toys, kitchen sets etc. But we as a responsible current generation, should ensure we let them make their own choices and guide them to make better choices, instead of simply imposing the existingn society notions in the young minds.
This is a much needed change – may be a part of series of such changes, that we need to bring in our day to day life, that is when we can get near to achieving equality in true sense. And we can prepare informed, knowledgable and educated next generation, who knows to reason with the existing ideals and adapt to new changes which lead to betterment of the society as a whole.
