It finally happened. My son, age 4, started talking about girls. I could hear him last night, talking with my husband, who was putting him back into bed for the umpteenth* time.
"I don't like girls," he said.
What he was saying was, he didn't like girls in sports. And that makes me sad.
Oh sure, I'm a massive hypocrite. For years I've followed the men's national soccer team and not really the women's. And my local MLS team, but not the women's soccer team. But I hadn't talked about it in front of my son. I thought he was immune still to this bias.
The truth is, although he doesn't remember it, he actually seems to have more fun at WNBA games than at NBA games. There are more day games, so he's not tired and cranky. Tickets are less expensive so we can sit in the 100s rather than the 400s. There's fewer people at the games so there's more room to move around. (Sigh.)
The folding of the women's pro soccer league the WPS made me think about women's sports lately, so I guess it was already on my mind. If we'd had a girl and not a boy, I'd want her to see the WPS and the WNBA and know that if she was a gifted athlete and she worked really hard, that her dream of playing for a living could come true. It's so unfair that women have fewer options in this arena.
When you're a kid and you're playing a sport, that dream that someday you could be on the court, the field, the pitch^ playing professionally is a dream that every kid should have. It can keep you going during practices and wind sprints and muddy scraped knees and that time you caught a softball in the face. (Ok, clearly I was never going to be a professional athlete of any kind but I was and I remain a world class day dreamer.)
I hope that right now my son's dismissiveness of women in sports stems only from his current age and fixation on categorizing and sorting and pattern-making. If not, I have a lot of work to do.
*That is the number my mother used to measure things when she was annoyed. "I've had it!" she'd say, "For the umpteenth time, put your toys away!"
^Europoseur
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