Kids Say the Darndest Things

“When is it OK to kiss someone?” -“When they’re rich”.

I see a reality show in Pam’s future.

I love Martin’s answer to the date question!

“When they’re rich” deserves a highlight too.  Early preparation for the GOP

That first kid won’t have to worry about marrying anybody.

Honestly, most of the answers sound like the results of what kids have absorbed.  Lynette, may be o.k.

I’m with Alan on this one.

The kids are exposed to their “normal” and a lot of what we see is unfortunate, but the scary thing is that the publication considers this for the “humor” section.

That’s true, but it also doesn’t seem like the parents are tryin to dispel those sexist ideas.

The highlighted ones are discouraging, but some of the others are frickin’ hilarious. God picks and then you find out who you’re stuck with. Waa! I think that message didn’t quite stick right in that kids head.

That the kids parrot what they see as the “proper” gender roles when taught that gender roles are one of the most important parts of their identity isn’t sexism, it’s just kids parroting what they’ve been taught.

But that the kids are taught this at all?  That their “proper” gender roles are one of the most important parts of their identity?  Oh yeah, THAT’S sexism.  And the fact that the people composing this church newsletter felt this was appropriate is indicative of religion’s complicity in maintaining the patriarchal status quo.

Too all, I am an atheist.  When my children where younger, they all believed in Jesus at one time or another through influence and at this age they are always under influence.  They also believed in aliens.  And sometimes they wanted to ‘marry’ me when they grew up.  I think you are taking this too seriously and I wonder if some of it is because of where the ‘sayings’ came from.  Pull it out of the context of a church bulletin and you might lighten up a little. 

Not new today, kids will always come to a point when they will have to make a decision as to whether or not they will follow God.  http://atheistlegitimacy.blogspot.com/

It would be interesting to ask real kids these questions…and then ask them WHY they answer the way they do.  I usually find answers to “why do you think that” and “tell me more about what you are thinking” to be the most interesting  of all.  I teach 3-6 year olds and I love a good question!

Martin knows the game.

Once again I’m shown that having children shouldn’t be a right. It is a privilege to have children, our grandparents knew this.  Our grandparents would have to watch as a handful of their children died, and actually work to make sure some survived. My generation(born in the mid 80s) and the 2 or so before us, have no clue what it means to bring a life into the world. Parental testing and licensees should be required, kind of like the Chinese do it, in order to have children. Anyone without these would have two choices(adoption/abortion). Of course, religion would have to release the death grip it has on politics for this to ever happen though.

The worst part about this article is the parents of these children, and anyone else who reads it without any form of logic in their tiny little heads, more then likely look at it and giggle. “Oh, they are so innocent,” they might say or “Isn’t that just the cutest thing in the world.”

This whole thing makes me sick.

Also, a lot of the kids they interact with will likely be from that same church, giving it that much more influence. The themes in these answers just reek of biblical gender roles. :/

I would argue that there are many, many areas of society where girls and women still face sexism. I mean, we still have a wage gap, for FSM’s sake. So even though women are legally equal, we are not yet socially equal.

Also, I was assuming no motives, only that the comments indicated that the boys are already learning that women are here to serve them, and that girls seem to feel resigned to that fact.

As far as the “boys are so dumb” thing, I think that gets thrown around a lot, but it doesn’t really mean much. Back to the first paragraph, men still make more than women, regardless of education and whatnot.

You are correct that income as adults is more important than grades in school (the second simply being a stepping stone to the first). And I agree that it is a problem that women still make less than men. But I think that much of the wage gap is connected to the fact that women are expected to be the ones that take off of work to raise small children, thus missing promotions. If more companies did a better job at offering time off for both genders to raise the kids, then I think that much of the wage gap would disappear. So yes, the wage gap is more important than the education gap, but sooner or later the education gap is going to affect the wage gap. Maybe they will cancel each other out. Maybe the wage gap will still exist one way or the other. In either case, maybe we can work to solve both at once.    

I didn’t mean to accuse you personally of anything. I’m sorry if that is what it sounded like. I was talking about Atheist society in general. I understand that sexism, racism, homophobia ect are important issues, but I think that most of flamewars within Atheism could be avoided if instead of accusing others right away, we took a more positive approach of teaching them to be better. (I know the example in the original post isn’t from the Atheist community, but imagine that they are). Does Alan really expect women to bring him food simply based on her gender, or is he just asking her to as a favor and then returning the favor at another time (Or is he still in the phase where he views all adult women to be like his mom and will grow out of it as he gets older.)? Does Lynnette really think boys are intrinsically less interesting or is she just joking (or participating in the gender tribalism of young kids which she will grow out of)? We don’t necessarily know the answers to these questions from just these simple quotes.

These are Christian kids, so people in this community don’t care, but I know that if someone in the Atheist community is accused of sexism or other bigotry, there is always a huge fight over every little detail because there are multiple ways to interpret each event and each gender takes it personally if they think someone of their gender is getting treated or viewed unfairly (which both genders inevitably do). I’m not just talking about the last month. I’ve seen it multiple times. Instead of accusing people, I think the Atheist community should just point out that certain activities are making parts of the community uncomfortable and to please help make things more welcoming. Then we could have hopefully more civil discussions and come out with a group policy that is fair to all genders/races/sexual orientations ect and every group gets a say rather than having the so-called oppression olympics to decide who should get all the attention.

 You were kind enough to consider the issues that affect either gender, even posting twice to make sure that you were understood to be sympathetic. I think others will do the same if we can get rid of the flamewars and the assumptions.

In the old days people just kept having children because birth control was either unavailable, not allowed or unreliable. But there was no real effort to keep them alive. It was just accepted as part of life that some of them may die.

Before the industrial revolution, having lots of children was even considered insurance for when the parents got older. They were a cheap labor force on the family farm and could take care of the parents later

Why do you need to keep score? Why can’t we tackle the whole issue of sexism and not take sides on who has it worse?

The “boys are dumb” thing needs to be dealt with specifically because it perpetuates the type of male behavior that leads to sexism against females.

After all “boys will be boys” so it’s okay for them to act like asses towards women, right? Rigid masculine roles are a huge part of the problem, not to mention boys that don’t fit the mold face a lot of scorn from both genders.

I think I first saw this collection of  ‘cute’ quotes more than 30 years ago.

Darn that religion and its death grip on politics… if not for that, we’d be able to dictate to other people how they’re allowed to live their lives.

I’m part native american.  Some of my family in the early half of this century were coercively sterilized by the government.  This happened to many black people in US as well.  Queer people have their children ripped from them, as do people with disabilities and poor people

You know what makes me sick?  When I see policies advocated that de facto result in genocide and massive discrimination.

Amen! Oops … well, you know what I mean.

I, too, think some people are taking this waaaaaaaaaaaay too seriously and are over analyzing these quotes because they appeared in a church publication. I’m an atheist, but I  don’t feel compelled to criticize everything that comes out of a church.

I went to one of the CRC’s colleges (that is regularly written about in the Banner) and if I had a nickel for every woman going to school to get her MRS or who simply believed that her greatest calling was to get married and pump out babies I would have graduated without student loans and with enough money to buy a new Lexus. 

I saw more sexism from both the students at the school and from the professors and administrators than I had seen in the evangelical culture I had grown up in (maybe because my parent’s were careful to give me options…). 

As a woman there who wasn’t obsessed with snagging a husband and who publicly declared her dislike of children, I was something of an oddity and a breath of fresh air to all the poor guys in the engineering department who were being preyed on by the MRSers. 

What exactly does that load of crap have to do with anything meaningful or on topic?

Sharp eyes, Bryan. Yes apparently “downtown dave,” aka “david,” aka “David Tiffany” has yet another new sock puppet, but for some reason, people see through his clever disguises.

Well yes, but stereotypes about boys should be dealt with even if they don’t directly affect women (forgive me if you already know this, but the direction of your post made it difficult to tell). What I’m saying is that in today’s culture smart boys are mocked as geeky in a way that suggests they should change while other boys are mocked as dumb in a way that suggests they can’t change. And that’s true regardless of whether women are affected or not. Hopefully we can work to reduce gender stereotypes regardless of who is hurt.  

Martin is one cool dude.

We should also remember that these kids are at the tail end of what Freud called the “sexual latency” period. Huge self segregation of the sexes at this point, yet at the same time an incipient interest in relationship and even sexual issues.