Dear Wendy

Congrats, Veritek! Don’t do Florida as your honeymoon if you hate I – that will just make you resent going to Florida for your SIL’s wedding even more. If you can’t afford another trip on top of going to Florida for the wedding, plan a great honeymoon closer to home and immediately following your own wedding. It will feel more special to you and more “yours.” You can still tack on a couple days in Florida after the wedding if you wanted, but don’t call it your honeymoon. Or, come right home after the wedding and save your vacations days and travel budget for something you’re going to enjoy more. A wedding at Disneyland sounds fucking horrible, but whatever. You only have to go to it once!

Well, it ain’t free!

@Kate, yes I can understand and appreciate bridal showers for very young brides/couples who need/want help setting up a household. That was the original purpose of a bridal shower, after all. But so many of us are getting married later in life now, after establishing full households (either on our own, or, often with our significant other before we tie the knot). I’ve been a little annoyed being invited to cousins’ bridal showers (many states away) when I’m already going to be sending a wedding gift and they’re like around 30 and have been living on their own for years. Like, enough already. But elderly aunts love throwing bridal showers so what are you gonna do.

All that said, when I got married, my friends did surprise me with what they called a “bridal picnic.” It was super casual, at the beach, and no gifts. It was pretty perfect.

Im not discounting your experience, Ange. I don’t know what your experience with kids even is, which was why I asked. I think most people who have extensive experience with young children understand that while, sure, socialization plays a part in the way kids behave — which I think is more apparent, at least in terms of gender, as people reach adulthood and start living out the adult roles they saw modeled for them as kids — *biology* plays a huge role in kids’ behavior. I wouldn’t be so quick to discount *that* is my point. You are arguing that gendered stereotypes are based on how kids are raised, and as someone who is actively raising young children and observing lots and lots of other young children being raised, I’m arguing that you’d be surprised how early and how strong the gender stereotypes present themselves, even absent of sexist childrearing.

For example, when I chaperone school field trips or I volunteer at school lunch and recess, I get to see 150 kids of the same age and observe their behavior. There is absolutely a difference in the ways boys play and relate to each other and behave and express themselves vs how the girls play and relate to each other, etc. there are exceptions, of course, and there’s a spectrum of behavior traits, but there’s most definitely a feminine end of the spectrum and a masculine end, and at 5, 6, 7 years old, most of the kids are not trying to meet societal expectations of how the should behave; their behavior is much more organic than that. And I promise There’s a different experience between, say, chaperoning a group of 5 7-year-old boys on a field trip vs a group of 5 7-year-old girls, and anyone who has extensive experience with kids, can tell you immediately what the difference is, and it’s not related to kids watching women in their families wash dishes at a holiday get-togethers (that kind of gender messaging shows up in people’s behavior and identity later).

Do you have kids, Ange? I think you might be surprised how innate gender is and how little upbringing has to do with gender, actually.