(“Harvey doesn’t like cheese,” she announces. Early on, Brown said, we could give children books that represent human variability-ones that quietly offer examples of kids who like to run, kids who like to read, kids who like to climb, without necessarily referring to a preexisting stereotype that’s being “busted.” The idea that there are lots of different kinds of kids out there is immediately applicable to their world-a toddler, especially one in day care like mine, sees tons of other children all the time and is constantly noticing their differences. Some of the things parents of toddlers can do to help fight gender stereotyping are more subtle than introducing a vocabulary of empowerment that we older feminists find familiar. Maybe, Brown said, but she’s already thinking about other things that will eventually feed into her awareness of gender. Should we really expect toddlers to have the capability for abstraction that’s required to understand a concept like “LGBTQIA”? Board books are traditionally intended for children ages 0–3. Kindergartens and even preschools have become much more academic than they once were-a state of affairs that specialists in child development regard with alarm.

The organization Zero to Three surveyed parents in 2016 and found that respondents expected qualities like self-control and empathy to develop a year or a year and half earlier in a youngster’s life than they actually do.

But since having a child, I’ve also become hyperaware of the fact that we often misunderstand very young children’s minds and expect a lot more adult thinking from them than we should. In case this needs to be said: I’m a feminist, I plan to raise my daughter as a feminist, and I know, of course, that these books have the very best of intentions. The kind of complicated, abstract, and historical thinking used in these books is probably beyond a toddler’s comprehension.

Feminist Baby by Loryn Brantz