eternally chaotic

An interesting conversation about marriage keeps coming up with Piper.  She is dead set on getting married to either Conner or Will, both daycare companions.  That idea that she understands what it is to be married fascinates me since she is so young.  Perhaps being a self described “beautiful princess” and entertained by various Walt Disney movies where the princess is always rescued and ultimately married by her handsome prince helps a little as well.

It seems though that even with a three year old there are boundaries about marriage that must be understood and obeyed.  This, on top of just the concept, Missy and I both found intriguing.  We certainly expose her to the movies and the concepts and the princess dresses, etc… but we have not really paid attention to the values that she is picking up from such things.

On a few different occassion, mainly to see if the results of our query would be the same across different conversation, as is often not the case when interrogating a three year old, we decided to inject a current political topic into a conversation about getting married to see how she would respond.

Piper, do you still want to marry Conner and Will?
No silly, I can’t marry them both.
Oh.  We didn’t know.  So you can’t marry two boys?
No.  Only a boy and girl can get married.
So boys can’t get married to other boys?
No.  Just a boy and a girl?
Well what about if they love each other?

There was a moment of hesitation here.  It took about five seconds and involved a weird look that makes you wish you could just blink to take a picture.  After which we were told:

No.  Only a boy and girl can get married.
What about a girl and a girl?
That is okay.  Girls can love each other too and they can get married.
Oh?  So a girl and a girl can get married but not a boy and a boy.  Correct?
Yeah.  Just a boy and a girl and a girl and a girl.  Not a boy and a boy, that is silly.

This conversation went on f or a while and was repeated several times in the car or at home while she was “calling” Conner on her little wooden kitchen phone while twirling her hair.  Each time the answer was the same and she wouldn’t budge or concede that any other solution was acceptable.  Later we confirmed that polygamy was also not acceptable in any form (boy with multiple wives or girl with multiple husbands – in each case daddy was being “silly”)

I think an interesting part of this is where the concepts were learned.  I was able to get out of here that princess only marry princess but they love other princess.  You see plenty of princesses dancing together but you don’t see the same with the princes’ (that would be late night HBO).  The same goes with many of the cartoons or movies we let her watch, mainly Disney and Sprout, and while non of them portray these beliefs out in the open, or even intentionally, it is interesting to see how they are built into and shape the mindset early on.  I hope to keep this up every now and again to see how the conversation changes as she gets older.  It will be fun to see if she continues down a hardline conservative opinion, a liberal viewpiont where anything goes, or something closer to the center.

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