"The Taliban in a minivan."

I work at a bookstore. I was cashiering today when a woman and her two kids (a boy and a girl, both somewhere between 13-15) came up to the register. The mom was buying 2 celeb gossip magazines, and the boy put down a book. The girl then walked up and set down the newest volume of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series.

The mom says "You can't buy that."

Girl: Why?

Mom: Because it's too big.

Girl: [Brother] is buying a book that big. It's not very expensive.

Mom: [Brother] is a boy. You're a girl. And girls shouldn't read big books like that. It's too thick. Boys don't like girls who read thick books. You want boys to like you, don't you?

The girl went and put the book away.

This appeared first in this post at LJ's customers_suck community, although I found it through a byzantine route that took me through Pharyngula and Byzantium Shores.

One of the many, many comments I've seen on this one has the idea that, well, if Mom is raising her daughter to be a baby-making machine, this is one of the things she has to do: build within the kid a character interested first in being attractive to boys and second with being herself. There's an entire movement in this country dedicated to this notion. It's called Natalism, and these people are serious: the culture war will be won by the ones that breed the most, and conservatives breed more than liberals, therefore conservatives will win. There's nothing surprising is the exchange going on in my quote: the mother is doing exactly what she thinks she must do, not only for the long-term success of her kid but for the success of her ideology.

I don't agree with it. I just don't find it nearly as shocking as most of the commenters do.