Gender Expectations for Children I

Gender Expectations for Children

I certainly agree with the notion that gender socialization pervades almost every aspect of childhood, and it is so ingrained in the childhood experience that many people simply fail to notice how pervasive it is. I have noticed how much toys, children's television shows, and movies reinforce gender stereotypes. However, I do not know if I agree that this is so harmful for the majority of children. Before mass marketed and produced toys or children's television were invented, children were learning gender roles from adults, and children identify the most with their same-sex parent. I still feel that the same-sex parent presents the strongest gender role model for a child. As a result, I feel like people suggesting that toys and marketing are responsible if a girl child develops an eating disorder are somewhat misguided. While I do think that such socialization might make a child more susceptible to eating disorders and other seemingly gender-related issues, I do not think they are the tipping point. I simply disagree with the notion that, even taken as an aggregate, these notions can outweigh the impact that a parent has on the child.

For example, I spend a considerable amount of time around a seven-year-old girl and a five-year-old boy. Their parents have relatively traditional gender roles; she is a stay-at-home parent and he is the wage earner. However, she is also the person who does the yard and handles seemingly male tasks, like caring for livestock, major home improvement projects, and car repairs. She also opted in to being a stay-at-home mom; she has a JD and was a practicing attorney prior to having children. He is the primary breadwinner, but he also engages in a huge amount of hands-on parenting. He handles bath time and bedtime every evening, attends birthday parties with the children, and takes the older girl to Girl Scout meetings and to cheerleading practice. They have a very wide variety of toys in their house and I found the Lego article very interesting because Legos are one of their favorite toys and the father, a PhD in electrical engineering, encourages both children to engage in building projects. They have filmed segments for YouTube with the children doing home chemistry experiments. It is not unusual for the girl child to be doing a woodworking project with the father and the boy to be helping the mom bake, or for the daughter to be helping Mommy work on the car while the son is helping Daddy sew sequins onto a Christmas stocking. Finally, some nights you might find all four family members playing Barbies or babydolls, and other nights they might all be racing remote control cars.

I use the above family as an example that I think that the socialization of children remains the primary job of the parent and that parents can help determine how external society influences impact their children. Whether society freaked out because of an image of a little boy with pink toenails is not nearly so important as how a family reacts if a little boy wants to paint his toenails pink. The little boy in the family I described accompanies his mom and sister to the salon and I have seen him with green painted toenails (his favorite color) and know there would be no objections if he wanted pink ones. His sister has rejected the "girl" Legos in favor of "boy" sets, but will vehemently argue with you if you suggested that Ninjago was marketed towards boys.