Sex Stereotyping
Hurts All Kids
Sociology Formative Assessment
Read the following
selection and answer the questions.
During the past couple of decades,
both men and women have fought to change the traditional views of sex roles.
Women who were raised to be homemakers have struggled to achieve success in the
workplace; men who were brought up to be tough and unemotional have strived to
be more open and sensitive communicators. If today's children are to become men
and women who can create a society free of sex stereotyping, we, their parents,
must understand how such stereotypes are created and what we can do to avoid
them.
Sex stereotyping—raising boys and
girls to be very different because of their sex—starts at birth. Listen at the
window of a hospital maternity ward where the baby girls wear stocking hats
with pink pom-poms and the boys wear blue ones. "Isn't he a big, strong
baby," says a proud father. "Look at that chin! Only a day old and
you can tell he's going to be all boy." Or, "She's beautiful and such
a delicate little thing!" comments a grandmother. It doesn't matter that
the big strong baby boy weighs 7 pounds and has no noticeable chin and that the
delicate little girl weighs 8-1/2 pounds; their families already see in them
characteristics associated with their sex.
Closer acquaintance with children
merely confirms people's stereotypes. In the famous Adam/Beth study mothers
automatically gave the six-month old Adam a "boy toy" and Beth a
"girl toy" and were shocked to learn that the masculine Adam and
feminine Beth were the very same baby boy dressed in different clothes. If
parents see sexual differences in newborns and automatically give children a
toy that is traditionally linked to one sex, is it any wonder that they
perpetuate sex stereotyping when raising their children?
Differences in how boys and girls
are raised start at birth. In Women—A Feminist Perspective (Mayfield
Publishing Company, 1989), Jo Freeman reviews a variety of studies, most of
which were conducted on white middleclass families. She finds that mothers talk
more and in a gentler tone to girls but they ask their sons more questions,
explain more to them, use numbers more often and even use more active verbs in conversation with their sons than their
daughters. Fathers play more often and more roughly with boys. Studies also
find that both parents, but especially fathers, spend more time with sons than
with daughters.
Parents teach boys and girls to
solve problems in different ways. They are more likely to sit down and help
their daughters solve problems while encouraging their sons to figure answers
for themselves with only general guidance. One study of parents helping their
children work jigsaw puzzles found that boys were shown how to solve the puzzle
while girls were given the specific piece they were looking for. Boys are
rewarded for and taught to succeed, to master their environment and to be
self-reliant. Girls, on the other hand, are taught to ask for help and to be
passive—to allow their environment to act on them rather than to take charge of
their play or their lives.
While boys get many benefits from
current patterns of sex role socialization, they also face drawbacks. Parents
cuddle and comfort girls more than boys. Boys are still told to "dry your
tears and act like Daddy's little man" when faced with disappointment and
hurt. Boys are not supposed to show emotions, except for anger. In addition to
verbal commands to hide his emotions, a boy learns this lesson from watching
his father. Many fathers have trouble showing affection, especially for their
sons, so a boy may see his dad give his sister a goodnight kiss and then have
his dad slap him on the shoulder and tell him to go right to sleep.
Toys given to children underscore
sex role stereotyping. Even today boys are given more trucks, blocks, models,
mechanical toys, scientific equipment and climbing and riding toys. Their toys
are more complicated and more active (as well as more fun) than girls'. Girls
are given many dolls and toy household items and they are encouraged to care
for and love their toys while boys are encouraged to ride on, take apart and
build with theirs.
Teachers, in preschool and later,
promote sex role stereotypes by responding differently to boys and girls and
unnecessarily segregating children according to sex. Many preschool teachers
encourage boys to play with "boy toys" and automatically lead new
girls to the housekeeping corner. Studies show that from preschool on, teachers
pay more attention to boys than girls. They pay attention and thus reward boys
who act aggressively and girls who act dependent. Many teachers still have
boys' lines and girls' lines although such segregation serves no purpose except
to remind boys and girls that they are different.
Teachers, like parents, expect
boys to do better at math and to have more trouble with reading, and this
quickly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Schools respond differently to
boys' and girls' problems. They are quick to get boys help with reading while
saying that girls just aren't good at math. (How many schools have remedial
math programs compared to remedial reading courses and reading specialists for
primary students?) Teachers are more
apt to attribute girls' success to the fact that they work hard and boys' to
the fact that they are bright.
Society in general promotes sex
stereotyping. On cartoons for children and even on educational TV shows such as
"Sesame Street," the number of male characters is disproportionally
high. Male characters are active and women are passive, often the victims of
violence. Studies of children's books show the same pattern. There are many
fewer girl characters than boys. Even the animals are more likely to be male,
not female. Girls in stories are less active and more often bystanders than the
main character. Studies in the 1970s found that award-winning books had few
women and those that appeared were usually in sex-stereotyped roles. Follow-up
studies in the late 1980s found that the situation had not changed
substantially.
Is the fact that girls and boys
are socialized differently important? Yes! "By far the most crippling
disease—for both boys and girls—is sex stereotyping," commented Dr. Spock
in Growing
Up Free, Letty Cottin Pogrebin's book on nonsexist child rearing.
Today many parents are willing to
allow their daughters more leeway to deviate from the traditional sex role than
they allow their sons. "Tomboys" have always been tolerated, though
made fun of, and most parents assume that someday such girls will "grow
out of it." Boys, though, have little freedom to be different. Parents are
more likely to punish a boy for what they see as "feminine
characteristics." Fathers, in particular, are likely to insist that their
sons conform to the stereotype of masculinity.
Even if parents want to raise
their children in less stereotyped ways, most don't know how. They are so
accustomed to a world where girls are considered weak and inferior and where
boys must be strong that they don't even realize that they have accepted those
values. Therefore, if you want to raise your child in nonsexist ways, the first
thing you should do is think about your assumptions about men and women and
your lifestyle. Do you think that women should care for the home and kids while
men make the money and wield power? Do women have jobs because their families
need money but men have careers? If so, it will be natural for you to give your
daughter a toy vacuum sweeper and your son an erector set.
Think also about what kind of role
models you are. Does dad only do yard work and household repairs while mom
cooks, cleans, and changes the diapers? Does dad make major decisions and is he
"head of the household" or are parents a team of equals? Even who
drives the family car tells your child something about sex roles. Does daddy always
drive because "women are lousy drivers" and dad always has to be in
charge?
Rather than raise your child as a
boy or girl, raise the child as his or her own individual. When your child is
born, make a conscious effort not to label him as a boy or a girl. As writes
Letty Cottin Pogrebin in Growing Up Free, "Gender
is a fact; sex roles are invented and must be learned." Your child will
learn between age 18 months and 3 years that he is a boy or she is a girl. A
child doesn't need to think that gender is the most important fact in his or
her life. Therefore, you shouldn't look for and comment on the presence or
absence of so-called "male traits" in your son and "female"
ones in your daughter.
Don't dress your son in blue and
your daughter in pink. Don't put your son in jeans and your daughter in frilly
dresses. Don't give your son toy tool sets to bang and chew on and trucks to
ride on and your daughter only dolls and doll houses to care for. Rather dress
your child to play and be active (how can a girl be active in a frilly dress or
with slick-soled dress shoes?), give your child toys to play with and to love
and play with those toys with your child in non-stereotyped ways.
Pogrebin suggests that fathers who
can't bring themselves to give their son a doll rename that toy. Maybe they can
accept it better if their son plays with a "buddy" or his
"baby" or, as Pogrebin suggests, his "guy." Better yet,
accept that a boy needs things to cuddle and love if he is going to grow up to
love and be a good father. Pogrebin also suggests that mothers make a special
effort to play with the traditional "boy toys" and dads get down on
the floor and play with the doll house and the baby doll.
Avoid
sex stereotyping your child
Girls raised traditionally are
less likely to learn as much as they can and to be successful in school, while
boys raised traditionally are less likely to have a happy marriage, close
friends and a loving relationship with their children. To avoid sex role
stereotyping your children you should raise your children in a nonsexist way.
Following are suggestions for ways to do this:
Raise girls to strive to . . .
achieve, compete, do their best, like math and science and expect to do well in
these subjects, recognize that they are capable, believe they can control their
own destiny, be active, lead, read well, enjoy art, music and dance, love
others, babysit, cook, clean and fix things, express their emotions openly, cry
as well as laugh, be helpful and cooperative, be their own person, stand out
from the crowd and value their individuality.
Raise boys to strive to . . .
achieve, compete, do their best, like math and science and expect to do well in
these subjects, recognize that they are capable, believe they can control their
own destiny, be active, lead, read well, enjoy art, music and dance, love
others, babysit, cook, clean and fix things, express their emotions openly, cry
as well as laugh, be helpful and cooperative, be their own person, stand out
from the crowd and value their individuality.
Sex Stereotyping
Hurts All Kids
Sociology Formative Assessment
1. How did you feel about the
article? Did you agree or disagree with its thesis?
2. Did you see yourself or your
family sex role habits in the article?
3. Should society work to reduce
sex role stereotyping in the modern world? Why or why not?
4. Why would a society develop
such a strict sex role stereotyping?
5. Do you think you will raise
your children as your parents raised you? Why or why not?
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