As a nanny this summer, I brought my magic bag of activities every day with hopes of entertaining and educating Isabelle, age three, and Halle, age five. One day, after Isabelle was finished coloring on the kitchen chairs and Halle had smeared macaroni all over me, I decided I had to be on my toes constantly and have activities ready for their moments of outburst: thus the bag of books, crafts and toys. After the girls informed me that the blue construction paper was for boys, and that Barbies had to clean the house, I felt the need to influence their gender role stereotypes.
Nancy Freeman from the Early Childhood Education Journal conducted a study in 2007 regarding preschoolers’ perceptions of gender appropriate toys. Freeman asserts that children are able to define themselves as boys or girls around the age of 24 months. As adults, we take the concept of gender for granted because we have already defined ourselves.
The main question asked in every child development study is: how is a child’s gender constructed? Because our society clearly delineates between two genders, male and female, researchers believe that role models greatly impact the development of gender in children. In addition to the part biology plays with gender, how much are parents at fault for having a ‘manly man’ or a ‘girly girl’? A parent may influence his/her child by performing gendered actions. Tara Smith explains in the journal Women and Language from 2001 that women influence their children’s gender with pre-birth gender talk.
After learning her baby was a boy during the sixth month, Smith began patting her belly instead of rubbing it gently. Instead of talking in a gentle and calming voice, she began to subconsciously use a lower and stronger tone while speaking to her son in the womb. Smith forgot about being gender neutral and instead began to construct her child’s gender at the earliest age, but she is not the only victim of this tendency. Many parents unknowingly influence their children’s gender construction. Children observe their parents’ behavior and, as a result, make conclusions about the differences between men and women. Martin and Ruble from The American Psychology Society confirm that “Children are gender detectives who search for cues about gender.” As soon as a child can tell the difference between a boy and a girl, he or she begins to make assumptions about those sexes. If a child observes two women eating broccoli and two men eating peas, he or she might conclude that women eat broccoli and men eat peas. Thus, it is important for each parent to equally perform tasks. One parent should wash dishes and mow the lawn. The other parent should be seen doing laundry and fixing the car. When children observe parents performing these stereotypical feminine and masculine tasks, they are more likely to develop open-minded attitudes toward gender roles. Also, children of employed mothers tend to be more egalitarian on attitudes toward marriage, children and careers than those whose mothers are not employed.
Every aspect of parental behavior greatly affects children’s attitudes and understanding of gender performance. In addition to riding bikes, playing baseball and assuring the girls that blue construction paper is not only for boys, I also made an agreement with the parents to equalize their gender roles at home. The mother began to work on the lawn while the husband played with the girls and made dinner. By observing their parents performing masculine and feminine tasks, the girls’ beliefs about gender tasks began to change. Although Barbie still wears dresses and waits for Ken to pick her up in his sports car, Isabelle makes Ken do the dishes while Barbie watches sports in her Lay-Z-Boy.