Gender Roles...

One of the classes that I have this term is Sociology. This past week we were discussing the roles of gender in our society. Why is it that boys and girls are set into certain "gender roles" within 24 hours of their birth? It used to be that some hospitals would bring the baby to their mother and father wrapped in blue for boys and pink for girls. Why? Many researchers are coming to the conclusion that a lot of boys are “emotionally mideducated”. Emotionally miseducated means that “our culture emotionally cripples boys--a set of unique stresses is continuing to propel today's young males down a troubled path.” The article that we had to read was from James Henslin, who mentions that “parents gently and sometimes not so gently push (their child) onto a predetermined course”. This course seems to be becoming more destructive to the male gender as our society feeds us “images (of men that are) hyper-masculine--emotionless killing machines…Many boys learn to hide behind a ‘mask of bravado’”. Since we have a society that sees us (men) as the dominate of the species, we tend to be the ones that find ourselves in more trouble. Some feel that this can be attributed to the father figure since “fathers have been found to reinforce gender stereotypes more often than mothers”.

So if males are more predestined to head down that path, where does that put women when we dress them in cute frilly little dresses, tell them that they cannot do something because it's not "lady like", and hold them back from being the little person that they should be. People tend to ask Mark and I how old our son is. I even had Mikayla in blue jeans with flowers on them and a peach and pink top with flowers (not too gaudy) and I had people say (two at least) "hey little buddy" or "how is the little buddy today". But my point is that no matter what we do to our children with regard to their clothing, toys, or outside activities, we need to let our children grow up in a society that allows them to be who they are and not to hold them back. I want to give my daughter the a hammer so she has the capability of smashing the "glass" ceiling.

Now that I have a daughter, I want to change the way people think about her. Mark and I want our daughter to be able to grow up in a world where her gender does not come into play. She can do or be whoever she wants to be. The clothing that we have bought for her stays mainly on the “gender neutral” side and I toss her around and let her play in the dirt as I would any child. Now the problem that we are facing is my mother wants to see her in dresses so that she will be "pretty". She is always asking us why we do not “allow” her top wear dresses. It is not that we don't allow her to wear dresses; we just don't see dresses in her personality. She is a child that wants to play, get dirty, run, jump in the water, and however else she wants to play is fine by us. You see I see my daughter as one of the strongest personalities that I have ever meet and I will never extinguish that by telling her that she cannot do something or be something because of her gender.