It used to be that you banned Barbie from the house and you were doing your part in the gender-stereotyping wars.
Now, the array of tactics is dizzying. Recently, there was the story of the Toronto parents who are concealing the sex of their baby for as long as they can. Then, there was the preschool in Sweden that has scrubbed “he” and “she” from its programming, using an invented gender-neutral pronoun instead, among its other aggressively gender-free policies.
Sure, they may both be extreme cases. But they are earnest attempts to address vexingly persistent questions: How can parents reduce the number of male-female stereotypes their children face? How can they navigate a middle ground between the equally powerful pink princess and tough superhero juggernauts aimed at their families?
While many experts say engineering gender out of children’s lives isn’t the answer, there are actually a number of other, more mainstream, ideas worth considering.
One issue that everyone seems to agree on is that starting early is crucial. By the age of two, children have a rudimentary idea of which activities are typically ascribed to men and which to women, says gender researcher Rosalind Barnett.
Parents and educators shouldn’t worry so much about which pronouns kids are using - they should focus instead on the ideas they represent. “Get into the child’s head more and explore [stereotypical notions] from the child’s perspective,” says Prof. Barnett, a senior scientist at the Women's Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, from her home in Cambridge, Mass. “That’s where I think you can have some powerful effects.”
If a child says all doctors are men, for instance, ask them why they think that – and point out that it’s not true.
Researchers like Prof. Barnett call parents, caregivers and teachers “early socializers” for a reason – gender is widely considered to be flexible and socially learned from birth (unlike sex, which is, in most cases, fixed.)
“Like it or not - even those versed in these things - we carry these stereotypes. We can’t not do it,” says Prof. Barnett, who is also the co-author of an upcoming book, The Truth about Boys and Girls, which takes aim at the educational trend of same-sex schooling based on supposedly innate learning styles.
But if we’re more conscious of them and check our own behaviour, “we have a chance of affecting our behaviour positively and having a positive impact on kids.”
Prof. Barnet says research has illustrated the subconscious attitudes of parents. One study asked mothers to rate how steep a playground slide their child would choose. When they set kids loose, the girls chose slides that were much more steep than those their mothers predicted, suggesting that moms consider their daughters more fragile and risk-averse. There was no difference between the slides the boys and girls actually chose, either.
“These stereotypes affect children’s behaviour at a very primitive level early on,” Prof. Barnett says. “When a boy goes down a steep slide because he wants to and his mother lets him, now he’s got confidence. And he’s going to do more of these things.” And girls, if they’re nudged toward less risk, may come to fulfill the stereotype of being more cautious than boys.
Another study found that the way parents speak to their children at a science museum differed by gender: Boys got preliminary scientific explanations and cause and effect; girls got descriptions about such things as colour. “That was true for kids as young as 1,” she says.
Other research has shown that children will narrow their toy choices if they think a parent will disapprove of a cross-gendered choice.
