Children are influenced strongly by the people closest to them, but also by society- movies, books, television, toys, etc. Children are bombarded with the media, and gender roles become quite apparent when you look for them. Clothing, hairstyles, and toys are all examples of how we pass on gender stereotypes. If you walk down the toy aisles in a department store the princesses, dolls, barbies, and anything pink and purple is in one aisle. Then in another aisle are all the trucks, super heroes, transformers, and dinosaurs. The stores assume that depending on which sex the child is he/she only needs to walk down one aisle. Movies constantly depict the males as strong, intelligent and brave while the females are pretty, weak and need to be rescued. Young children soak it all in.
As we learned last week, many different family structures exist and whether we believe the family structure is appropriate or not, a child's family plays a crucial role in his/her development. I think bringing books and other visual aides into the early childhood classroom that depict all family types is very important. It is our "duty to help all children develop a positive sense of self, no matter what our personal beliefs are" (Laureate Education, n.d.). Children need to be supported in their identity development and making them visible is a key component in that process (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010).
References:
Derman-Sparks, L., & Olsen Edwards, J. (2010). Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves. Washington, DC: NAEYC.
Laureate Education (Producer). (n.d.). Start seeing diversity: Gender [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.eduLaureate Education (Producer). (n.d.). Start seeing diversity: Sexual orientation [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu
Mary,
ReplyDeleteIn my classroom I have so much fun watching to see what children are going to play with and how their classmates will respond to their choices. A few years ago I had a boy in my classroom that loved to dress up in our princess dresses. There were times when children would tell him he could not wear that because he wasn't a girl. We would talk about how we each could make our own choices about what we wear and that we need to treat each other nicely no matter what people wear. After a couple of times of him wearing the dress the children never gave it a second thought and they all went on playing as usual. On the other hand when his father found out about him wearing the dress he was very unhappy about it. I explained to the father that it was very common for young boys to dress up in dresses and he was just having fun. The father never really made too huge of an issue about it but I know he was never okay with it and often told his son not to do it.
Mary,
ReplyDeleteYour post was very insightful for me and made me reflecting about my own biases against LGBTs. It is a fact that families and society at large have a very clear idea of gender roles which are very distinct for girls and boys and these are passed down to children. You rightly observed that homophobia and heterosexism permeate the world of children from everywhere starting from the family itself, like when you said family members will prevent boys from playing with dolls or wearing girl dressing because "they don't want them to turn out gay". To be honest I would also be one of those parents too. That makes me realise that somewhere at the back of our mind, we all know that some children will turn out gays and lesbians and as heterosexuals, we don't want this to happen to our own children. However my question is even if we don't encourage such behaviors in children, can we stop some children from developing into more effeminate boys or masculine girls as they grow up and to be attracted to same-sex partner later in life? If the answer is no, then preventing these children developing their true identity by imposing gender roles that do not fit their identity, makes no sense. It will in the contrary preventing them to blossom and be themselves. As heterosexuals, I think we need to start changing our perception of the world and include LGBT as another gender identity also, along with heterosexuals, with their corresponding gender roles.