Raising children without gender stereotyping
Raising children without
Many girls don’t like their body image and start dieting to change it before they reach puberty. Boys tend to get aggressive when they’re mad and eventually disengage from school.
If those statements are generally true, it could be because of the different ways that men and women are taught based on their gender, says psychology professor Christia Spears Brown.
And the people teaching them may not even realize it, she says.
“There’s a big field of research looking at how gender and gender stereotypes seem to impact how kids are developing,” says Brown, author of “Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue: How To Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes.”
“And there’s also research that looks at how parents contribute to that,” she continues. “How they might engage in accidentally stereotyping, usually not meaning to, but how they’re treating sons and daughters differently in ways that are really not helpful for kids.”
Brown, a professor of developmental psychology at the University of Kentucky, made a drop-in visit in Chattanooga, a rest stop between home in Kentucky and an appearance in Atlanta, earlier this summer to speak to interested parents about these issues.
Her work on the impact of gender stereotypes on children has been featured on NPR, “CBS Evening News” and in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. She writes a regular online column, “Beyond Pink and Blue,” for Psychology Today.
Brown says she realized that although there’s a lot of research about gender-based stereotypes and the unintended effects, scientists weren’t communicating the information to parents and teachers, the people who usually have influence over youth.
Teachers should understand that just having high school girls mark the correct gender box before taking a test could lead them to think about the stereotype that girls don’t do well in math and influence how they take the test. The same effect could happen to boys marking their gender on an English exam since the stereotype is that boys don’t do well in English.
The Rev. Rosario Slack, master trainer for The World Needs A Father International Fatherhood Program, says he has firsthand knowledge of the impact projected stereotypes can have on boys.
Slack says that, as a child, he often finished his work first in his class and then got sent to the principal’s office for acting out.
“Nobody called me smart,” says Slack. “They called me bad, a troublemaker and I would show up at the principal’s office for all the wrong reasons. A lot of times we mislabel people that are really quite smart, and they’re not getting the proper attention.”
Girls Inc. CEO Melissa Blevins says she sees how the attitudes that adults have concerning girls create artificial limits or barriers for them.
“The workforce is changing and our community needs girls to be successful, to not be limited by their gender,” she says. “They need to graduate from high school equipped for the same jobs, the same opportunities that boys are.”
As far as neuroscience goes, boys and girls are the same when they’re little, before puberty. But adults tend to push girls into one category and boys into another, says Perkins, recalling what she learned from attending the event.
She says after listening to Brown’s message, she’ll treat a person’s gender like she treats a person’s race and not refer to it unless it’s necessary.
“There’s a big field of research looking at how gender and gender stereotypes seem to impact how kids are developing.” CHRISTIA SPEARS BROWN