Dangers of Gender Stereotyping - Essay Example

It is no doubt parents easily transmit their thinking, beliefs, and ideas to their children. Parents have a profound impact on their children’s career development, especially mothers. Children who are more close to their mothers have higher educational expectations and put more value on schools. Students report that they interact more with their mothers than anyone else about their career plans; therefore, it is their mothers’ duty to use gender-neutral words as we might influence our children’s career plans by passing along gender-stereotypical comments. We want to believe that we can raise children who do not make a huge deal of the opposite gender and who think that boys and girls are equal; if it is so, then we have to change our “pink brain”/ “blue brain” mentality. When we hear our boys say that pink is for girls and our girls say that trucks are for boys to play with, we need to correct them immediately in order to prevent them from developing stereotypical believes and patterns of behavior as to genders.

Studies prove that gender development starts at a very young age, in the toddler’s age, if to be more specific. Stereotyping can start at this age and we need to fight these terms so that we can raise our children in a gender-neutral environment. Following are the five ways to reduce gender stereotyping in our children:

BOOKS:
Books can present our children with a variety of ideas because TV promotes stereotyping images for example that your child watches on TV. Associating colors with genders like pink is for girls and blue for boys or reading books with strong girls and sensitive boys can be helpful. Good choices of books according to the National Association for educating our children are the Story of Ferdinand, Nessa’s Fish, the Paper Bag Princess, etc.

GENDER-NEUTRAL TOYS:
Toy companies heavily promote gender stereotyping because toys with a lot of pink and good looks are considered girls' toys and the toys that serve action are considered boy toys. We need to stop directing our children from getting a particular form of play or particular toys associated with either gender. Buy your toddler the same rag doll that looks like him which can wear his outgrown baby clothes. Or instead of purchasing dolls and trucks purchase toys that encourage creativity in a general way such as blocks, Lego, art supplies, animals, and games. (Grabrucker, n.p.)

CROSS–GENDERED PLAY:
Instead of discouraging your children from playing with toys that belong to their gender, we should encourage them to play with toys that belong to the opposite gender. Girls for example can learn that it is fun to play with trucks just as it is to play with dolls and vice versa. We should know that for boys playing dress-up in girls’ clothing is normal and is fun because we should understand that will not affect their sexual orientation.

CHORES:
When children grow old enough to help around the house then keep them equally spread, without any regard to gender. Every child should know how to make his own snacks like sandwiches and chips, do gardening or maintain their own patch of garden. Each child should know and be responsible for making his own bed every morning and sharing it equally, in doing the dishes and clearing the tables and maintenance.

GENDER NEUTRAL LANGUAGE:
We should be well aware of such a term, meaning we should use words that are gender-neutral. The word “mailman” has given away to the word “mail carrier” but other terminologies are still used in the same persistent way. We’d be surprise to learn that how many times the words fireman, policeman or mailman come to our mouth. Although the best choices are fire fighter, mail carrier and police officer. The point is to talk about what these people do rather than pointing out their statuses.

Therefore, these are the ways through which we can eliminate gender stereotyping. Sometime our children ask all sorts of questions related to race, sexuality, gender etc. And mostly we put them off or we do not answer them, which is completely wrong because then they make their own assumptions and come up to their own conclusions based on scarce or deformed information and experience, which in the long-run might generate stereotypical way of thinking. Therefore, adults need to have honest and open conversations with their children about the differences and things they see, notice and ask. When we see our children say that “boys are strong” and “girls are weak” we should immediately correct them with gentleness with a notion that “girls are strong too”. Every time we do this, we take away the possibility of their harmful assumptions (Brody, n.p.).v Read More