Children and Gender Roles

When Ethan was born I had visions of him growing up to be an NHL player.  Or maybe an NFL star.  Whichever he wanted.  I was flexible.

Point was, when my boy was just days old I'd already decided that he should grow up to be one of the manliest of men out there because that's a dad's job; to mold their sons into lumberjack cowboy astronaut pit-fighters that rip phone books in half and intimidate grown men with but a glance and walk off broken legs like they're just minor inconveniences.

Right? 

As he got older and began to develop his own personality and character traits, Ethan displayed no signs that he'd grow up to become any of those things.  He liked to play with dolls.  He liked the color pink.  He liked to walk around the house in his mother's high heels.  He liked to do "girly" things like help cook and clean.

On top of that, he was small for his age and probably one of the least athletic or graceful kids you're ever likely to meet.

It became clear to me pretty early on that he wasn't going to grow up and be the next Wayne Gretzky or Barry Sanders.  He was almost certainly never going to be good enough at sports to even come close to making it as a collegiate athlete. 

But when I thought about it, I was okay with that.  I was also okay with his enjoyment of playing with dolls and liking pink and wanting to help cook and, well, with whatever he wanted to do because there's no shame in any of those things.

It got me thinking about societal gender roles, though, and how we learn them.  Why was it that when he was born I thought it my duty to harden him and shape him into what I perceived a "man" was?  For that matter, why did I define a man as what I did?  Why is it frowned upon when a boy displays any interest in anything considered "girly"?  Why is being a girl an insult?

After some inner-reflection it came as a little bit of a shock to me at how deeply these things were ingrained within my thought processes.  Without realizing it I'd been carrying around these ideals of what made a man a man and a woman a woman, and I don't think they're my own ideals.

I didn't grow up in that kind of environment.  My father cooked for us and helped clean the house, in addition to his "fatherly" duties like squishing spiders and fixing what needed fixing.  My mother worked outside of the home and ran her own business while still balancing motherhood and family duties.  My sister is tough as nails and always has been, even while having her girly side; she was a cheerleader and also the only girl on the town's boy's soccer team.  Heck, I'm a stay-at-home dad responsible for most of the housework.  My whole life growing up I was surrounded by people who didn't adhere to the standard definitions of gender roles and neither my wife nor I do so now, so where did I get this seemingly instinctual desire to steer my firstborn son toward an unfair and, frankly, unachievable image of "mandom?"

I think it comes from a place we cannot adequately defend ourselves from: everywhere.

It's in every commercial.  Every movie.  Every television show.  Every magazine.  Every song.  It's all around us.  It's in our neighbors.  It's in our children's classmates.  It's in our co-workers.  It's everywhere we look.

Go to the toy store and hit the girls section.  It's one big explosion of pink and lace and long hair and dresses and high heels and jewelry and play set kitchens.

Head over to the boys section.  It's all sports and guns and soldiers and robots and cars.

Is it because that's what boys and girls respectively prefer, or are we creating those preferences?  Based on my experiences, I'd say it's largely the latter.

Whether deliberately or not, we continue to perpetuate these gender stereotypes every time we choose a football for our son to play with and a toy broom for our daughter.  We're steering the direction of their interests whether we realize it or not from the second they're born and we choose a pink or a blue onesie to put them in.  We're passing on our own biases about what a boy and a girl should be and should spend their time doing.

The one good thing we have going for us is that, fortunately, it isn't the 1950s any longer and adult roles are not so unbreakably defined.  Girls have role models that aren't just June Cleaver waiting by the door with a martini to present her husband when he returns from a tough day at the office.  Boys have role models that aren't just manly men who expect a woman's place is in the kitchen.

We have ourselves to show that it's okay for a boy to play with a Barbie instead of a G.I. Joe, and a girl to throw a football instead of a tea party.  That it's okay for a girl to speak her mind and a boy to listen to her do it.  That a boy can help out around the house and a girl can work outside of it.

As it turns out, Ethan is now hugely into sports and Kaeleigh wants to be a ballerina princess when she grows up.

Sometimes I still wonder how much of it is their own desire and how much of it they've learned, and if I/we have failed them in some way as stewards of their development.

I think we'll go have a tea party with G.I. Joes.


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