Re: starting early with gender stereotypes

["Nancy Whittier" <nwhittie email smith edu>]

Hi Ken (and whoever else is still on this list):

Are they in childcare at all?  Do they have babysitters who talk about
gender?  Do you all talk about it?

Otherwise, I'd suspect books.  When our older one was little, we used to
systematically change the pronouns of characters in books.  He was an
early reader, so it didn't last long.  We're doing that again this time,
more assiduously because our oldest is keeping on us.  Anytime a piece
of pink clothing comes into the house, Jonah makes sure that it is for
Isaac, not Eva.  (In practice, we tend to rotate that kind of clothing
between both.)

Your kids are both pretty verbal, right?  You can absolutely talk
directly with them about gender at this age.  I'd point out that some
girls eat crust and some boys don't, and carry through in your own
pizza-eating habits for an example!  I think that giving kids critical
thinking skills about this stuff has to start really early.

We have not yet found that ours express these kinds of opinions or
differences.  They do talk about the fact that Isaac has a penis and Eva
has a vulva, but the truly salient thing about that seems to be that
they can both pee in the bathwater.  Our oldest was quite non-gendered
until age 5 or so.

Nancy

>>> Ken Olum <kdo cosmos phy tufts edu> 12/09/04 4:20 PM >>>
Yesterday I asked my daughter Jocelyn (28 months old) why she didn't
eat the crust on her pizza and she said she didn't like it, but Perry
(her twin brother) ate his "because he's a boy".  It's true that Perry
likes the crust and Jocelyn doesn't, but where did she get the idea
that it's because he's a boy?  I asked her, but unsurprisingly she
was not able to explain.

                                        Ken

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