Gender Roles

I've been thinking a bit about gender roles recently. This was brought on after a trip to a lake, where I over-heard a mother express concern about her eighteen-month-old son who was afraid to go in the water, "We hope he'll grow out of it. His dad is worried he'll be a sissy."

I go back and forth in my head about whether I should say anything, but I always come to the conclusion that it's none of my business, even though comments like that burn the fire out of me. The child was in no danger, the parents were within their rights, and I'm afraid I just don't have the blatant gall to stick my nose where it doesn't belong. But still, it's had me thinking about children and gender roles.

Once, at Christmas time, I was in a Pottery Barn Kids and overheard a woman complaining loudly to her companion over the toy displays. "I just think it's awful that they have the doctor's kits on the boy's side and the dolls on the girls side." Even as she said this, two robust boys were happily playing in the girl's section with the pink kitchen set while their dad got some shopping done (I know they were with their dad because he kept coming over to quiet them down when they got a bit too rowdy). But it does bring up a point: do toy makers design toys for boys and girls based on natural gender preferences, or do kids gravitate towards "gender appropriate" toys because of the labels and pressure we put on them? In other words, which came first: the chicken or the egg?

My first inclination is that it is a little bit of both. Boys and girls are wired differently, that much is obvious, and so it would only make sense that their interests lie in separate, but overlapping, areas. I think when dealing with generalities this is not a bad way to think about it. However, I do agree that some of the stuff marketed to girls is just downright offensive, and the things marketed to boys are downright oppressive. It seems the idea of girls as sex symbols is being marketed to younger and younger girls, which I think is both horrible and devastating. And while a part of me believes that it is a parent's job to filter our the garbage and shelter the girl's self-esteem, that's a bit hard to do without becoming a hermit these days. We don't watch live tv in my house, not because I'm against tv or even the programs necessarily, but I hate the commercials marketing junk food and toys to kids. They simply make my job so much harder.On a recent trip to the mall, a walk through Dillard's in search of a bathroom took me through the juniors section, where a pair of short on display were too small for the mannequine. I won't lie: as a parent of girls, there was a part of me that rejoiced at Mattel's decision to give Barbie a boob reduction. Debate over how all of those Hollywood images and unrealistic bodies negatively affects a girls self-esteem has been debated ad nauseum.
But on the flipside, I believe that there isn't necessarily a double standard against girls in modern marketing: boys are just as oppressed and forced into roles. I think that putting the doctor kits on the boys side and the kitchen set on the girls side is every bit as offensive to boys as it is to girls. Those boys playing on the kitchen set were having a great time. In fact, kids always want to immitate whatever their parents do. So if a little boy sees his dad or mom cooking, or running a vaccuum, or caring for a baby sibling, that's what he will want to do. But those toys, he is told, are off-limits. They are for girls only, and he shouldn't want to play with them. What sort of message does that send to a little boy? How will he interpret that message as an adult? My guess would be that he will grow up to believe very strongly in "a woman's place", etc. Little boys are told again and again that they must be strong, that they can't cry, that it's not "manly" to feel emotion, that they shouldn't be afraid of anything or they're a sissy. I would think that these boys would grow up to be emotionally distant and poor communicators, with low self-esteems and the decreased ability to value the opposite sex for anything but their gender role. In other words, I think they would grow up to be lousy spouses and poor parents who most likely will just perpetuate the cycle of gender roles for their own children.

I am just speculating here. I haven't done any research on this subject, but I would like to one day. These are just my current inclinations. What do you think?