Gender Assignment : Child Is Born With The Sonogram

The genderization process begins before a child is even born. Go into :1 store in the United States to buy a present for a newborn baby, and you will immediately be asked "boy or girl?" (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet 738) As the child gets older, they

A quote from the reading that explains how a child develops gender identity is “to develop awareness of personal identity, a baby interacts with family members and others who are part of a larger social world”. Parents use inanimate objects like toys, clothes and chores they assign to children to teach children what the society expects of them. For example, while I was growing up my dad always gave me presents every time I excelled at something but those gifts were sports related and he always motivated me using stories of great athletes around the globe.

Gender coding is not a natural or biological characteristic. People are born with different physical and biological characteristics, but make sense of their gender roles through cultural influences. “Stereotypes are amazingly powerful, and we may not realize the degree to which our thoughts, beliefs, and actions are shaped by them” (Silverman, Rader, 2010). Boys and girls are labeled as masculine or feminine, which is considered the “norm” for society. Children are not born masculine or feminine, they learn these roles from parents, peers, media, and even religion. Concepts of gender identity are sometimes placed on children even before their birth, such as with the selection of paint colors for the nursery.” Children begin to form concepts of gender beginning around the age of 2, and most children know if they are a boy or girl by age of 3” (Martin & Ruble, 2004). From an early age, children are encouraged to identify with gender coding. Gender is formed at birth, but self-identification as being male or female is imbedded into their minds by parents and society. A child learns to understand their gender role and their identity by what is taught and expressed to them by others. Yet as a child grows, gender coding can cause cultural confusion, and insecurity issues throughout the course of their life.

Those who agree that gender is a social construct would also argue that gendered behaviour is not innate, and that it is learnt throughout development. Gender identity is defined as “the way in which being feminine or masculine, woman or man, becomes an internalized part of the way we think about ourselves” (Ryle, 2014). The idea of masculinity and femininity and the strong distinction between the two are taught to us throughout our lives. An individual’s earliest exposure to the concept of gender comes from parental influence. Many studies show that parents socialize their children from birth by creating distinct environments for boys and girls and treating son’s and daughter’s differently. For instance, parents are more likely to assign domestic chores such as cooking, mending clothes and doing laundry to daughters, whereas sons are more likely to be assigned maintenance chores such as mowing lawn, small household repairs and carrying out garbage (Lackey, 1989). Parents may also use more emotive language when talking to their daughter’s and might encourage certain interests such as math and science in son’s, by purchasing more math and science toys and committing to other promotive activities (Jacobs & Bleeker, 2004; Leaper, 1998; Tenenbaum &

Children learn as early as age two what it means to be a “boy” or a “girl” (Aina & Cameron). This is described as gender identity, a person’s sense of self as male or female. Gender stereotyping emerges hand in hand with the development of gender identity in Early Childhood (Halim). Gender roles are society’s expectations of the proper behavior, attitudes and activities of males and females. When babies are born they are either put in pink or blue, as they grow up they still maintain the same “gender” colors. As young children start to socialize, they are playing with either “girl” toys or “boy” toys. When they get older they

Environmentally, a child’s experiences impact gender identity. Depending on family values or morals, a child could be confused by their gender. When a baby is born, there is much control on colors (if boy or girl) and ideas of the parents on how they would want to raise their daughter or son. For an example, a father would treat his son in a rough or unemotional way, while a girl would be protected and nurtured. Known as traditional roles, a boy doesn’t cry or play with dolls, but he can roll

Gender and gender roles are a somewhat complicated idea to understand. Contrary to popular belief, gender and sex are two different things in that “gender is not inherently nor solely connected to one’s physical anatomy” (“Understanding Gender”). When parents automatically assign their child a gender based on their sex organs, it leaves very little room for change later in the child’s life, because children born with female sex organs are not necessarily girls, just as children born with male sex organs are not necessarily boys. Rather, gender is based on mindset, personal identity, outward presentations, and behavior of the individual. Binary genders, or the broadly

They explain how from birth society labels infants as male or female and thus initiates them into a continuing learning process of what it means to be a boy or a girl. Naming and colour coding are used as examples of how infants are immediately plunged into a life of gender processing by adults, which they then later adopt themselves. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet’s work aims to demonstrate, through reliable sources and studies, that gender is not something we are born with, but something we learn to

“Is it a boy or a girl?” is a question that is commonly used in a world where roughly 350,000 babies are born each day. Questions such as the one previously stated are what helps to determine what gender a child would be. “Learning to Be Gendered” by Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet focuses mainly on the factors that potentially influences gender. These factors can include names, colors, voice change and the societal norm of what a boy and girl should be. Eckert’s main argument is that being gendered isn’t something one can to gain based off of physical characteristics but rather on their own and through their interaction with society. Names and clothing are just a small part of the symbolic resources used to support a consistent ongoing

Nurture plays a greater role than nature on the formation of an individual’s gender identity, influenced by: parental, environmental experiences and taught behaviours through media. Family guidance proves to influence one’s individuality throughout the early years of childhood. New-borns require billions of nerve cells primarily made in the first three years of a human’s life; making the important connection, which determines a person’s intellectual, emotional, and social make-up. These connections are the fundamental bases, influencing an individual’s gender identity and whoever and whatever comes in contact with the child will have an effect on them. Similarly to how family influences the early stages of a child’s brain development, environmental

Gender should not be intertwined with the term sex, which refers to the physical differences in individuals. Instead, gender is the idea of being male or female, and it is well understood by the time children reach the preschool years. Differences in gender become more pronounced as children age, and societal expectations are reinforced by parents and peers. Behavioral differences may be evident since parents may treat their child differently according to gender. A big example of this is how parents may react to a child’s first

Let me give you a scenario; It’s 3:00am. Rushing down the halls of a hospital you are on your way to support a person who is doing one of the most beautiful and complex things in life. Giving birth. You are the doctor in the room. Cutting the umbilical cord you hand the mother her child. She smiles up at you with tear rimmed eyes and you wrap the child up in a blanket and hold out to her a beautiful baby _____. Boy or girl? It doesn’t really matter which you say so long as you say one or the other, right? Within a few moments after birth and a quick scan between the legs of the child will enable you to develop a gender label for the child that they will carry for the rest of their life relevant to their sex.

An individual’s gender identity (in some cases) is based upon one’s chromosomal sex (Nevid, Rathus & Fichner-Rathus, 2005). Several factors can influence our gender identity. As a child (nurture) can help to shape, ones gender identity. One’s father and mother can see their child as male or female, meaning they see female as having feminine traits and a male as having masculine traits. For example, I was born female and this is the main factor in the evolution of my personal gender identity. My mother and father tried to dress me in clothes for a girl, while trying to teach me how to sit like a lady, and to show characteristics that are considered to fit my gender (female).

The biggest question asked is how it comes around, however there is not a solid reasoning or proof of one main causal factor. According to Lippa, exposure to testosterone during the second trimester of pregnancy, when the development of both male internal and external genitals and a male-typical nervous system forms, may influence gender identity. (98) Brown counters this argument by saying the formation of a secure unconflicted gender identity and gender role is influenced by social factors, such as the character of parent’s emotional bond or the relationship each parent has with the child; he asserts that the biological factors (genetic complement or prenatal hormones) do largely determine gender identity however they do not act alone, more or less just setting the stage to go one way or the other.

From the moment we were born, we are labeled as a specific sex. We were welcomed home with blue balloons if we were a boy and pink balloons if were a girl, these colors are strong indicators for gender roles and categories. In early childhood, gender roles begin to form and will negatively or positively affect a child’s behavior, interactions with peers, and their choice of toys, actives, and later on career jobs. This type of gendering is called gender socialization, which is a process by which we learn the norms and values of masculinity and femininity. Our first exposure to gender socialization is through the toys we were given to play with when we were young and when our brains were still developing. This concept of gender roles is, in many ways, socially constructed and impacts the way we behave due to the characteristics considered to be appropriate for a lady or a gentleman.