Parents Have Higher Expectations For Their Boys Than Girls

When children are born, mothers and fathers tend to describe boys as firm, alert, and strong, and girls as beautiful, pretty and cute. There is no difference between babies except for gender. The different descriptions reflect the parents’ attitudes about boys and girls rather than the babies’ actual characteristics. These stereotypes find there way into a child’s bedroom. A boy’s room contains more vehicles and sports equipment, while a girl’s room is more likely to contain dolls. Fathers, in particular, treat sons and daughters differently. Fathers play more roughly with sons than with daughters, and usually give them more independence. The different messages that are received by boys and girls from parents and TV become important to the way they view and behave in

| Not all children share the same experiences: there are gender differences between children (Hillman, 1993), boys are more likely to be allowed out on their own or later at night, whereas Bonke (1999) found that girls did up to five times more housework than boys. Ethnic differences also show that Asian parents were more likely than other parents to be strict towards their daughters aged 15-16 (Brannen, 1994). Bhatti (1999) also found that ideas of family honour could be a restriction, especially on girls.

In this session, I will discuss the gender roles in my family. The definition of gender role is the degree to which a person adopts the gender-specific behaviors ascribed by his or her culture (Matsumoto, D. R., & Juang 2013, 156). For example, traditional gender roles recommend that males are aggressive, angry, and unemotional. It goes further and explains that the male should leave the home every day to make a living and be the main wage earner. The traditional gender role for the female purpose is to stay at home and care for the children. It explains that the female is to be nurturing, caring, and emotional (Matsumoto, D. R., & Juang 2013, 156). These traditional roles for female and male are the opposite of one another. It is believed that the culture is likely to influence our perception about gender role in a family. In my family, my parents utilize the traditional gender role. Growing up, my father went to work every day and my mother stayed home with me and my sister. I believe my parents were influence by their parents and their culture to be traditional gender role parents. My father explained to me that they chose traditional parenting role because both sides of the family utilized traditional parenting gender roles. I believe my parents felt pressure to obtain the gender roles of the mother staying home with the children while the father worked. However, when my younger sister was old enough to go to school, my mother started to work. It was believed that when

Once a child is born, he or she learns to view the world based on the behaviors of others. The child’s primary caregivers, usually the parents, and others present in the child’s environment, such as siblings, peers, teachers, and even the media, contribute to the development of the child’s perception of himself, those around him, and society overall. This concept is called socialization. “The way we are, behave and think is the final product of socialization” and it is through socialization that we “learn what is appropriate and improper for both genders” (Crespi, 2004). This concept of gender socialization leads to the inescapable

The most important piece of evidence that shows the differences in standards between sons and daughters is that parental expectations begin to differ very early. “Parents have differential expectations of sons and daughters as early as 24 hours after birth.” (Witt, n.p.) “6-and-12-month-olds of both sexes prefer dolls to trucks, according to a host of studies. Children settle into sex-based play preferences only around age 1, which is when they grasp which sex they are, identify strongly with it, and conform

The gender based expectations are taught and the sometimes subtle, often overt lessons begin at a very young age. It starts with the color of the blanket a baby is wrapped up in, the toys bought for them to play with, and extends to the pretend play they engage in. So from the earliest ages of social awareness, society reinforces the ideals of masculine and feminine throughout life. Consequently, it is perfectly acceptable for a girl to put on a purple tutu and twirl about granting wishes to her stuffed animals, while it would be discouraged for a boy. He should be outside in the sandbox setting up his toy soldiers in a mock battle. In spite of the entrenched idea of gender, some mothers and fathers aspire to a more gender-neutral parenting style, that doesn’t restrict their child to specific societal ideals. However, the pressure to conform to the gender binary is ever-present and difficult to deconstruct. The boy that cries when he gets hit by a baseball is called a “sissy” and told to “man up” by his coach. The girl who tells her high school counselor, she wants to take auto

In this society, their self-actualization depends on the relationship and support they receive from their mother. This approval of dominance from their mother impacts their success to achieve self-actualization and in turn affects their self-esteem. For the mother, ensuring her son breeds as many children as possible also maximizes her fitness as well. A mother is more likely to support her son because her daughter could become competition; for this reason, daughters are usually sent to find a new family during their adolescence.

It seems that many middle class and lower/working class families do not want to have a child that is a boy, they instead prefer a girl. This article explains why these parents are truly hoping to have little girls and breaking away from traditional norms that preferred boys. Having a male child is a fear amongst certain social classes in the United States. This fear is due to the expected gender roles that society expects from males, the normal aggressive behavior and boys don’t cry roles.

The idea of gender roles has been prominent throughout not only American History, but world history as well. Everyone understands that men are the ones who provide for their family while women are responsible for household work such as taking care of the children, cleaning, and cooking. The United States has come a long way in demolishing these gender constructs from presenting women the right to vote to recent strives in pop culture such as Benny’s gender crushing single and music video, Little Game, but the nation is still not quite to the point of completely shattering the often harmful gender roles that are set upon children and adults in society. As a means to prevent damage to future generations, parents should not assign gender roles to their children at birth.

For girls, because their female role model who is their mother is always available unlike for boys who don’t not have as much access to the male figure in their lives (the father) because traditionally the father would be at

People receive thousands of cultural messages everyday about gender roles from advertisements, movies, TV, music, magazines, family, school… etc. People perceive these messages and realize expectations for their gender and for their children as well, and how they should operate within society. While many individuals and organizations challenge these traditional gender roles, the evident impact of mainstream culture persists.

According to an analysis done by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, for every ten U.S. google search requests about males being overweight, there are seventeen searches about girls being overweight, but in reality, boys are nine percent more probable to being overweight than girls (Gonchar). There are countless kinds of gender double standards in society, including the standards parents hold their children to. It is no secret that parents dream for their daughters to be attractive and their sons to be athletic. How else do these standards become apparent in a child’s upbringing? In an investigative paper, The Gender Double Standards in Parenting Attitudes, Meeso Caponi Ro, William G. Axinn, and Linda Young-DeMarco state, “We differentiate dating, sex, and premarital cohabitation from marital and childbearing behavior to investigate differences within the courtship and family formation domain.” (Axinn). There are different standards for boys and girls when it comes down to relationships and sex as well. Parents tend to be more lenient when it comes to their boy’s romantic relationships and stricter with their daughters. “A new study from Netmums reveals that 88 per cent of mums admitted that they treated their sons and daughters differently despite thinking that this was wrong.” (The Gender). Parents don’t want to admit they treat their kids differently, because then issues of favoritism or unfair treatment can occur, but by human

Sometimes, parents tend to raise their sons and daughters differently based on their genders. Joyce J. Endendijk et al. states that, “Parenting girls would be more likely to focus on, for example, affiliation and interpersonal closeness, whereas parenting boys would be more likely to focus on, for example, assertiveness and dominance, because these characteristics are important to succeed in their respective roles as homemaker or economic provider” (299-300). The way that children are parented is heavily influenced on the beliefs of the parents themselves, and the more stereotypical the parents are, the more likely they are to parent this way. It is shown that parents are more physical with boys than girls when it comes to controlling them. Some examples of these are “[...] grabbing, pushing, holding, physically redirecting, or spanking” (Kochanska, Barry, Stellern, & O’Bleness, qtd. in Endendijk et al. 300). In turn, this can increase the possibility of boys becoming aggressive later in life. A test is done in the Netherlands of households with two parents and children between the ages of 12 months and 3 and a half to see their gender socialization. 299 families of 156 boys and 133 girls were tested. At time 1, the children were an average of 3.01 years old, mothers were between the ages of 25 and 46, fathers were between the ages of 26 and 63, and the parents were together (Endendijk et al. 302-303). Participants were asked whether words such as “management” or “children” were more masculine or feminine to them. Words involving careers were rated as more masculine than feminine. They were also given a computer task with congruent blocks where participants had to “[...] sort career attributes to the male category and family attributes to the female category, and incongruent blocks in which participants have to sort career attributes to women

How Gender Roles and Societal Expectations Shape Personal Lives” “Boys will be boys”. “If a girl flirts she should follow through”. “A woman belongs in the kitchen”; We all have heard these phrases in some form or another on our TVs, on campus, behind a pulpit, be it indirectly or directly. Somewhere along the line, these messages become a mentality, and in turn the mentality becomes a mandate: do what is expected of you. “Boys”, “Girl”, and “Lust” are all examples of how gender roles and societal expectations shape how we think, act, and see others.

Society today places many ideals when it comes to proper behaviours regarding gender roles. These are considered societal norms that are widely debated and controversial. Society has created a norm, which encompasses specific expectations and rules that change the daily lives of men and women, giving them specific tasks and behaviours to abide by. These standards are known as gender roles, which are defined as distinguishing actions, thoughts, and feelings of males and females. Gender roles are said to be a result of nature, which is a natural process, every male or female is to follow. On the other hand it can be a result of nurture, which changes ones way of thinking and adapting their lifestyle to fit their environment. Either way gender roles are a part of someone’s life from the moment of their birth, as they develop, and long after that, this proves that gender roles are influential to a person’s life and development. This essay examines how media such as music, family life, and different parenting styles encompass gender roles and teaches behaviours regarding them. Therefore, gender roles define males and females are a result of nurture and not nature.