Discuss the influences of parents on our gender role development

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

- Parents' assumptions about the gender of their children are reflected in how the parents treat and interact with their sons and daughters and how their children behave in response. Studies have shown that parents describe their infants in different ways, depending on the sex of the baby. Parents tend to describe their newborn girls as soft, fine-featured, petite, delicate, and beautiful and their boys as strong, big, and determined. They also describe infant girls as little, beautiful, pretty, cute, and resembling their mothers but describe their infant sons primarily as big.
- The number and strength of gender-based attributions made by parents appear to be decreasing as people have become more educated about gender issues and as fathers, especially stay-at-home dads, play a larger role in the birthing and parenting process. Nevertheless, parental expectations of their infants based on the baby's gender persist.
- In part, children are directed into gender-appropriate activities and attitudes throughout childhood by the choices parents make for toys, room décor, and clothing the child wears. Perhaps even more important, children are rewarded by the subtle or not-so-subtle reactions of parents and others to the children's behaviors. Most parents are uncomfortable if their child engages in activities and behaviors that are gender-inappropriate. Parents and other important individuals in a child's life reward behaviors that conform to gender expectations and either withhold rewards for or punish behaviors that appear to violate those expectations.

- Mothers tend to interact with greater emotional warmth and responsiveness with girls but encourage greater independence in boys. Fathers typically spend more time and engage in more physical activity with their sons than with their daughters. This parental influence on children's gender development continues throughout childhood. Among school-age children, many parents maintain a distorted perception of their children's academic skills based on gender. As children grow up, these childhood gender-based experiences cause males and females to pursue different educational and professional paths, further reinforcing cultural gender stereotypes.