Sex Role Development

Boys are strong. Girls are graceful. Boys are policemen. Girls are meter maids. Boys are doctors. Girls are nurses. Boys invent things. Girls use what boys invent. Boys build houses. Girls keep houses. And when you grow up, Tough, aggressive, powerful, confident. These are words that are used to describe boys and men. Weak, fragile, incompetent, perhaps, illogical, emotional. These are the kind of phrases and words that people use to describe girls, women when they grow up. We don't know, of course, whether these really are God-given kind of characteristics of people, the way perhaps our society likes to believe, or maybe arbitrary characteristics of people essentially passed on to them by parents, by peers, playmates, by institutions that have sort of formal educational systems that tell people what they ought to be. The child is born and it either has a penis or it has female genitalia. The label is attached, all sorts of things start happening over and above the anatomy. Congratulations, Mr. Jones. It's a boy. Mr. Smith, it's a lovely, healthy girl. Now, Johnny, I told you big boys don't cry. Go back out there and hit Billy back. You can defend yourself without running to me. Johnny hit me in There, there, precious. Tell Mama what that mean nasty bully did to you. My hero. Susan, I just washed that dress. When will you ever learn to act like a lady? That Timmy. He's all boy. I told you that. Oh, silly. Boys don't play with paper dolls. Studies have demonstrated that the stereotypes exist in lots of different individual ways. One specific example is a study in which students were asked to rate the quality of a piece of research that was attributed very unobtrusively by presenting the name of the author to either a woman or a man. The results were that when attributed to a man, the article was judged to be of higher quality than when attributed to a woman. These kind of results occur again and again in a variety of fields, various sorts of studies. And the findings hold for both sexes. That is to say, the stereotypes exist in the minds of the men and of the women in these studies. Many stereotypes, of course, have some grains of truth and some associated with sexual stereotypes perhaps do. We don't know really what the grain of of truth is to the many stereotypes that we've mentioned. For example, there probably is, in fact, some physical difference between boys and girls, men and women, which has a pure biological basis, starting from genetics through hormones, anatomy, physiology, which makes, for example, uh men more successful runners, say, in a 100-yard dash. There's a clear difference in the speed with which boys, as compared to girls, can traverse a distance like this. But, of course, one of the important concepts growing out of sex role research is that of androgyny, namely, the idea that people can take the best of the sex roles associated with women, associated with men, and combine them in a creative fashion, which gives them essentially flexibility. Flexibility to act aggressively when the situation demands it. Flexibility to act emotionally when the situation demands it. The only way we can really be sure to what extent stereotypes are a function of biology or environment is to assume that people are absolutely malleable, can grow individually, and let's see where that takes us. This thing over here, what is that? Richard and Carol Friedlander are typical of the increasing number of parents exploring this non-traditional concept of androgyny. Their 3-year-old son, Joshua, reflects the open attitudes of his home environment. We're making lunch. You are, that's the truth. As a child, I was taught in the things around the house that one has to do for survival, like uh sewing on a button or cooking my own dinner or washing the dishes after I finished cooking or cleaning up the bathroom after I was finished in there. And there really was no separation of the sexes in terms of that. Everybody sort of cleaned up after themselves and took care of themselves. Pancakes just about ready. And I thought that was a very valid way to teach my own child. And that's what I've been trying to do. And I know Carol has been trying to do that. Just sort of being and not trying to separate roles and say one does this and one does that, but rather one does what has to be done. Mommy. Yeah. Where are you? Mhm, what smells so good? We can put some syrup on your pancakes. of us as three people living together, sharing things together, but within that sharing is the understanding that everybody is somewhat responsible for his own being. You know, we all love each other and we do things for one another, but there are certain things that you have to learn to do for yourself. Guys cooked, so I think I'm going to clean up. Would anybody help me? Oh, can I get any help around here? Let's go. Okay. Part of eating is cleaning up after you finished eating and finished cooking. And there are times when I'll do the cleaning up, and times when Carol will do the cleaning up, and inevitably Joshua will be a part of it, regardless of who the leader is. Cuz we all sort of pitch in. Is this my job or yours? Um. Yours. It's just a part part and parcel of everything that's being done. Oh, thank you. One more time. the the idea Taking charge of of his knowing that you would put the same amount of energy into the fun thing of making the pancakes as you would into the maybe not so much fun thing of cleaning up afterwards. I wouldn't want him to feel that there are things that are more valid or less valid for him because he happens to be male. I think that many people make distinctions between boys and girls from the minute that they're born. I think that they have in their mind the direction that they want their male child to go, and their female child to go, and they begin preparing them from that for that from birth. Um that's not my philosophy. That seems It seems to me that preparing a child from birth to be something is a goal-oriented life, and to me that that seems to remove so much of just growing up and being happy in the world. So much of life is missed when you're constantly looking ahead as to what you're going to be when you grow up, and what you're going to do when you grow up. So I would try to avoid that at all costs. It does upset me to see other people doing it, but that's really not my business, and I would hope that some of what we do around other people would rub off on them, and maybe they will stop pushing their children in those directions. Richard has often used the example of the horse with blinders on. When you set your sights for something, and you're looking off into the distance, sometimes you miss some really lovely things along the way. And what we hope that we're doing is letting Joshua grow up without blinders on. And if he wants to move to the left or to the right of the straight ahead, I like to to hope that we've given him the opportunity to do it. Here I am. How are you this morning? Very well, I thank you. Run away. Run away. Oh, that was good. I feel secure in Joshua's relationship with his father. The most important factor in this in my mind is Richard. He knows that he's a man. And I think that his security in who he is will be shown to Joshua. Emotion is an important motivating factor towards doing things in life. Feeling a great love, crying when when you feel the need to cry, laughing when you feel the need to laugh. I I myself can't segregate these things and say one is good and one is bad. Do you want to read this with me, Josh? What is Right now, we don't have the proper feedback from the world to determine whether what we're doing is right or not. It just feels right and seems proper and it's just part of being alive. Can you do another one? How about this one? Little boy, little come blow your horn. The sheep's in the meadow. The cow's in the corn. Where is the little boy who looks after the sheep? On the haystack. Fast asleep. Fast asleep. No. No. The world expands. Parental influence declines. Teachers, peers, and playmates predominate. Pacific Oaks is one of many schools concerned with maintaining a non-stereotyped environment during these formative years. When we talk about development, we include all of the things that um go to make up a child's total growth. And though we are involved in an educational setting, we are very concerned with aspects that are sometimes neglected in the education of the child. One of those, uh in the area of emotional development, has to do with how children develop their sex role identity. And from the research, um the indications are that typically in the preschool years, this becomes a critical time for a child's sex role development. In providing experiences that are the same for boys and girls, we hope to get rid of some of the artificial differences that we once thought perhaps were significant. And through that process, discover then what really might be the important and significant differences between men and women in our particular society. You're doing a good job. You're getting really good at that. Oh, I'm getting it. Getting it? Maybe if I hold it, it will help you. Like that? Uh-huh. Just like that. And then we need one about one more right here. Okay. You know something something me and Kim found out, you can sew right over the top of these. It's really Yeah, it's really neat. Let me put it on here. I hold I hold it like this, right? You can put one hand on this side, and then I'll help you, uh if, you know, when it starts coming to. Here we go. So, I I try to provide, you know, a well-rounded experience. daily staff meetings, the Pacific Oaks teachers continually re-evaluate the goals and philosophies they share. I mean, we value the whole person. You know, really the Pat says it much better than I do. Right. That it's a celebration of the human being, you know, an environment that supports an individual arriving at their own level. I think what happens sometimes in the yards in general, and it transcends the whole thing of of the sex roles, is really the formulation of of helping relationships between people in general, using the the term people once again, because children in the yard discover that there might be a child, who could be a girl or a boy, who's really able to do something, let's say, at the carpentry table, or or somewhere else, and he or she can call upon that other person to help do that. So, I think we we we tend not to to dwell on talking about, you know, male and female roles, rather we we tend to talk about the formulation of helping relationships between people, and I think that makes that makes it a lot easier to deal with, especially with It slips in every once in a Yeah, right. You know, that we do a sexist trip inadvertently. Very vividly recall an incident just recently in the in the group where it was time to feed the animals, and we had to go way up to the other yard to pick up the hay and the alfalfa, and I asked uh if I could have two strong boys to go with me to help, and I realized right away that I didn't need two strong boys, but I needed two strong children, because the job was, you know, something that would require a certain amount of strength, not a whole lot, but they didn't necessarily have to be boys, but that was just my mindset that it really was the boys who were the strong ones. I think that, you know, this whole opening up and and freeing of the roles of the adults in terms of what you can do with the kids, what you can wear for us as teachers is really important uh as a, you know, role model for the kids, you know, being able to be with a man and do kinds of typically women things or be with the women and do, you know, kind of typically uh men things. As as the classroom, as the school environment continues to become more and more surrogate family and extended family as as the nuclear family becomes smaller, you know, we do in fact function as as uh parents for the children. And to have a balanced family in a school environment in terms of both, you know, men and women uh is important. The whole message I want to convey to to children, to parents, and to staff is that all of us are people first and foremost, and we are a sex second. And that our relationship relationships are person-to-person, and it's not either maleness or femaleness, it's peopleness. Um I don't know, I just think that there's still a lot of open questions involved. And that our goal is not necessarily to make men and women the same, but the goal is more to discover what are some possible real significant differences. Do you remember the noodles that we had once before? Yeah. We decided we cook some more for snack today. This is worm? Huh? This is a worm? No. Remember, these are noodles. Can we throw these away? What is this for? This is for the the noodles that we're going to fry. This. This. Do that. You go and help Francis on the other Although teachers obviously have a strong influence on the school-age child, children themselves begin to exert an ever-increasing influence on each other. Pacific Oaks, as well as many secondary schools, has achieved a high measure of success in creating an atmosphere that shows children we don't reject people who are different from the stereotypes, neither should you. If you are a boy who wants to learn to cook, we will teach you. If you are a girl who enjoys math or science, we will encourage you. The values of these institutions filter down to the children, and they learn to accept each other as individuals. But the child must also learn how to deal with a world in which many stereotypes still abound. This person who wrote this book really didn't understand what a lot of you understand, that moms and dads can do both things. Here it says boys are strong and girls are graceful. Oh, what do we have here? Doctor. And this picture only shows a girl being a nurse, doesn't it? But boys are nurses, too, and I think the person that wrote this book didn't understand that. It's a lot of things this guy didn't know. Oh, here's boys build things and girls keep house. I'm glad you're a girl, and I'm glad you're a boy. We need each other, and that is absolutely true. The experiments that our society is undertaking both individually by families trying to rear their children in non-sexist ways, by the social movements that are going on, may turn out to be failures in the long run. That is to say, although they bring about changes, it may turn out that these changes are somehow not natural to human nature, whatever human nature is. And consequently, the next generation, the generation after that, may completely reject these ideas. May turn around and may say, "We demand a differentiation. You've taken away from us cues that we consider very important. Give them back. Do not eliminate these crutches, these ideas that that have straightjacketed people. They do have function. Give us some aspect of them back." My guess is that they're going to have an interplay. We'll move along in one direction for a while, then we'll probably move back, and perhaps over the long run we'll find out what might be ideal for people as best we can.