Kids and Gender
Anonymous, via Pinterest
Whether we like it or not, we live in a world where our everyday lives are affected by gender norms. They are reinforced by family, friends, neighbors, community youth workers, and the media. Often times, these guidelines for living influence how our children perceive themselves, those around them, and the situations they confront daily. In many ways, parents can help shape how their children process these gender norms, but there are notable biological and social forces to contend with that leave their mark on children as well.
John Colapinto’s 2001 book, As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who was Raised as a Girl, underscores the power of biology while documenting the dramatic real life events of a twin baby boy who was born in 1965. Two years later, responding to the child’s botched circumcision, his parents made the agonizing decision to have the child undergo medical treatment and surgery to alter his gender and raise the child as their daughter. In adolescence, after years of uneasiness, the child rejected his assigned gender and ultimately transitioned to live his life as David Reimer—first as a teenage boy, and then as a man.
More recently, many are familiar with the media hype surrounding Bruce Jenner's recent public announcement in an interview with ABC's correspondent Diane Sawyer that after more than 60 years he is transitioning to be a woman. Best known to younger generations as the father on the reality TV show Keeping Up With the Kardashians, and revered by older generations as the ultra athletic 1976 USA Olympic decathlon champion, Bruce is raising public consciousness about the challenges transgender people confront, both as children and parents.
Fortunately, very few dads have to deal with the anxiety that goes with such weighty decisions about children’s gender identities or their own. Instead, most dads turn their attention to more mundane, yet consequential aspects of raising boys and girls that relate to emotions, appearance, dieting, bullying, sports, dating, sexuality, education and career aspirations, domestic responsibilities, and other everyday concerns. In recent decades, dads increasingly recognize the negative consequences that rigid, conventional norms can produce for their children. In today’s fast-paced society, dads with more progressive views about masculinity, femininity, and gender equality tend to be better equipped to help their sons and daughters navigate their social worlds. Even though gender equality for kids and adults has evolved considerably in recent decades, dads still face unique, gender-relevant challenges raising sons and daughters (see links here to the sons and daughters subpages).
John Colapinto’s 2001 book, As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who was Raised as a Girl, underscores the power of biology while documenting the dramatic real life events of a twin baby boy who was born in 1965. Two years later, responding to the child’s botched circumcision, his parents made the agonizing decision to have the child undergo medical treatment and surgery to alter his gender and raise the child as their daughter. In adolescence, after years of uneasiness, the child rejected his assigned gender and ultimately transitioned to live his life as David Reimer—first as a teenage boy, and then as a man.
More recently, many are familiar with the media hype surrounding Bruce Jenner's recent public announcement in an interview with ABC's correspondent Diane Sawyer that after more than 60 years he is transitioning to be a woman. Best known to younger generations as the father on the reality TV show Keeping Up With the Kardashians, and revered by older generations as the ultra athletic 1976 USA Olympic decathlon champion, Bruce is raising public consciousness about the challenges transgender people confront, both as children and parents.
Fortunately, very few dads have to deal with the anxiety that goes with such weighty decisions about children’s gender identities or their own. Instead, most dads turn their attention to more mundane, yet consequential aspects of raising boys and girls that relate to emotions, appearance, dieting, bullying, sports, dating, sexuality, education and career aspirations, domestic responsibilities, and other everyday concerns. In recent decades, dads increasingly recognize the negative consequences that rigid, conventional norms can produce for their children. In today’s fast-paced society, dads with more progressive views about masculinity, femininity, and gender equality tend to be better equipped to help their sons and daughters navigate their social worlds. Even though gender equality for kids and adults has evolved considerably in recent decades, dads still face unique, gender-relevant challenges raising sons and daughters (see links here to the sons and daughters subpages).
