Gender Spectrum

1647 Words7 Pages
Parents’ Perception on Gender Spectrum. In a society that is negatively rich with gender biases and stereotypes, children eventually resort in adopting gender roles which does not necessarily give fair perception to both sexes. Children who are exposed to both internal and external factors shapes their attitudes and behaviors towards traditional gender roles as they move through stages of adolescence and ultimately in adulthood. Witt (1997) argued that these attitudes, character, and behaviors are learned at firstly at home which are then heightened by the school experience, child’s friends or peers, and television viewing and other external factors after social bonds are formed outside a family setting. However, it is primarily the family…show more content…
It is difficult and almost impossible “for a child to grow into an adult without having experienced some form of gender bias or stereotyping." (Witt, 1987) It may be the notion that boys are always better than girls at math or the idea that only females are capable of nurturing children. Martin, Woord, & Little (1990) said that “when children develop towards adulthood, the gender stereotypes of which that are indoctrinated to them at home are reinforced and exponentially heightened by other factors in their surrounding and are thus sustained throughout their whoe childhood and on into adolescence.” In 1994, Santrock suggested that multiplicity of ideas, attitudes, characters, behaviors, perceptions, and beliefs that a child is exposed to will eventually influence directly him. These ideas will soon shape his or her sense of self, or self-concept and…show more content…
These gender stereotypes will eventually become deeply entrenched and doctrinated beliefs and thus become a part of the child’s concept of self. Parents contributes to the first notion of the children about trsditional gender roles according to Santrock (1994) and Kaplan (1991). Parents treat sons and daughters differently, From the time of their children’s incipience, dressing infants in traditional gender specific colors like pink for girls and blue for men, giving gender differentiated toys like dolls and trucks, and expecting different behavior from either genders like brave and shy (Thorne, 1993). According to Rubin, Provenzano, & Luria (1974), a study shows that “there is a whole world difference in the parents’ expectations on their sons and daughters which is formed as early as a day after the child was born.” These messages about gender are received by the children early in their childhood years primarily from their parents. This awareness of adult gender role differences is evident in twenty-four-month-old children (Weinraub, et al., 1984). A study suggests that children at thirty months of age already know how to stereotype gender in describing their
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