This week our assignment was to watch two different videos about gender roles/stereotypes. In the first video it had a bunch of young kids between the ages of four and six and they were being asked simple questions about gender roles and who would do what in the house.
I thought it was crazy how much they already knew about what the difference of boys and girls were supposed to do. The second video we watched was with kids who were a little older, maybe in Jr. High or middle school who were being asked the same question. These kids also knew right away what was right or wrong by social terms for a man and a woman to do/wear/say. One thing that I thought it was really intriguing and shows how much a child can be taught is when they were asking the older kids who would work, who would clean the house and who would take care of the baby. For the younger generations they were so confident that the female would be cleaning the house and taking care of the baby and the man would be working. The reasons why were because ‘boys like to do boy things and girls like to do girly things.’ The older kids, however, were able to recognize that not just one gender was assigned to do certain things in life. One of the older kids even said that each doll, the male doll and the female doll, could do either of all of the tasks that were being asked. I definitely thing this is a great thing to teach your children, especially in these times. It’s almost rare these days