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FW: Perspectives on Gender
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From: Laban Hill <labanhill>
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 17:50:59 -0400
Forwarded Message From: Laban Hill Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 14:48:19 00 To: Thom Barthelmess Subject: Re: [ccbc-net] Perspectives on Gender
I think one thing people are not taking into consideration is the way that children develop. Though I'm not an expert, I know I've read this somewhere and I have definitely seen this happen with my kids and their friends. At some point when girls and boys are somewhere between 3 and 7 they gender identify to the extreme. Girls become obsessed with the symbols of femininity while boys do the same with masculinity. It always made sense to me when my daughter wore a dress every day to school, even to soccer practice, and even when she was skiing (cramming that dress into snowpants was a bear!). She also loved pink and played with Barbies. It seemed to me that she needed to be a girl in the extreme and understand female-ness before she could venture out into more ambiguous roles and identities. With this in mind these princess books and truck books seem just a healthy part of a child's development.
From an adult perspective, this over-identification made my skin crawl. I bought my daughters trucks just to see if I could offset it, but they never were interested in them. Ultimately, I had to get out of the way of my child's growth into her identity. Ironically, for all that pinkness and dresses, both my girls won't wear a dress now. Hmmm.
Laban Author of the YA Novel Casa Azul and the YA history Harlem Stomp!
On 7/21/05 2:27 PM, "Thom Barthelmess" wrote:
------ End of Forwarded Message
Received on Thu 21 Jul 2005 04:50:59 PM CDT
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 17:50:59 -0400
Forwarded Message From: Laban Hill Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 14:48:19 00 To: Thom Barthelmess Subject: Re: [ccbc-net] Perspectives on Gender
I think one thing people are not taking into consideration is the way that children develop. Though I'm not an expert, I know I've read this somewhere and I have definitely seen this happen with my kids and their friends. At some point when girls and boys are somewhere between 3 and 7 they gender identify to the extreme. Girls become obsessed with the symbols of femininity while boys do the same with masculinity. It always made sense to me when my daughter wore a dress every day to school, even to soccer practice, and even when she was skiing (cramming that dress into snowpants was a bear!). She also loved pink and played with Barbies. It seemed to me that she needed to be a girl in the extreme and understand female-ness before she could venture out into more ambiguous roles and identities. With this in mind these princess books and truck books seem just a healthy part of a child's development.
From an adult perspective, this over-identification made my skin crawl. I bought my daughters trucks just to see if I could offset it, but they never were interested in them. Ultimately, I had to get out of the way of my child's growth into her identity. Ironically, for all that pinkness and dresses, both my girls won't wear a dress now. Hmmm.
Laban Author of the YA Novel Casa Azul and the YA history Harlem Stomp!
On 7/21/05 2:27 PM, "Thom Barthelmess" wrote:
------ End of Forwarded Message
Received on Thu 21 Jul 2005 04:50:59 PM CDT
