Stereotypes In Children

I chose to go to the local park in my town, as a parent myself, I know that park gets very busy and it’s hard to keep up on monitoring your child due to gender stereotyping. One of the most obvious gender differences in children is the clothing and its color. When the children were running around it seemed easier to find your son over your daughter. The reason why is because boys are wearing whatever color, meanwhile the girls are all dressed in pink or purple with a few exceptions. When the girls got into a group to talk there was an overload of pink clothing and it became hard to tell them apart.
As I continued on and I observe the interaction differences between the parents and children, you can see that boys and girls play and are raised
Parents are who influences the children to what is appropriate for their gender and not appropriate especially at a young age. Parents raise their boys to play rougher, they are raised to play with army men, guns, and fighting/wrestling. This brings up a situation I was faced with at a children’s birthday party I attended with my daughter over the summer. There were 3 boys on the trampoline jumping around and play fighting. In my opinion they were getting too rough with each other, so I told them “boys take it easy before someone gets hurt” their reply back to me was “We’re boys this is what we are supposed to do.” I know the boys and their family and the response I got back from the boys I know was influenced by their father, who feels boys should be tough. This is considered to be called gender socialization, gender socialization is a role that is learned according to a person’s sexual gender. Usually the first person to expose this to children is the child’s
Our society views men as superior compared to women, boys become aware of this and makes boys want to uphold that role. Boys are told that girls are special and fragile and they should protect the girls and never hurt them and girls are told that the role of boys is to protect them. Parents raise their girls telling/showing them how to care for babies and how to cook meals. Then we have mass media which influences children into their gender roles by promoting toys and games geared towards a specific gender (Example girls- toy kitchens and baby dolls. Boys- pretend tool sets, police or fireman costumes.) Peers also play a role in gender socialization by teasing a friend for wearing a certain shirt that may seem to girly or boyish. I have witnessed this first hand with my daughter getting teased for playing with a toy dinosaurs from her female friends because they have been told that dinosaurs are for boys. I have learned from my own personal experiences regardless of how much parents try not to use gender socialization it will always be a part of our lives, it’s everywhere you