Week 4: Socialization and Gender

          Talking about gender and education this week really made me reflect on my job working at a day care in high school.  I usually worked with 3 and 4 year olds and their sense of gender at that age was incredible.  There was rarely a time when you saw the boys and girls playing together, because they were all interested in different things already.  There was too many times when I had to get in between an innocent fight between the boys before they got hurt.  After I would break up the fight they would get made at me because they were trying to see who was "stronger".  It is incredible that at that age they are already worried about being masculine and one-upping each other.  On the other hand, the girls were much more delicate and would always want to play house and read princess books.  At one point I did not even need to look at the words on the pages of Sleeping Beauty because I had had it memorized from reading it so many times.  Surprisingly, there were problems with reading books too, because they would fight over who go to sit on my lap or who got to lean on my shoulder.  Once again, I was so intrigued about how young their feminine sides showed and how they had to be near or touching each other all the time.

          I also saw examples of this when I was a nanny for two summers in a row.  The first summer it was just a one year old girl who I was watching, so the gender roles were a little less obvious.  She would play will all her toys, whether they were neutral or feminine, and not worry about a thing.  In the spring, she was blessed with a little brother and just like that her feminine side came shining through.  She no longer played with her neutral toys, saying they were for her little brother because they were "boy toys".  She would only dress up in Disney Princess outfits, and when I would try to get her brother involved and put one of her dresses on him she would start crying saying that he was a boy so he was not allowed to like princesses.  It is amazing that at such a young age she knew about gender roles and stuck by them like she was under oath.  I’m curious to see if this ever goes away, or if she will forever be connected with these roles.