Zischler 1

Jasmin Zischler
Professor Banta
Family and Human Studies 2450
10 September 2015
U1 Essay 2
Question:
OPTION I: GENDER STEREOTYPES
With parental permission, interview a preschool or early elementary-age boy and girl.
Ask them what being a "boy" or "girl" means. Ask them whether particular occupations are boy
or girl jobs (i.e. Are doctors girls or boys? Are teachers girls or boys? Can a girl be a firefighter?
Can a Dad stay home and take care of children?). Report on your findings. Did you see evidence
of gender stereotypes? What can parents and teachers do to lessen the impact of gender
stereotyping?
Answer:
I have interviewed a boy and a girl both five years of age. There is my child; I will refer
to it as child 1, and the other child as child 2. I do not intent to reveal the sex of either child in
order to prevent stereotypes and to simply make it more interesting.
As soon as pregnancy and once I started raising my child in this culture, I realized how
many gender stereotypes and gender expectations exist here. It always has agitated and bothered
me to be put into a certain category or categories by people. It is even more troublesome for me
to have my child exposed and influenced by such narrow behavior. I try my hardest to keep my
childs mind open for all sorts of possibilities and alternatives of peoples lifestyles and choices.

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Often I host several other older neighborhood children in my house and they project their
gender stereotypes and expectations of them onto my child. Oftentimes I have had to intervene
and ask them if they truly think so about a subject, or if is a prejudice way to think and behave
towards the given subject. They have never been challenged to rethink some of this conduct
before.
When my child started expressing some of these gender stereotypes I worked hard to
break those borders down and to show child 1 that those are not attributes to define a person. I
interviewed my child and asked child 1 if there is a job that women cannot do. Child 1 could not
think of anything, I even given child 1 some hints and asked about certain job titles, but child 1
stated that there is not one job that women could not be able to perform. I asked child 1 if there
are jobs that men would not be able to do, child 1 could also not think of anything that men could
not perform in. I than asked child one if there is anything that man or women cannot do. Child
one replied that man cannot grow and nurse babies and that women cannot fertilize a womens
egg cell with sperm. I was happy.
I asked child 2 the same questions and child 2 displayed several gender stereotypes. Boys
cannot wear dresses, they cannot wear pink. Men hunt and women do not. Women are not
firefighters or fix cars. Women are teachers and take care of children. I was a little shocked to
hear that. I did give child 2 some examples to challenge the childs view of some of these
subjects.
Parents and teachers can lessen the impact of stereotyping by being more excepting of
androgyny and by not allowing gender specific stereotypes into their classroom or home. By
not supporting statements made by children about gender specific behavior but to challenge such
thinking by providing alternative thinking methods and to support exploring the other gender

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specific expectations. Also by being a great example of displaying equality towards all genders
and to welcome discussions about it.