by Sally Casis Cheriel of The Register-Guard
When Pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock came out with his “Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care” in 1946, he suggested that a father get close to his son by playing baseball with him, and show appreciation of his daughter by complimenting her on her new dress or on the cookies she baked.
Today, Spock, now 78, says his early views were hopelessly sexist, that they reinforced traditional beliefs about the way males and females should perform in society.
For some modern-day parents, Spock is passe and in his place is a new tome of baby and child care entitled “Growing Up Free: Raising Your Child in the 80s” by Letty Cottin Pogrebin.
While Pogrebin (an editor and writer for Ms. Magazine) doesn’t tell what to do if the baby breaks out in a rash, she does have on how to raise children free from sex role constraints.
Spock himself endorses the book as “an essential, practical guide to (sex stereotyping) prevention and cure.”
Pogrebin looks at families, sexuality, toys, sports, the media, language, education, religion and other aspects of culture and society and asks the question: What is non-sexist childrearing and how does it work?
While she already has decided that non-sexist childrearing is desirable, she says, “at this point in history, we cannot raise our children in a world free of sexism. But we can try our best to rear free children at the same time as we work to change the world.”
Do others hold this view? Is non-sexist childrearing really desirable? Or possible? Are there parents who are trying to rear their children in a non-sexist way?
According to psychologist Beverly Fagot of the University of Oregon, more and more parents are articulating egalitarian views, yet there have been few changes in the dissimilar ways in which people treat boys and girls.
Fagot, who observes children at the UO’s child development laboratory, says, “It’s amazing how difficult it is to change styles of rearing children. We learn styles of interacting and don’t think about what we’ve learned. It just doesn’t get into the intellectual process.”
Fagot’s studies of 2-year-olds show that the two sexes are treated alike in many ways by parents, yet subtleties foster dependency in girls and independence in boys. She notes, for example, that girls are criticized more for being rambunctious; girls are readily offered help when they ask for it but such requests from boys are likely to be ignored or criticized, and girls are rewarded with attention when they stay close at hand, while boys are urged to go off and play by themselves.
She sees sex role stereotyping as “very destructive,” with both females and males paying a price: girls are not given the opportunity to develop their motor skills; boys do not learn to control aggression. As adults, many women suffer depression and sense they don’t control their lives; many men feel a lack of control over their aggressive impulses.
Fagot predicts slow, gradual behavioral changes toward non-sexist childrearing.
“With the women’s movement, women have begun to articulate what’s wrong with their role and they don’t want their children to fall into the same traps,” she says. Then, too, for a variety of reasons, men have taken an increasing interest in rearing children, she says, “and they’ve been forced to look at what skills they’ve lacked.”
Two parents who see the need for non-sexist childrearing are George and Pat Parsons of Eugene, who have a 6-year-old daughter, Megan, and a 9-year-old son, Brad.
“Before I had children,” George says, “I envisioned that they would be free from sex-role stereotypes. I have been only half successful because I over-estimated my own ability to help children avoid stereotypes and I underestimated the power of society inputting them into roles.”
George says that by talking with their children–not by remaining silent–he and Pat can point out what stereotyping they see and what the alternatives might be.
Though the Parsons children have limited access to television, if they see a show such as the “Dukes of Hazzard,” for example, the family might talk about how the women on the show do no thinking but are simply part of a decorative landscape, or about how the men are rough, not nurturing or vulnerable, he says.
The Parsons family is “traditional” in the sense that the father leaves home for work each day (he is an ordained Presbyterian minister who works as a marriage and family counselor) and the mother stays at home, though she designs and sews commercially in her workroom for about six hours a day.
Yet, the family is not traditional in other ways. He likes to cook; she takes responsibility for car maintenance, electrical and plumbing work. While she’s watching a football game on TV, he might be reading to the children. Both parents like the idea of their children viewing them in variety of ways.
“Children as individuals come into the world with different propensities and strengths,” George says. “It’s important that they have equal opportunity to explore their interests and develop their strengths. Since society is built on a narrow definition of what male and female should be, there is a need to be acutely aware of that, and to go beyond what society says our roles should be.
Girls must be aware that moving beyond sex-role stereotyping will be an uphill climb, he feels. “It’s important for my daughter to meet women involved in a variety of kinds of work and activities,” he says.
Fast-moving, decision-making, risk-taking females are not valued by society, he says. “Those aspects are not only not valued, but they are punished. Girls are told not to be so aggressive, that they ought to be nicer. There might be a withdrawal of parental support. In a thousand ways, they might be told to change. In addition, they are rewarded for behaving in an opposite manner.”
Even though, he admits, he may be unintentionally reinforcing some stereotypical behavior in his children, he wants both his son and daughter to have “the freedom to develop what’s inside of them, to learn skills necessary to become caring, cooperative human beings.”
“Being locked into sex-role stereotypes hasn’t worked, it hasn’t led to happiness,” he says. “It only enables people to use a part of themselves. Many people are doing the things society expects of them, yet they’re unhappy.”
Pat Parsons says she wants her children to have choices she didn’t make when she was young because, she says, her definition of her role as a female was too narrow. She went from being a top student in mathematics during three years of college to feeling pressure to opt for the “safer, more traditional field of home economics, she says.
She married George who was “handsome…somebody who was going to go out and do things, and I, known as the brain,’ was going to hide behind this guy the rest of my life,” she says.
Both Pat and George say they want their daughter to know she can explore many options in her life. “If she chooses a so-called traditional role, that’s OK, but it really should be her choice and the work she does in that role should be valued,” Pat says.
And they want their son to know he can be sensitive and vulnerable.
“I didn’t cry from about the age of 9 or 10 until age 24,” George says. “And the limits to what I know as a nurturing person, I learned as an adult. I’d rather my son not have that disadvantage.”
Like the Parsons, Eugene psychologist Susan Gilmore believes children should be sensitized to “the cultural realities of sexism.”
She’d like to see both males and females develop leadership skills to make things happen and also be cooperative and humanistic–what she calls “pro-active” and “pro-social.”
“Individuals who are narrowly defined in sex roles are the least well-adjusted,” she says.
“What’s important,” she says, “is that little girls and little boys know they are girls and boys and can do all kinds of things.”
As people age, she says, they have to learn how to cooperate and assist one another in all types of situations.
Most parents reinforce sexist thinking, she says, simply because they are unaware that they are placing people in defined roles; they don’t catch the nuances of their behavior.
“Most parents want their children to be happy in whatever they do,” Gilmore says.
Pogrebin, in her book, puts it this way:
“We do not have to choose between raising children to be sex-typed’ and raising children to be the same.’ We can simply help each child to become the fullest person possible.”
“We needn’t prove girls and boys radically different from each other in order for our daughters and sons to feel good about being themselves.”
“We don’t have to label them to love them.”
“And we needn’t prove them the same before we can offer them the same chances and choices.”
Reprinted with permission. Copyright 1981, The Register Guard, www.registerguard.com.