How we Teach Children to be Gendered
Children’s gender concept and their understanding on gender issues are acquired overtime as they grow up. Children become gender stereotyped depending on how they are taught as they grow up. Moreover, the society and culture a child is born in highly dictates the gender lessons they learn and how they will cope with people who are not of their gender for the rest of their lives.
A child can learn to be gendered through experiences and interactions with the people surrounding them. First of all, a child needs to recognize whether they are male or female and they can only do that by being explained to by the people around them. According to Shields book Welcome to your world baby, the baby learnt many things through the big sister. She taught her how to bath, and even gave her favorite teddy bear to play with, through this, she learnt to be feminine (Shields, 2008). Through parents, siblings and relatives, a child can learn how to be feminine or masculine and how to cope up with people who are not of the opposite sex. The way a child is treated by the people around them will determine how they become.
Children learn to be gendered through social learning by imitating the behaviors they observe from people of their sex type. Most children tend to imitate the behaviors of others for example boys imitate their fathers or other males while girls imitate their mothers or other females around them (Bandura, 1963). An example is when a girl imitates the mother by pretending to cook with toys the time the mother is cooking. Through this, the child will identify with the mother since they are both female and she will learn how to cook by imitating the mother. Children will always watch what other people do and do it the same way. Children are taught how to be gendered by the people around them since they tend to copy and learn from them. A can be taught how to be gendered through the surrounding or by coping from what they see.
References
Shields, B. (2008). Welcome to your World Baby. New York: Harper Collins.
Bandura, A. (1963). Social Learning and Personality Development. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
