Let’s Teach to Be Both Independent and Nurturing: Teaching Children Psychological Androgyny
By Michelle Jecha
When parents find out the sex of their baby, they usually give into the gender stereotypical toys and decorations. Boys having trucks, dinosaurs, and everything blue. While girls have dolls, princesses, and the color pink. Girls will often be praised for dressing in cute dresses, whereas a little boy who wants to wear a princess dress may be laughed at or even scolded. This differential reinforcement from parents and society can influence a child’s gender development.
Children are influenced into gender stereotyped roles from the beginning. Society teaches gender roles consistent with biological sex early on. Psychological androgyny is having positive masculine and feminine traits in a person. For example, positive stereotypically feminine traits could be “nurturing” or “patient” and positive stereotypically masculine traits could be “independent” or “ambitious.” Psychological androgyny has many benefits for people that perceive themselves as having characteristics from both genders. It has been proven that people with both characteristics have mental health advantages, higher self-esteem, and report feeling little pressure for gender differentiation (1). Androgyny has also been shown to have an effect on communication skills later in life. Someone who has androgynous characteristics tends to be able to communicate with people of the opposite sex better in social and professional settings (2). As you can see, there are many long-term benefits to supporting psychological androgyny development, but you may be wondering “how can I encourage this in my children?” There are many simple things to do to help promote androgyny in the home.
Credit: Paul Windle, The New York Times Sunday Review
One way to encourage psychological androgyny in children is to model flexible gender roles. A way parents can model flexible gender roles is by having equality in tasks in the home. When a couple becomes parents, it can be very easy to fall into traditional gender roles, this is called parental imperative. It is important to model equality of roles in the home. Some examples are parents taking turns driving, cleaning, or cooking. By modeling equality in traditional gender roles, it shows children that they don’t need to restrain themselves to stereotypical gender roles.
Another obvious way to encourage androgyny is toys. Provide toys typical to both genders. This allows a child to play with whatever they want and not be influenced by the only toys available. Boys may be more likely to pick a truck over a baby doll, but it is important to give them the option to play with what they want and not discourage them to play with typically girl toys. All toys can have developmental effects on a child no matter the gender. A baby doll can teach a little boy to be nurturing and Nerf guns can teach a little girl assertiveness or power.
It can be very influential to talk about and show children males and females in a range of occupations. Children observe from society and media stereotypical gender occupations. Doctors and firefighters are usually portrayed as men, whereas nurses and secretaries are portrayed as women. This is very important to talk about with children because a parent wants their child to be whatever they want and not give into societal stereotypes. In particular, girls need to be encouraged and shown that they can also hold powerful jobs. In recent times, there has been more of an increase in equality between men and women in the workplace, but attitudes still favor men in the workplace and women having fewer hours working.
The media plays a big role in portraying traditional male and female gender stereotypes and this should be avoided. We all know the movies with the women in distress and the male hero has to save her in some way or another. These types of movies bring out the negative stereotypical traits in men (e.g. aggressive, dominance) and women (e.g. submissive, dependent). Not only are gender stereotypes seen in movies, but they are also in child programming. Often there are gender stereotyped color schemes (i.e. pink vs blue) depending on what gender is the target audience. Avoiding media that portrays gender stereotypes allows a child to avoid that observational learning of gender stereotyped roles.
To summarize, there are many ways to support psychological androgyny in children. Here is a list of ways to encourage androgyny in children:
Model flexible gender roles
Provide toys typical to both genders
Encourage play with peers across genders
Talk about and show males and females in a range of occupations
Avoid media that portrays traditional male and female gender stereotypes
Focus on anatomy as the primary difference between boys and girls
These changes in a family can help prompt psychological androgyny in healthy ways. Everyone wants their child to be the best that they can be. By encouraging positive traits from both genders, parents can encourage children to be who they are and not be confined by gender stereotypes.
References
(1) Pauletti, R.E., Menon, M., Cooper, P.J., Aults, C.D., & Perry, D.G. (2017). Psychological androgyny and children’s mental health: A new look with new measures. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, 76(11-12), 705-718.
(2) How to Enhance Communication Between the Sexes: The Androgynous Bridge Part II, Psychology Today.
(3) Sigelman, C.K., & Rider, E.A. (2017) Life-Span Human Development 9th Edition. Cengage Learning.
Image 2: Paul Windle, The New York Times Sunday Review