Gender Creativity and Parenting
Parents in today’s world face many issues regarding their children and often search for skills to achieve best parenting strategies. Such a trending issue is gender creativity, which journalist Sabrina Erderly presents in her article named “About a Girl: Coy Mathis’ Fight to Change Gender” which was published in Rolling Stones magazine. Coy Mathis is a gender creative child who struggles to part from her biological identity to establish herself as a girl in an embracing community. This real story portrays the issue of gender creativity, the role of society around a gender creative child, and most importantly, the role of parents. Writer Ryan Harty points out a similar concept and parenting strategy in his science fiction story, “Why the Sky Turns Red When the Sun Goes Down” which is about a mechanical child named Cole and his human parents Mike and Dana. In his story, Harty illustrates this fictional character with a very common situation often experienced by many real world children. In the story, Cole is describes as a D-3 child- a notion of mechanical human common in Cole’s life. Cole’s parents, Mike and Dana, adopt him in place of a real child and face many problems. Like other machines, Cole sometimes malfunctions and breaks down. He twitches his hands, rotates his head in abnormal ways, and unintentionally hits himself damaging his own body. While tackling this problem, Cole’s parents disagree about his future and argue whether to upgrade him to D-4. Cole’s father, Mike, does not want to change him since it would mean a child with a completely different personality. On the other hand, Dana, Cole’s mother, does not want to deal with his malfunctioning anymore and wants to repair him. Cole’s mo...
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...e D4. Same might happen with Dana. Consequently, they could reach out to communities of D4 children and investigate further about Cole’s condition based upon his will.
Mike and Dana had a nice relationship which came to a brink as they started to disagree about the future of their only robot son. They did not take their time to logically think and investigate Cole’s issue and were influenced by outside people to come to a split decision. Even though Mike did his part best supporting Cole mentally, he failed to consider Cole’s future and did not foresee that he might lose him forever. Dana lacked the sympathy toward Cole’s present condition which did nothing more than worsening Cole’s condition by making him depress and feel guilty. Thus, the parents’ indecisive and rushing manner toward their son covered both their relationship and their son’s future with darkness.
In the short story, The Fall of a City, by Alden Nowlan, Teddy’s dreams are crushed by his uncle when his dreams should remain true till the day he achieves his dreams and his uncle’s stereotypical behaviour influenced teddy is a negative way. It is important for children to pursue the personality and dreams they want to take with them into their future. Firstly, adult’s stereotypical behaviour can influence a children's future choices, but children should have their own dreams and goals to pursue so they get the life they deserve. “Paper dolls and doll houses. An eleven-year-old boy!” (Alden Nowlan, 133). We see how gender stereotypes come in the way of children achieving their goals and dreams since society tend to follow stereotypes every
Children develop their first sense of self at around age four, when they develop metacognition. (Berk, 2006) In pursuit of their self, they start to develop personal identities, informing their likes and dislikes as well as their disposition. Although children are born into a certain sex, they do not immediately develop a sense of gender. Their gender forms at the same time as their sense of self, by observing their outside environment. But even before the child understands their sense of self, they are already placed into gender specific play from around age 2 (Zosuls, 2007).
A child born in hopelessness is bound to hopelessness until guidance from a good, healthy, influential adult. After Yummy shot Dean his face hit the news and everyone had an opinion. One reporter had this to say, “This young kid fell through the cracks. If this child was protected 5 years ago, you save 2 people. You
Kane displays five different ways of parenting based on gender. She first introduces us to the Naturalizers. Naturalizers practice traditional values when raising their child. They believe in the concept of “it was how they were born” (Kane, 2012. p. 53). The mere definition explains to us that the biological outlooks outweigh the social outlooks. Naturalizers believe that differences are vital to gender. Next, the reader learns of a group named Cultivators. Cultivators believe that gender is socially constructed in the parents influence. Although this is deemed true by them, Kane shows the reader how Cultivators still adhere to the traditional value of young men but are okay with young women being nontraditional (taking out trash, doing
I watched the foreign film Ma Vie en Rose (My Life in Pink), a Belgian film by filmmaker Alain Berliner. It is a warm, startling, funny, and realistic study of what happens when a seven-year-old boy is convinced, beyond all reason and outward evidence to the contrary, that he is really a girl. His certitude is astonishing in one so little, and his gender conviction is so strong that his belief can't be laughed away as the result of a “phase” or an “active imagination.” Yet the crux of Ma Vie en Rose is not a study of trans-gendered children per se, despite the fact that such sensational subject matter would seem to be surefire material for attention-grabbing moviemaking. You're never even quite certain about the long-term psychological ramifications of young Ludovic's obsession: Is he trans-gendered, a transvestite, gay, or straight? Such determinations are not the movie's concern. What Ma Vie en Rose is interested in is what it means to be a “difficult” child, a child who whose difference always sets him apart, and what it means to be the parents of such a child. Here we see some cultural differences with the characters.
Michael soon decides that if he can trust Joe enough to keep in silence, he may be able to out wit the police. When Michael makes his decision, he never considers the ramifications that will come of it. For example, Michael never even considers the long agonizing nights he will stay awake or the ling pain filled days he will go through thinking of Jenna Ward and her mother suffering day after day. On the contrary, Michael thinks he will be able to just move on and forget about it.
Kane, E. (2012) The Gender Trap: Parents and the Pitfalls of Raising Boys and Girls. NYU Press: USA
How do children learn to be men or women? Penelope Eckert is a professor of linguistics and anthropology at Stanford University and Sally McConnell-Ginet is a professor of linguistics at Cornell University. They wrote an article “Learning to Be Gendered,” published in 2013 in the book “Language and Gender.” The authors argue that society has many ways to shape children's gender by children behaviors since their birth. Eckert and Ginet show to the readers that the parent teaches their children behavior. The author is using ethos, logos, and pathos to support the thesis statement.
Cole Matthews was fifteen years old. He lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota until his banishment to Drake Island, Alaska. Cole was a bully, and beat up Peter Driscal when he ratted Cole out about a break-in Cole committed. Cole was an independent kid that thought the world revolved around him until he completely changed on Drake Island. Now Cole has gained forgiveness from Peter due to Cole’s devotion to heal Peter.
Parenting may be said as an experiment, because every parent has different views and ways of raising their own children. Parents raise their child in such ways in which they believe is beneficial and healthy for the child. A story that came across media news about a baby, Storm, being raised as “genderless” fueled a controversy in defiance of gender stereotyping. The Witterick family in Canada believed that by acknowledging this practice it would, “tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a standup to what the world could become in Storm’s lifetime” (Davis and James). However, in terms of raising a genderless child, this can cause the child to be unprepared to face the conventional norms or society. This practice may be causing the child a disservice.
Parent/Child relationships are very hard to establish among individuals. This particular relationship is very important for the child from birth because it helps the child to be able to understand moral and values of life that should be taught by the parent(s). In the short story “Teenage Wasteland”, Daisy (mother) fails to provide the proper love and care that should be given to her children. Daisy is an unfit parent that allows herself to manipulated by lacking self confidence, communication, and patience.
... growth where a child is forced to start looking for solutions for everything that is wrong instead of simply being a child. This analysis prove that children have their own way of seeing things and interpreting them. Their defense mechanisms allow them to live through hard and difficult times by creating jokes and games out of the real situation. This enables then to escape the difficulties of the real world.
...ninity. Thus, through sexuality alone, gender is not purely established by agency, there is a social structure which has a great influence on it. Children songs, further this notion of social structure, through its ability to become a demonstrator for what each genders role is. The songs establish femininity as the nurturer and housekeeper, while it shows masculinity as the provider and laborer. Thus, we can see that agency fails to fully establish gender; social structure plays a huge part in creating gender through demonstrating gender roles. Both sexuality and children’s songs become self-fulfilling prophecies as well as examples of what true femininity and masculinity are. Ultimately, without social structure aiding in the development of gender, the very idea of gender and gender roles could not exists as there would be no basis for creation of such a concept.
This article showed some of the common opinions regarding gender-neutral parenting. Many parents have started to see some of the issues with “traditional” parenting styles that limit the possibilities of their children exploring different gender norms. With a shift on the views of gender and sexuality in our nation, many parents have begun to recognize the need for their children to figure out their gender through experiences and preferences. This idea is allowing children to be more fluid when it comes to gender, being able to experience their world in ways many people have been limited in generations prior. This will also allow parents to break down gender stereotypes from an early age, which could eliminate a lot of gender-based prejudice.
Gender roles are extremely important to the functioning of families. The family is one of the most important institutions. It can be nurturing, empowering, and strong. Some families are still very traditional. The woman or mother of the family stays at home to take care of the children and household duties. The man or father figure goes to work so that he can provide for his family. Many people believe that this is the way that things should be. Gender determines the expectations for the family. This review will explain those expectations and how it affects the family.