Parents and children negotiating gender assumptions

[firecat]

This article was going around Facebook:

http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/babiespregnancy/babies/article/995112--parents-keep-child-s-gender-secret

This reminds me of the anecdote about psychologist Sandra Bem's son, as told in her book An Unconventional Family. One day her four-year-old son, Jeremy, decided to wear barrettes in his hair to school. She wrote:

Several times that day, another little boy had asserted that Jeremy must be a girl, not a boy, because "only girls wear barrettes." After repeatedly insisting that "Wearing barrettes doesn't matter; I have a penis and testicles," Jeremy finally pulled down his pants to make his point more convincingly. The other boy was not impressed. He simply said, "Everybody has a penis; only girls wear barrettes."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Bem

Comments

[trinker]

I have seen good and bad homeschooling with an external curriculum, with a parent-driven curriculum, with a child driven (unschooling) curriculum...and good and bad traditional schooling.

I think it's too easy to point out the failures of unschooling, while disregarding the failures of other forms. (Then again, I've seen some really horrendous abuses that were possible because the children were isolated, and I'm not sweeping those under the carpet!)

[teigh_corvus]

I completely agree. There's no perfect type of schooling available, really. It sounds like the older children in this particular case are happy and getting enough outside socialization. But it also sounds like the eldest is starting to run into some problems - though not from his schooling. I wish there was an easy way to make room for children's unique selves in the world.