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

[clawbug.livejournal.com]

Freud would have been proud of Jeremy :-D