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

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I used to wear barrettes when I was a small child, too. My mother told me that people might mistake me for a girl if I did so. I asked her why that would be a bad thing. She said that, if it didn't bother me, then it wasn't a bad thing, and bought the barrettes for me -- she had just wanted to let me know.