In this article, Tara Culp-Ressler discusses gender roles
and the impact they have on children. I think this article is particularly
interesting because it brings up a study recently done on children, by Dr Maria
do Mar Pereira, who did a study on teenagers by acting as a student for a few
months in a Grade Eight class.
In this study, Pereira found that girls would avoid sports
and put themselves on diets because they thought they were “feminine.” She also
found that boys would face extreme pressure to show off their “manliness” by
being violent towards each other.
The author, Culp-Ressler, goes on to discuss how we can help
change what the results of the study told us. At the end of the study, Pereira
held single and group interviews, and ended up telling the teenagers that
nobody liked conforming to those gender roles. Afterwards, Pereira found that
there was less mocking and teasing, and the teenagers weren’t so adamant about
sticking to their specific gender roles.
Culp-Ressler proceeds to examine how “pressuring kids to
conform to those rigid roles can end up having serious mental
health consequences for the children whose parents try to over-correct
their behavior.” Essentially, she says that while gender roles are harmful
to children and their health as found in Pereira’s study and through the
findings of other various studies, we can still impact and change this by not
teaching our children such a rigid definition of gender.
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