The Social Construction Of Gender: The Genderization Of Parenting

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Imagine this: a businessman with a generous salary, his stay at home wife keeps the house clean, the dog fed and their two children, one boy-one girl, cared for. Their one story house is in the best neighborhood with the whitest picket fence on the block. This is America’s ideal family, a perfect family. Now imagine this: a man too concerned with being masculine to bath his children or to help his frantic wife with the housework. The dutiful wife up to her arms in cleaning, lacking any social interaction outside of the house and the pressure from society to be the best wife and mother all while being a size two. The second image is a convergence of gender roles within the household and intersectionality. Although America’s families are changing …show more content…
Judith Lorber states in her article, The Social Construction of Gender (1994), “parenting is gendered, with different expectations for mothers and fathers, and people of different genders work at different kinds of jobs...and these experiences produce different feelings, consciousness, relationships, skills—ways of being that we call feminine or masculine.” The genderization of parenting begins way before one becomes a parent it starts within their family unit. Shaw and Lee the authors of Women’s Voices Feminist Visions (2015) state,“the family is the social unit where most people are raised, learn systems of belief, experience love and perhaps abuse and neglect” (p.443). Meaning that a father fathers the way he does and a mother mothers the way she does based on their own upbringing. In most families the gendered separation is still the norm. Women cook, clean, Shaw and Lee point out,“work done in the home is often not considered work at all” (p.470) and provide care while working in a job deemed ‘suitable for women,’ and men only have time for two things: work and sex. This gendered behavior is then observed and copied by their children who also have had certain colors, toys and activities forced upon them simply based on their genitalia. The authors point out “It is especially in the family where many girls and women feel the consequences of masculine power and privilege” (p.455) Within the family girls experience the first forms of oppression that stunt the female gender’s growth. From being told to act like a lady or ‘that’s not something girls do,’ to doing household chores her brother does not have to do—often cleaning up after the men in the home, told not to dress too revealing and that she should remain chaste to increase her odds of finding a husband; because society says marriage is the ultimate goal for women. “The rituals of

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