The Gender Trap: Parents And The Pitfalls Of Raising Boys And Women

In today’s society, gendered experiences exist in all facets of life. Women suffer from the glass ceiling as they struggle to make salaries comparable to those of men in equal or lesser positions. Men face daily battles, as they are encouraged to fit the perfect mold of being a “real man.” While these are simply several examples highlighting the gendered experiences men and women face on a daily basis, it is vital to remember that these gendered differences and gendered experiences did not start once women began their first job nor when men reached a certain age. Instead, these gendered differences started at infancy as children are persuaded and influenced by external factors, such as the environment they grow up in, or even their parental guidance. In Emily W. Kane’s book, The Gender Trap: Parents and the Pitfalls of Raising Boys and Girls, the author successfully works to explore how parents navigate the multifaceted trap of overseeing their children’s gender and their gendered experiences in their world. Kane successfully traverses the gender …show more content…
She begins this exploration by investigating what she refers to as the “conceptual building blocks.” In this section of the text, she interviewed several sets of parents and discussed with them whether they wanted to have a son or a daughter and their inferences for the gender trap. Throughout this exploration, she considered factors such as gendered expectation and anticipation, beliefs about the roots of gendered childhoods, and similar concepts. Within the study of these families, Kane found that “about three-fourths of the interviewed parents offered at least one similar claim that gendered interests are ‘built in’ (Kane, 33). From this there were several parents who defended their daughter playing with dolls or their son playing in mud as something their child is born with, a hard-wired