Gender sterotyping starts at home?

[LeBFG]

These are some thoughts I've been having in light of some recent threads. We are all familiar with the idea that gender stereotyping is to be eroded. The messages our children get come from society, their peers and their parents.

I have moved to a pretty sexist society (rural France) and, through circumstances, have become essentially a SAHM while DH goes to work - household labour has ended up dividing along gender lines (though DH would LOVE me to do renovation jobs in the house or mucking out the cows and so on). I have 2 children, boy and girl, they are just babies but I'm finding myself questioning how I treat them and how I will culture thoughts and question biases. However, the example I'm setting is the traditional sexist set-up (on top of all the societal messages around us)....and I feel actions speak louder than words. THe 'do as I say not as I do' is pretty poor, yet I feel, depressingly, that is what I will have impress on my own children.

Yet, time and again, I read on here about how it's OK to sacrifice career, work part time or stay-at-home if that's what you want. I'm also a do-what-you-please person - don't get me wrong. But I can't help feeling there is a dissonance here. There are a whole lot of bright and educated women 'choosing' to downgrade work/stop altogether when children come along. They say things like DH salary is greater so it was a simple financial choice etc. So, it seems to me, in light of this, that gender stereotyping will continue to be propagated at home.

So, while we try to hold society to account, get upset with page 3, shops selling gendered clothes etc are we doing the same things at home and should we?

Children learn what they see.
If they see an equal relationship at home, with mutual respect between adults, if things aren't defined as boy jobs and girl jobs but merely tasks that need doing by the one best suited to it, then that's what use as the basis for measuring other experiences against.
Which helps when they launch out into a sexist society. They may choose to conform, or go their own sweet way regardless of social norms or they may choose to challenge. But they have a touchstone.

I've been struggling with this too, I'm a SAHM to a son and I worry about him thinking that's how it should work. I think the trick is to have more than one facet to your life. So I'm a SAHM but I also have a hobby I do a couple of evenings a week, and I have friends I see regularly. I'm not just a little woman tied to the kitchen sink. I'd also make it very clear that staying at home is a choice, not something the woman automatically has to do.

I also make a point of challenging sexist attitudes whenever I encounter them, so DS sees that these views are not right, and it's OK to point it out. It gets a little wearing, and I'm sure people think I'm a busybody for interfering (managed to simultaneously call some teenage boys on their language and tell them off for objectifying the girls in their group) but it's important not to let it slide. But that's just me!

I can see how household chores are defined can help...but when those household chores are described by society about us in sexist terms you're fighting a losing battle. To take just one tiny example, I love cooking, so I cook. So do all of the women in the area: it is defined as 'woman's work'. So I fall into the sexist stereotype. But on a grander scale, simply by being the kept woman (this is not how I or DH see it of course), I fall into a much worse (and largey true ) stereotype, that women don't have careers, or they do but then give them up/downgrade them when children come along.

I do little things - sounds crazy, but driving DH and children - driving is almost always a male job here bizarrely, so I do it to make a point. Note is taken . But this is pissing in the wind a bit I feel.

Yes, I think this is a difficult issue. Who does what in the house, who brings in the money/earns more etc is significant. I think they did some research that showed that in heterosexual couples with children, same sex children benefited when the parent of their gender was the main breadwinner, which I thought was interesting. ie boys did better when dads were bread winners and girls did better when mums were breadwinners. Not sure how they measured it and whether it was quality research though!

You seem to be having a similar dilemma to another poster who also finds herself in a traditional role and wanting not to reinforce that as the only choice to her children.

Is there anything you can do that would be obviously counter to traditional thinking? Stand for election on the town council? Can you make sure DH does the shopping whilst you muck out the cows? Or take a DIY course so you can do more of the renovation work yourself? (I'm thinking about this one - not because I need to challenge gender preconceptions but because I feel bad about having to ask friends to help me every time).

You can reinforce as well to both your children, that SAHP is a valid choice for them but they need to have career ambitions because that opportunity may not present itself for one reason or another. My ds is convinced he is going to be a SAHD because his dad is - but I point out his dad worked for nearly 20 years before becoming a SAHD! So he's now contemplating being a volcano scientist instead of or as well as, not sure he's decided how to juggle work and childcare aged 8!

Or the more obvious way of disrupting the norm is to go back to work (I feel I should say that before Xenia appears and does so ).

Yes, I read that thread and it is part of what inspired this post. It's not that I'm particularly searching for ways of imrproving my home life (though any help gratefully received: DH and I have already discussed at length lots of our respective chores and division is almost entirely on enjoyment - I've tried all the renovation stuff: tiling, mixing and lumping concret, rendering, brickwork...I just hate it and when it comes to mucking out DH does it literally in quater the time, it's far less backbreaking for him and he likes it). I'm more pondering the fact that when it comes to gender stereotyping, much of this starts at and in the home. No matter how much I drive DH around, I fear both children will grow up with the message that 'men drive'. DO you see my point? If I worked in a really good career (not possible in my location), I feel this would send out a much more powerful message yet this is the big 'thing' that so many women choose NOT to do.

The other thing I have found, with both of my children being adults now, is that their upbringing has had an impact on how they view tasks.
I was never a SAHM. their father was a SAHD for 6 years.
We divided up the stuff that needed doing between us, but I'm also a firm believer in child labour as appropriate.
So they've helped both of us out at first, then taken over certain household jobs. Those jobs are not gender-differentiated, but according to aptitude, preference and logic. The shitty jobs that everyone hates are on a rota.
So any choices they make are active, informed ones. Not just falling in with what's 'normal' in our society. They have to be based on logic, not solely on stereotypes, prejudices or their own emotional preferences.

You can say whatever you like-it is what you do that counts.

People are very set in gender stereotyping. I was so fed up with a thread about using IVF to produce the gender of your choice in order to have your 'ideal' family that I had to hide the thread. There were no reasons except people's own wants-they are so used to control and choice and apparently they were 'entitled to a mother/daughter relationship' or it was simply that they had such set views on how a DS or a DD would be.
You could give them all sorts of examples where it didn't work but it made not an iota of difference!

^
This.

You can talk to your children all you like about girls being as good as boys, that a woman can do almost anything a man can do, and vice versa. Buy all the positive empowering books you like.
But what they know is what they see and experience on a daily basis as the fabric of their lives. If they don't see you and your partner actively living those ideals, then it's just hot air and waffle.
Absolutely fine to be a person who chooses to SAH, but it has to be equal, and the children have to see that you could step away and make a different choice at will. Not that it's what you are genetically-programmed for and thus powerless to change.

Perhaps I'm working towards questions like, how compatible is feminism with SAHMothering. If mum stays at home, even in a househol with a well-balanced distribution of chores, she will almost certainly do disproportionate amounts of housework, let's say. That, in conjunction with societal views of women, reinforces the status quo.

Should we (us, feminists/people interested in challenging gender stereotypes) be more active encouraging women to go out after careers etc? Sounds just like a leaf from Xenia of course - the difference (subtle) is I'm talking about stereotyping and not 'being successful' whatever that might mean. I couldn't give a fig if my daughter turns out like a dropout (like her good mother ) or if she runs a FTSE 100 company, but whatever it is she does, I want it to be her free choice (ha! whatever that might mean).

I think SAHM is very compatible with feminism - but no good listening to me because I am repeatedly told that feminism isn't about choice and thatbInshould want to run BP, even though it would take away my life and make me utterly depressed!

You can be a SAHM along feminist principles. I just get the impression that those who shout the loudest put up with a lot of rubbish at home and therefore their message is useless - you have to live it to be effective. DCs always do as you do and never as you say. On the simplest level it is utterly useless if you give them rice cakes and water while you have chocolate digestives and coke!

Presumably you also want to reinforce to your son that he can run BP or be a SAHP?

should want to run BP, even though it would take away my life and make me utterly depressed You and me alike - and lots of other women apparently - but is this because women are less ambitious? Is my lack of ambition linked to my own stereotyped upbringing? I've been pondering these things over the last few days!

I don't think it's the macro things that kids pick up on (who has which job, who does which tasks), I think it's more related to the general tenor of the household. My mum was a SAHM until I was 12, at which point she went back to work part time and full time later on.

But I was NEVER under the impression that she was in her role for gender reasons, just that she was there because she was good at it - she was always the stronger parent (more consistent, more present, more respected) and very much an equal partner in all decision making.

Also, I never had the impression that she (or dad for that matter) were in any way defined by what job they did - she never talked to me about the importance of being houseproud, or how she or dad should or couldn't do something for gender reasons, or judging other women (or men) for their choices - all the things that trap women into gender-based roles. She was just doing her thing, it was immaterial that she was a woman.

So I think it's perfectly possible to be a SAHM and raise children with a very feminist perspective - I've gone on to have a very successful career, a healthy equal relationship and no sense of being restricted in my choices because I'm a woman.

I don't reinforce anything to anyone - I assume that they are like me and anything remotely 'preachy' is a turn off. DCs are astute enough to work things out for themselves, they do not need it hammered home.

I wouldn't tell a DS or a DD that they can be head of BP or a SAHP - I encourage them to do well in education so that all doors are open and that hopefully they can do whatever they are interested in as a career, and that marriage is a partnership and you can sort the childcare however you wish. We know SAHM, SAHF, those with nannies, those with nursery places, CMs, grandparents etc etc

I think very few people want the top jobs- the majority work to live and a top job makes it living to work.It is just as well that some people want them.i would agree that working practices need to change- all the 'old boy' networks etc have no place in 21st century - or expecting the wife to be on hand to entertain etc.

My mother and grandmother were the strongest women I knew so I am always shocked on MN where the man doesn't wash up, has to 'babysit' his own DCs etc. Why did the woman start like that- and why is she continuing?
There is a recent one where the man thinks his partner should cook and wash up every night because she is a SAHM- madness, he gets off duty with his job whereas she never finishes! Another one says he will do it 'when he gets around to it'- so she then does it instead of letting it pile up until he does get around to it.