Today’s headlines, analysis papers, and debates sent a direct message about the expectations of gender stereotyping, which perpetuates the family dynamic. Parents directly convey their beliefs about gender by providing instruction, illustration, guidance, and training to their children from their early childhood. Cultural expectation assigns the role and expectation for both genders, to organize their lives and behavior. Children can observe gender stereotyping by the parents’ comments and behaviors in the households, such as the mother doing all the “missionary work” and the father doing all the “hardcore work”. Most differentiate sex-typed behaviors by encouraging their children's involvement in gender-stereotypical activities, such as boys being outside horseplay while girls are inside playing with their dolls. While others rely on children's individualities and attraction to certain activities. Gender socialization messages are indirectly transmitted through parents' modeling of sex-typed behaviors. Gender stereotypes are perpetuated within the family dynamic by cultural expectations, gender socialization, and parents’ differential roles with their children.
Gender socialization is a process that is taught and given by the parents through the children's development stages, which begins at birth through adolescence stage. Through the gender socialization process, children are taught the behaviors, attitudes, and social expectations associated with gender. “Boys don’t play with dolls” would be something a parent yells at a child to reinforce the belief that this behavior is not acceptable because children are taught to distinguish feminism and masculinity. Children learn that women and men act differently when they observe that mothers spend more time on caregiving, and fathers on leisure activities with their children. For example, the father is believed to have “hardcore” duties, such as going to work and lecturing the children about their behavior. The mother is believed to have “missionary” duties, such as staying home to take care of the children and household while the father is at work. We can see this behavior exhibited in the poem called “My Husband Back” by Susan Minot because, throughout the poem, she speaks about the household problems faced on her emotionally bad day while expressing her love for her husband and the hard work he does around the house. From this perspective, parents pass their attitudes about gender roles to their children, resulting in congruence between parents and children's gender role attitudes. Religion plays a significant role in gender stereotypes because religion has a different set of rules and representations for each gender, which influence cultural expectations.
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Cultural expectations employed gender roles to distinguish masculinity and femininity and also to distinguish the social roles of the sexes. Cultural expectations define “parenting” in each family structure and the duties to be a parent. Cultural expectations shape and reshape children to become the men and women they’re expected to be. Culture can create compulsive stereotyping for children to distinguish between masculine and feminine behaviors, which is viewed in studies like Gudyani (Dolls). Male children should not join nor company feminine games or activities, like tea parties or dress up. Not limited to chores, appearance, and personality is distinguished between masculine and feminine. In some cultures, female children are expected to do most of the household chores, keep a very clean appearance, and stay in school. Male children are expected to work at an early age and are not usually expected to keep a clean appearance because they’re expected to be hard workers and breadwinners. Cultural gender stereotyping can distinguish the treatment of female and male children. For example, a mother is seen to be more emotional and attentive to the children’s feelings; while the father is harsh on the children and focuses on punishment. Culture can influence parents’ differential role with their children by their behaviors and attitudes towards the children.
Parents have differential reactions to their sons and daughters, which is argumentative in every family household. Many children who have siblings can agree that their reactions differ depending on the child and gender. Parents normally are stricter and have higher expectations for their daughters than sons because daughters are expected to be well trained and kept in closed environments, such as the house. Sons can participate in a few activities that most female children aren’t allowed to participate in, such as dating and having the openness to speak about sex. For example, mothers use emotional explanations to describe their sons’ emotional distress (crying) or behavior; also usually to are more patient and gentler. Compared to their daughters, mothers use emotional labels to describe their daughters’ behavior and attitude because it is believed that girls are more emotional than boys. We can observe this behavior in the short story called “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, as Mama treats each daughter differently. Even though it has two daughters, this situation can relate to many male and female siblings’ households. As Mama is more attentive and protective of Maggie than Dee, we can still observe this with sons and daughters in a household. This same behavior is seen with fathers too. Fathers are seen to be more playful and spend more time with their sons than daughters because fathers believe that daughters are more fragile than boys. In other words, fathers can horseplay and play rough-competitive sports with their sons rather than daughters because rough-competitive sports a masculine activity, which might involve playing in the dirt. Even though girls are capable of playing the same sports as boys and handle manly jobs.
In some families, gender socialization and stereotyping don’t exist because the family lives in a one-parent household. In a nuclear family household, children would exhibit gender socialization by watching their fathers being the breadwinner, while their mother has the weaker position. This can be reversed and combined in a single-parent household, where one parent must take on both positions. Single mothers and fathers are seen to be the breadwinner, homemaker, etc. in the household because of the absence of the opposite sex. Like Mama said in “Everyday Use,” “In real life, I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands.” (Christian and Walker). Women in a single-parent household are seen to be capable of doing a man’s job and taking on the fatherly positions for their sons. As for fathers, we can see fathers today taking on the motherly position by learning how to their daughters’ hair and instructing their daughters about hygiene and menstruation. Even though in a single-parent household, gender stereotyping and socialization can still occur because the parent enforces a certain behavior in their child depending on sex.
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