boys and girls...

[smittenbyu]

This whole week, wherever D & I go, she has been asking about gender "requirements"/associations for various jobs. At the pediatrician's office she asks, are her doctors all boys? At the dentist office, she asked if all nurses are girls, if all doctors are boys. As we see the garbage truck go, are they all boys? At the library, are all librarians girls? Will her kindergarten teacher be a boy or girl? Are all teachers girls? we were looking at NASA advertisement and she asks if all engineers and astronauts are boys?

oh so curious as to what's going on in her head!

P.S. We did end up seeing the female pediatrician, male nurse (hygienist; D calls them nurses) at the dental office, male librarians at the library and the ad did have both boys and girls. Seeing is believing after all!

Comments

[jaelle-n-gilla.livejournal.com]

He, funny. I think I accepted at face value that any gender could do any job, although there might be preferences. I don't know if it's "normal" for a child to question that but at least in my youth there were certain assumptions going with gender. Mothers stay at home with the kids. Or heavy lifting jobs are only for men. Maybe somebody told her that and she's trying to prove to herself it's not true. Or maybe she finds it hard to categorize male and female when the modern world is so confusing about who's supposed to do which job :-)

I think it's nice that she's curious and you can read those LJ entries out to her in ten years and see if she remembers. Which reminds me: have you ever tried asking what goes on in her head when she asks things like that?

[smittenbyu]

I think at this age they are figuring out how world works. Everything fits into categories. There are clear cut rules and she feels that gender roles are also somehow clear cut?

If I in anyway try to probe why she is asking she responds with a whiny-frustrated, "I am just asking!" he he..

I did speak to moms from her classmates and apparently for whatever reason there's a very strong boys' club and girls' club! There are very clearly set boys' toys and girls' toys. Even down to finding it strange that girls are going to boys birthday party and vice versa. The teachers mention it's natural for this age, but they are surprised too at how much more clear cut it is for them - they haven't seen it before with recent past batches!

D though doesn't seemed to be bothered by that part. She is often the only girl at the boys table (from the photos the teachers share). Don't know. Maybe she heard the boys say something? who knows... which is also strange since the teachers don't lean towards the boy-girl differences. And out of the 8 boys, 6 moms work outside the home, the other two work from home in different fields.

and most have sisters and at home there is no separation of boys' girls' toys. So it's amusing and interesting to see where all this is coming from.

[jaelle-n-gilla.livejournal.com]

Sometimes one single but assertive child can tip the whole scale. As you said they are all looking at how to categorize the world at that age. If only one of them spreads such ideas like "that's a boy's toy" or "girls can't be firemen, duh! Girls can only be nurses" you end up where this batch did.

I remember some kids who were like that, and no idea where they got it from, and it takes the others ages to figure out that, no, Bob hasn't got a claim on the wisdom of the world :-)

[lyssa027.livejournal.com]

I think I was the same way when I was younger

[sistrmoon.livejournal.com]

We have 2 male nurses total on my floor right now(out of probably 25-30 nurses.) The patients always assume they are doctors!

[sistrmoon.livejournal.com]

Dan has very set ideas of boy and girl things and I've always been very careful not to label things like that. So it's either peer pressure or something innate or a combo.