Learning Of Traditional Sex Roles example essay topic

Traditional Sex Roles in Children The conflict over appropriate sex roles runs into unresolved questions of what sexual identity is and how it is formed. According to most psychologists, sexual identity is built up by stages beginning with genes, hormones, early mothering, and family upbringing. In these early years, parents may give dolls to boys or baseball mitts to girls, so long as their intent is not to destroy the child's basic biological identity. When children begin to spend time outside the home, traditional sex roles become imperative. "During the grade-school years, a major job for a child is consolidating what it means to be a boy or a girl", says child psychiatrist Thomas Johnson.

"This is done partly by identification with children of the same sex", Johnson argues. Same-sex organizations such as the Little League and Campfire Girls, he believes, allow children the necessary freedom to discuss with their peers the sexual changes going on inside them. Unfortunately, says Dr. Johnson, "I'm seeing more and more children concerned and confused with sexual roles", a situation he feels is aggravated by "some in the women's liberation movement who would do away with recognizing any differences between boys and girls". Lee 2 The real war over sex roles is now being waged in the early stages of adolescence. To some psychiatrists, who spend most of their time in therapy with disturbed adolescents, the learning of traditional sex roles is a necessary factor in completing a child's sexual identity.

"Mothering and fathering are trans-cultural roles, rooted in biology and anatomy", (Mead 121). So long as mothers and fathers are needed, adolescents must learn from their same-sex parent to anticipate these basic human experiences. Later on boys and girls may want to modify their sex roles, but they should first learn these nurturing skills, and not be robbed of them by liberated parents who may simply be on an adult head trip. For example, to child psychiatrist, Arthur Korn haber, the case was disturbing and unraveling when a child at the age of 13, had become a substitute mother in her own home.

"She did most of the housework and provided most of the care for her younger brother because her working mother hated chores; her father, raised to do only a man's work in a man's world, refused to help", (Kramer 18). The teenager's problem was not overwork but the crushing shame she felt for actually enjoying the experience of mothering and homemaking that her parents obviously scorned. Like many psychiatrists who work with the middle-class families, psychiatrists find out that more and more adolescents are being psychologically sabotaged by adults who really do not want to be parents themselves. "Mothers who don't want to be mothers and 'liberated' women who feel their daughters ought not to learn their feminine ways, are robbing their daughters of their sexual Lee 3 identities. In extreme cases, these kids are being taught at a crucial stage in their development to hate their wombs, their bodies, the whole idea of having and caring for children.

And the fathers, by working too much and refusing to share their lives with their sons, are teaching these boys to retreat from their male responsibilities", (Howard 151). Parents are supposed to be the idealistic figures that children follow after. It is crucial that the parents show their children the right path to realizing their sexual identity. Without this vital element of teaching and guidance, children are likely to change their sexualities in their later stage in life. "One of the most startling things I've seen among today's affluent adolescents is the slurring of gender, says Dr. Ralph Greens on, who was Marilyn Monroe's psychiatrist" (Adams and Laurikietis 17) Child psychiatrists are deeply divided over how they should react to these shifting sexual boundaries among American adolescents. It comes off as a shock to know that the trouble with sexual identity starts at an adolescent age.

"Teaching little girls how to cook and to sew just won't wash with kids in our mobile middle classes", (Anonymous 4) Children have completed their acceptance of themselves and their roles in life by the time they are six or seven, and then must simply wait for physical maturity to assume the complete role. But in most societies, adolescence is a period of re-examination, and the possible reorientation of the self towards the expressed goals of society. During this time of re-examination, the child needs direction and counseling on their sexual identity. Learning to be a male or female Lee 4 is how children arrive at their own sense of sex. Whether it's paying with an action figure or Barbie dolls, the male and female adolescents should be taught of the basic values. In retrospect, adolescents who are not shown how to be properly nurtured by their parents, will emerge into adulthood questioning their sexual identity.

"Youngsters should learn what their sexual identity means", (Anonymous 6) Teaching adolescents at a young age will result with the correct sexual identity when reaching their adulthood. As the child is taught on his or her roles in society, the adolescent grows in the right path of their sexual identity as an individual. Contradictions on what gender he or she is will have no effect on the child after they are taught the correct morale about their sexual identity. Work Cited Adams, Carol and Laurikietis, Rae. "The Gender Trap: A Closer Look at Sex Roles". American Reader 1999: 17.

Anonymous. "The Changing American Family". Editorial. Congressional Quarterly 10 February 1991: 4. Anonymous.

"Gender Roles in the Youth". Editorial. Congressional Quarterly 20 March 1989: 6. Howard, Jane.

Families. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1978. Johnson, Thomas. Interview. 60 Minutes. 25 November 2003.

Kramer, Rita. In Defense of the Family: Raising Children in America Today. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1983. Mead, Margaret. Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World. New York, NY: William Morrow and Company, 1949.