Question

How does culture influence children's gender identities? give 6 examples with explained reasons

Answer 1

During the early stages of cognitive development, the influences that the child gets, are majorly by their family, their grand parents or their neighbourhood. One important thing to note is that these are the different pillars of a cultural building. The parents and grandparents and neighbourhood, more or less, comprise of a particular cultural setting. There would be very few families who are aloof of the cultural setting. Hence, from a very small age, the child gets conditioned into one form of culture.
the child learns to observations and mimicry. Whatever actions are carried out by the parents, they are tried by the child. Without any efforts, the child gets conditioned. Different ways in which these cultural influences would be shaping the gender identities of the child are as follows:

- the toy: the kind of culture in which the child prevails will dictate the kind of toys that would be first handed over to the child. In a gender neutral culture, a boy could be given a kitchen set or a barbie to play with and the girl could be given military tanks and cars. But, since, the gender roles are propagated in culture, mostly, boys are fed with toys that aggravate masculinity and girls are fed with sleek looking barbies to invoke feminity.

- household chores: the gender roles and identities are also defined by what should and should not be done by the child. For some boys aren't allowed to be associated with helping their mothers and daughters aren't allowed to be helping their fathers.

- peer group: also the kind of people that the child would be getting associated with is decided by the culture. If w young girl, who associated more with boys, wants to play with a young group of boys, she is labeled as being a tomboy and might be facing ridicule in the early days because of her peer group choice. Similarly a boy with more association to females, might be ridiculed by other boys or even by his parents for his choices.

- appearance: the culture defines what is an appropriate appearance for a boy or a girl. The kind of clothes that covers ones body has to be according to the cultural norms. Men are supposed to be dressed as being more masculine, in tight t shirts or shirts and females should adorn clothes that show they are feminine. Such ideals prevail in the cultural setting, and anyone trying to break through is considered as being outcast.

- activities: our culture has been formed such that women have been considered to be more delicate. They are seldom included into activities such as wrestling or weightlifting where show of strength is important. Though, they might associate with it. On the other hand, a man associating with more delicate arts such as ballet is frowned upon.