Chapter 5 focuses on socialization and gender roles. This chapter first focuses on the many gender myths and then goes into explain the difference between sex and gender. Sex refers to the biological characteristics with which we are born, whereas gender refers to learned attitudes and behaviors that characterize people of one sex or the other. The chapter then goes into discussing the nature-nurture debate stating that many people argue that nature shapes the behavior point into three kinds of evidence: health differences between men and women, the effects of sex hormones, and some cases of unsuccessful sex reassignment. On the other hand many people maintain that culture, or nurture, shapes human behavior. The text then goes into talking about Sociobiology, Cognitive Learning Theory, Symbolic Interacting Theories, and Feminist Theories. Sociobiology is defined as the study of how biology affects social behavior. The Social Learning Theory is defined as when people learn attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors through social interactions. In contrast to social learning theories, cognitive developing theory argues that children acquire female or male values on their own by thinking, reasoning, and interpreting information in theory environment. Symbolic Interaction views gender roles as social constructions that emerge through day-to-day interaction and vary across situations because of other people’s expectations. Feminists believe that gender roles differ due to socialization, patriarchy, and gender scripts. We then learn the socialization agents which include parents, peers, teachers, and the media. We learn throughout this chapter a global view of gender and the variations in gender roles.
I found it quite interesting reading about the many gender myths when in comes to female-male similarities. I found it particularly interesting when reading about how often we describe the same behavior differently for women and men. Some examples the text provided included: “He’s firm, but she’s stubborn. He’s careful about details, but she’s picky. He’s honest, but she’s opinionated.” These examples really made me think about how differently we describe behaviors of men and women. It was really quite interesting to read.
My question that I have for the class is do you think parents should let their child decide what gender they become? Remember, we learned in this chapter that gender refers to the learned attitudes and behaviors that characterize people of one sex or the other. Obviously the child’s sex will be the child’s sex, but their gender is ultimately their decision. Do you think parents should let their child decide without leading them in one direction or another?
Maria Nicholas
I found your question to be interesting because is the child really going to have a choice on what gender they feel they are most suited because I feel that falls under the nature versus nature debate. Because the parents can allow the child to decide for themselves what they want to do, but in the end they are going to raise the child in a certain way which would influence the decision the child makes on what their gender identity is.
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