The Fear Of Having A Son By Andrew Reiner

We were taught in class that little boys tend to model after older men in their life and girls do the same with older women that they look up to. This is to be considered a socially acceptable norm. The child observes behavior of parents and others and symbolizes and remembers perceptions. They develop concepts for masculine/feminine and gender behavior. When a boy is little it may be cute when he plays with Barbies or dresses in high heels, but once he gets to a certain age it is looked down on.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” is a question that is commonly used in a world where roughly 350,000 babies are born each day. Questions such as the one previously stated are what helps to determine what gender a child would be. “Learning to Be Gendered” by Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet focuses mainly on the factors that potentially influences gender. These factors can include names, colors, voice change and the societal norm of what a boy and girl should be. Eckert’s main argument is that being gendered isn’t something one can to gain based off of physical characteristics but rather on their own and through their interaction with society. Names and clothing are just a small part of the symbolic resources used to support a consistent ongoing

Ever since the beginning of history, women have been discriminated because of their gender. They were not allowed to attend school much of the time, couldn 't vote, couldn 't possess anything and couldn’t even work for themselves. Such denial of freedom has made females seem weak and unequipped for making their own decisions. Kids start to take in their sex roles at an extremely young age. Boys must identify what men do, what they like, and even how they think and feel. The girls do the same as they take in the parts for the women.

While it is normally considered acceptable for women to be feminine and show their sensitive side, if a guy does this, he will often be made fun of. I think this is a good example of patriarchy within our society – being a strong alpha male is considered a good thing, and being feminine and sensitive is considered weak and bad. I watched an interesting documentary last year in my psychology class about toxic masculinity and the affect it has on boys even at a young age. In many traditional families, parents teach their boys to toughen up or “man up” if they are hurt, instead of allowing them to be emotional. Boys often feel as though they have to constantly be tough and brave, and are not allowed to show any type of emotion because it is considered weak. This is extremely toxic behavior to teach young children, and often causes issues as the child grows up. All children should be taught that they should be free to express themselves however they want, regardless of their

Today’s society is organized in a way that women seem inferior to men and each gender is expected to behave a certain way. According to Ariel Levy, author of Female Chauvinist Pigs, society has set specific stereotypes for each gender. These stereotypes of women tend to hinder their movement to be seen as equal to men. Some women embrace them (FCPs) and other women do not (feminist). In her article, Parents Keep Child’s Gender Secret, Jayme Poisson writes about a couple who decided to take a stand against society’s expectations and raise a child without revealing the child’s gender to the world or to the child.

To some, it doesn’t matter if people are unhappy about gender roles. The men at the Fatherhood Foundation believe that gender roles are necessary, and they explore

Babies are commonly viewed as the most innocent lifeforms in the world. Not only does their cuteness touch the lives of everyone they come in contact with, but their inability to carry judgments makes them someone most of us admire. Unfortunately, while the baby may not be able to express their likes and dislikes, their parents have already introduced the baby to the idea of favoritism, even before it makes its way out of the womb. New technology has allowed parents to select the sex of their baby. As a result, the idea behind childbirth being a miracle, as well as a magical process, is now lost. By allowing parents to select the sex of their children, society is enabling people to value one gender over another and neglect the true intentions

As a boy grows into a man he faces the ever-raising mountain of masculinity. In regards to the occurrence, he finally reaches maturity he has no choice but in order to fight to retain his measly sense of manhood. He is not allowed to act feminine or else he’s not man enough, he can’t show his emotions, he has to hide that he can do anything a woman can do sans give birth. Boys grow up being told they are not allowed to cry and that they are supposed to be tough, that they are not able to be like girls and in the event that they are then they are not real boys. This concept is known as toxic masculinity, some people are not aware that men are being forced to suppress their emotions or even that toxic masculinity should be a topic that is

The idea of gender roles has been prominent throughout not only American History, but world history as well. Everyone understands that men are the ones who provide for their family while women are responsible for household work such as taking care of the children, cleaning, and cooking. The United States has come a long way in demolishing these gender constructs from presenting women the right to vote to recent strives in pop culture such as Benny’s gender crushing single and music video, Little Game, but the nation is still not quite to the point of completely shattering the often harmful gender roles that are set upon children and adults in society. As a means to prevent damage to future generations, parents should not assign gender roles to their children at birth.

In the beginning of this article, Andrew Reiner described his experience with having a son. He stated, “I was faced with one of my biggest fears about parenthood: having a son” (Reiner, 2016, para. 6). Reiner elaborated on the growing trend of parents wanting female children instead of males. The article mentioned that adoptive parents are even willing to pay an average of $16,000 more in finalization cost for a girl instead of a boy (Reiner, 2016, para. 10). Reiner also noted that the boys-will-be-boys behavior does not originate with them (Reiner, 2016, para. 12). Instead, it is a product of their environment. He cited “... parents tend to touch infant boys less often and more roughly than infant daughters and that daughters are handled more gently and protectively… (Reiner, 2016, para. 12)” This displayed how societal norms shape behavior attributes that can be seen as non advantageous. Towards the end of the article, Reiner emphasized that we should empower our daughters and empower our sons with the same emotional literacy skill set and expansive worldview we teach our daughter (Reiner, 2016, para. 18). He finished the article with a short anecdote about how his son only wanted his attention and that is why he was acting out.

     Femininity and masculinity are topics that have been debated over in our society extensively, through psychological research and day to day interaction with people. Children learn from their parents as well as society the concept of “feminine” and “masculine.” The majority of people tend to believe that these conceptions are biological but I believe it is more cultural. From birth, female children are shaped by society as being sweet, caring, loving, and delicate and usually associated with the color pink. While male children are shaped by being tough, aggressive, and competitive and associated with the color blue. As these children grow, the boy is given a football to play with and the girl a

Why is it that nearly everything: behaviors, clothing, music, patterns of speech, colors, toys, occupations, and much more, have a gender pre-assigned to them? Many, if not all of these things are unisex yet are considered to be manly or girly; they’re unnecessarily gendered. For example, in Michael Kimmel’s “Bros Before Hos: The Guy Code”, he exposes the almost cult-like patterns of behavior forced upon boys from a young age, called the Guy Code. This “Code” includes the following: “boys don’t cry, it’s better to be mad than sad, take it like a man, nice guys finish last,” and other ridiculous rules that can cause damage to a young boy’s psyche. As one can see, these are namely to do with emotions and expressing them; it tells boys that

Why is it that most parents want to have a son born first rather than a daughter? Along with that question raises other questions concerning sexism and the incline of families preferring males to females and why. In the figure to the left we see that there are two gender symbols, one for male and one for female. The female’s gender symbol appears to have an X through it while the males symbol has a check mark in it. This is a visual representation of how the world is gender-stereotyping women in general and choosing the male gender over female due to personal reasons of the father and mother. There could be reasons such as a father seeing the males as dominant figures thus wanting to start out his family on a strong foot. Another example could be a father wanting the son he always dreamed of having that he could play baseball and football with and wrestle in the mud with. Or maybe he wants to give his son the type of life that he never had growing up as a child. These sorts of things are the stereotyped gender roles of males throughout history and the types of sons that fathers wish to have (Malpani, “Preconception Gender Selection”). Why is it that parents don’t want to start families with females? A study of 101 consecutive elective

From the beginning of time, there has always been that one question that an expecting parent has been asked: “Do you want a boy or a girl?” Generally, the answer is this: “I don’t care as long as it is healthy.” This answer may or may not always be true. Some want pretty little girls to dress up with extravagant dresses and pretty bows, and some want rumble-tumble boys to play and roll around with. Regardless of which sex is preferred, we love both. The fact of the matter is, from tutus and dolls, to mud and bugs, boys and girls have many differences.

This is called gender socialization, which exaggerates sexual differences physically, experimentally, academically, and psychologically. Most parents are unaware that they play such a large role in creating a male or female child. But they are the first and one of the largest influences on their child. When parents have a female child she is viewed as sweet and gentle. The parents will even hold their daughter closer than they would a son. As they grow older boys are encouraged to explore while girls are kept closer to their parents. They are taught different approaches to many different problems in life. They may not realize it but through their interactions with their children they are encouraging their children to grow into a certain type of person based on their gender. The toys they are introduced to are even gender-based. Toys for males encourage them to develop such abilities of spatial perception, creativity, competition, aggression, and constructiveness. Toys for girls encouraged creativity, nurturance, and attractiveness. Children’s rooms and clothing are specific color: girls are pink and boys are blue. Girls often wear dresses and skirts that limit their physical activity. These types of influences at such an early age lay a foundation for the child’s personality. By the time they reach school age they already have a sense of being male or female. In school peers and teachers enforce these differences even further. (Lips, 1979,