The Gender Trap

Parents and the Pitfalls of Raising Boys and Girls

Emily W. Kane

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780814771440
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

From the selection of toys, clothes, and activities to styles of play and emotional expression, the family is ground zero for where children learn about gender. Despite recent awareness that girls are not too fragile to play sports and that boys can benefit from learning to cook, we still find ourselves surrounded by limited gender expectations and persistent gender inequalities. Through the lively and engaging stories of parents from a wide range of backgrounds, The Gender Trap provides a detailed account of how today’s parents understand, enforce, and resist the gendering of their children. Emily Kane shows how most parents make efforts to loosen gendered constraints for their children, while also engaging in a variety of behaviors that reproduce traditionally gendered childhoods, ultimately arguing that conventional gender expectations are deeply entrenched and that there is great tension in attempting to undo them while letting 'boys be boys' and 'girls be girls.' Instructor's Guide

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction “Glamour Babies” and “Little Toughies”
• One Wanting a Girl, Wanting a Boy: Conceptual Building Blocks
• Two “It’s in Their Nature”: Naturalizers
• Three “I Think a Lot of It Is Us, Parents and Society”: Cultivators
• Four “We Try Not to Encourage It, but I Know It Gets in There”: Refiners
• Five “You Applaud All the Other Stuff”: Innovators
• Six “Surviving in a Gendered Culture”: Resisters
• Conclusion “A Better World”: Dismantling the Gender Trap
• Appendix: Research Methods
• Notes
• References
• Index
• About the Author