Bussey came to this conclusion when he found that children imitate same sex models but do not imitate same sex models that are gender inappropriate. Gender roles are also affected by social influences like parents. Parents sometimes have strong opinions on the divides between genders which results in different reinforcements for different behaviours. For example, a mother may react negatively to their daughter playing with masculine toys but positively to their son playing with the same toys. Parental influence has strengths, for example there is a wealth of scientific evidence supporting it.
In addition, she witnesses her daughters grow up with Barbie influence. Smiley believes that Barbie dolls can be role models for young girls, and she also thinks girls like Barbie because with the doll they can discover new things, girls define their femininity, and it is their liking during childhood. Jane Smiley states that young girls like Barbie dolls because they can try on a no-holds-bared (376). Smiley’s daughters are in the childhood stage when they are often curious to try something. Smiley says, “Both of them learned how to put makeup before kindergarten” (376).
In the majority of cases, the child’s biological sex matches their gender and there are no problems. However, some children are born “inter-sex”; they have ambiguous genitals and are not obviously one sex or the other. Money believed that, providing that a a child’s sex is decided before their 3rd birthday, social factors are so influential that children will accept their assigned gender identity. The third year is another critical period, and because a child’s gender identity is established by then, it cannot thereafter be changed without causing the child significant psychological problems. Early research did support this hypothesis.
While parents cannot determine whether their children have sex, use contraception, or become pregnant, the quality of their relationships with their children can make a real difference (Miller, 1998). The family unit must be restored. Parental influence focusing on the issues surrounding adolescent sexuality may help many teens from becoming parents at an early age. A variety of factors contribute to teenage pregnancy. The breakdown in American society includes moral and ethical issues.
His emphases that many people worry that children raised by homosexual couples would suffer from confusion over sex roles, and they might turn out to be homosexual. Society is afraid the continuation of this phenomenon will become a threat of human race extinction. In contrast with Pollit is totally different because she explains The considerable body of research on the children, and the parenting abilities of gay men and lesbians has consistently found that they are as good parents as their heterosexual counterparts and that their children do not differ appreciably from children raised by heterosexuals. In other words, children who are raised from homosexual households are no more likely to be gay or lesbian than other children. These are different points of view with important and credible
This was introduced by the Labour party, who Lewis argues have taken on the idea of ‘social investment in children’ seriously and have realised family forms are changing. The Labour party have introduced a number of laws, attempting to strengthen the family unit. They were mainly concerned on helping the social and economic position of women, for example, marital rape was made illegal in 1991 by the Labour party. The rights of children have also been improved by the labour party due to the children’s act of 1989. New right thinkers however; believe that these laws undermine the traditional male dominance in families, but many believe these new policies for women and children strengthen the family rather than weaken it.
By only handing a girl pink playthings for the first three years of her life, she may decide pink is her favorite color because “that’s what girls like.” In fact, researchers think that parents and other social factors lead children to prefer gender-specific toys. Some of these things, like the Disney princesses and all the princess culture related, seemed innocent and protective. But maybe it's not. Parents need to have more context about girls' culture to understand the decisions they're making and make them so that they'll be in concert with their values. A 2009 study found that 31 per cent of “girl” toys are all about appearance, involving plastic makeup and dresses.
It also aims to reduce ethnocentrism meaning the tendency to use our own cultural group as the norm and judge others as deviating from this. Finally the aim is to also consider culture as an important independent variable and to readdress the balance in gender research meaning to do more in other parts of the world to see if it's the same. Research showing cultural differences in gender roles, was carried out by Margaret Mead who was a renounced anthropologist arguing in favour of environmental determinism. Mead changed her view in light of further research. The first was that she found that in all three tribes, it was the men who went to war, suggesting some traits such as aggression may be innate.
Increasingly, we are told that the source of these robust preferences must lie outside society—in prenatal hormonal influences, brain chemistry, genes—and that feminism has reached its natural limits. What else could possibly explain the love of preschool girls for party dresses or the desire of toddler boys own more guns than Mark from Michigan? True, recent studies claim to show small cognitive differences between the sexes: He gets around by orienting himself in space; she does it by remembering landmarks. Time will tell if any deserve the hoopla with which each is invariably greeted, over the protests of the researchers themselves. But even if the results hold up (and the history of such research is not encouraging), we don’t need studies of sex differentiated brain activity in reading, say, to understand why boys and girls still seem so unalike.
We all have equal rights, some more so than others. Anna Quindlen a writer for the New York Times wrote an article titled “Evans Two Moms” which pertained to gay and lesbian rights over their heterosexual counterparts. Whether or not you believe in same sex marriages Quindlen allows you to feel some sort of sympathy toward their everyday struggles with judgment, prejudice, and stereotyping. In today’s society it has become more socially acceptable to be a gay man or a lesbian woman, but should elected officials in government offices allow gay couples to have the same rights as heterosexual couples? Quindlen believes gay couples should have the same rights as heterosexual couples.