Marimar Suárez

Exposition and Argument Section HM

Erin Kelly

Research Paper Intro #1

17 November 2016

Research Paper Intro

In 1975, an experiment titled The Effect of Gender Labels on Adult Responses to Infants was conducted. Random men and women from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York were invited to individually play with a baby for three minutes. The experiment was divided into three groups: men and women who were told the baby was a girl, men and women who were told the baby was a boy, and men and women who were not specified the gender of the baby. In the experiment room, there was a football, a doll, and a teething ring for the adult to choose from if he or she desired to play with the baby. The subjects were told that they were evaluating the baby’s response to strangers, when in fact, they were evaluating the adult behavior towards the baby depending on the baby’s gender. The result proved that both men and women used the doll when the baby was introduced as a girl, but tended to use the teething ring or the football when the baby was said to be a boy. However, with the neutral baby, men tended to use the teething ring while women chose between the football or the doll. This behavior is due to the fact that women wanted to connect with the baby while men decided to distance themselves because they did not know the gender. It is interesting how even thought it was the same infant, the label defined how the adults would approach the baby. This proves how stereotypical gender ideas are socially constructed and indirectly taught to people since infancy. More importantly, it leads to the question of who teaches these stereotypical ideas of gender to the children in the first place. People learn from the process of socialization, and sociologists agree that the first phase of socialization occurs at home, specifically, by the parents. The socially constructed ideas do not only affect what the gender of the child, but other aspects such as the comfort with their sexual orientation are also at risk. Andrew Solomon in his essay “Son” describes how “vertical identities” and “horizontal identities” play a role on the development of gender and sexual orientation and how they feel obligated to conform with their parents’ views on gender. On the other hand, Steven Johnson offers how parent’s neglect towards their children’s sexual orientation may lead to a wedge between the parents and the child. Therefore, this research will focus on how the parenting methods employed by both parents to raise their children can either positively or negatively affect their child’s sexual orientation.