Research Paper First Draft

This is my first draft. There is a lot of information still missing and I have more resources. Hopefully in the next two drafts my paper will flow better with more developed ideas. 

Research Paper Draft #1

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.

            It is important to distinguish between sex and gender in order to understand gender roles, how they are socialized and how they affect children. Sex refers to the physical differences of the body between men and women. For instance, the reproductive systems, the levels of testosterone, and the brain structure are some key distinctions. On the other hand, this research focuses on the effect parenting has on the child’s gender, which is a more complex term. It has to do with the “social expectations about behavior regarded as appropriate for the members of each sex. Gender refers not to the physical attributes distinguishing men and women but to socially formed traits of masculinity and femininity” (Giddens, Duneier, Applebaum,Carr). Gender is not something people are born with, people cultivate and learn it through the process of socialization, which is the never-ending process that enables humans to learn norms, values, behaviors, and social skills appropriate for society. During the first developing years of children, from infancy to childhood, primary socialization occurs via parents and close family members. Hence, parents are responsible for ingraining core values, norms, and behavioral patterns to their children. More importantly, parents are the first ones to introduce gender role ideas and practices to their newborns, which consequently affects the development of their sexual orientation.

When parents are expecting a child, they already have a preconceived illusion of how their children’s physical and personality aspects will be, so when they realize children are their own individual, problems can surge. Parents wish their children will become a combination of their personalities, characters, and physical traits, but then they realize that children may develop characteristics and identities of their own. Solomon distinguishes these expected identities with the new, surprising ones as “vertical” and “horizontal, respectively. “Horizontal identities” are attributes, values, and beliefs that are passed from one generation to another specifically, from parent to child. Nevertheless, “vertical identities” refer to the identities children may be born with or develop later one that are foreign to the parents. Blindness, deafness, and more importantly, homosexuality, are some examples of these “vertical” traits. When parents are faced with these rebellious identities, they must choose how they are going to approach them.

There are different methods of parenting that parents can use to raise their children that will positively or negatively affect their sexual orientation. There have been previous studies that intended to find out the effects that parenting can have on the sexual development of children. They have only focused on the parenting method used by the mother because she was a stay at home mother or they just assumed that the father would behave the same way. However, recently there has been an increase in women in the workforce, “Women currently account for roughly half of the total workforce, and almost 60 percent of women are now employed outside of the home” (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014).  For this reason, the role of both the mother and the father must be taken into consideration when analyzing the effects it can have on their child’s comfort with himself. According to the study “Negative Maternal and Paternal Parenting Styles as Predictors of Children’s Behavioral Problems: Moderating Effects of the Child’s Sex”, there are three main types of parenting: authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive. All of them differ on the level of warmth and control parents direct their children while they are parenting. Authoritarian parents impose much control over their children’s behavior and personality trait, but do not offer enough warmth and care towards the. On the other hand, permissive parents are the opposite. They offer a lot of warmth and love to their children, but do not exercise enough control over their actions. Finally, authoritative parents employ a balanced combination of control and warmth when raising their children. The parenting method, along with other factors later on discussed, will determine the relationship parents will have with their sons and daughters.

Parents, either consciously or unconsciously, ingrain stereotypical gender ideas to their children. A study conducted by LoBue1 and DeLoache aimed to observe and analyze how boys and girls prefer blue and pink based on their gender. The arrived to the conclusion that young children, regardless of gender, have a tendency to prefer blue since it is a primary color, but there is no concrete evidence that states that girls have a special inclination towards the color pink. In the study, they analyzed female and male babies from 7 months to 5 years old. At their youngest, girls would select the color blue just as boys did, However, as they kept on growing, girls would increasingly select pink objects over blue ones and boys would increasingly avoid the color pink. This behavior is due to the social construction of gender. Children learn from what they observe and what they are taught. If since they are little, the child’s nursery and clothing is a specific color, they will learn to associate themselves with that color. Even though children have a natural tendency towards primary colors such as blue, girls learn to ignore that preference and opt for the color indirectly enforced by their parents.

Just as children learn to associate themselves with a specific color, parents also ingrain hackneyed ideas about sexual orientation to their children. Most parents indirectly teach their children that heterosexual is the norm and that homosexuality is considered abnormal. This phenomenon causes children to feel pressured into hiding their true identity and conformity to what their parents deem “appropriate”. Specifically, authoritarian parents can cause children to feel at conflict over their sexual orientation since their parents usually seek to control their identity and their behavior. Solomon, the author of “Son” had to struggle with his parent’s nonconformity when it came to his sexual orientation. He narrates an occasion where he was offered to choose a balloon from a salesman at a store. He said, “My brother wanted a red balloon. I wanted a pink one. My mother countered that I didn’t want a pink balloon and reminded me that my favorite color was blue”. (Solomon 374). Even though his mother knew he really preferred the pink balloon, she imposed the blue one to his son and forced him to conform to her selection. Even though the mother thought that what she was doing was harmless, she was making her son feel insecure and unhappy with his sexual orientation.