This semester I am taking marriages and family's, aka Soc 102. I swear I'm being taught my mr.rogers father. Its that bad comedy's. But like any sociology class it inspires me. Today we were discussing the theories of socialization.
Now I'm not quite sure if its my teacher or reality but they all seemed to revolve around the idea of proper gender roles being the main force in socialization. I mean take the social learning theory (defined by my teacher as: children learn their gender role as taught by parents, school and media).
Well perhaps I grew up in a very different household then most. See my mom didn't educate me in the ideas of gender roles. She educated me in the idea of fairness, and the joy of learning, and to be confident and work hard. She taught me that I can be anything I want to be.
I didn't grow up thinking girls played with dolls and boys played with trucks.. I grew up playing with my trucks and my dolls. My dresses weren't all pink and frilly and I wore blue and plaid just as often as pink.
I knew songs like "free to be you" and me and "Williams doll"
Somewhere along the way, hippies started raising children folks. And adults like me are the results. Free thinking, educated, compassionate, opinionated, eclectic people.
The world is about to change.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Socialization of the Hippie child.
Posted by XO-JK at 12:20 PM
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1 comments:
[chuckles] i am the last one to really be remarking on gender roles. or possibly i should be the first to comment on this.
my thoughts: kudos to you on your thoughts, feelings, and opinions with this. i am a firm believer in that roles are imposed by people on other people out of fear. once something is nicely labeled and stored, there are a certain set of expectations. those expectations keep the catagorizer "safe". there are then a "known" pattern of behaviour for both parties.
the flaw in this: noone fits into a single box. behaviour outside of the set label will occur, and suddenly, all that was percieved as "safe" in now in ruins. furthering the issue, the expectations are still in place, so what was a "safe zone" is now a mine field. insecurities creep an and trust is now just a memory.
why is it such a 'radical' idea to live without "gender roles"? it is not a moevement into 'chaos' (which, by the by, is NOT disorganization, it is just a very complex very organized system. disorder is disorganization. but that is another tangent). instead, could we not construct another system. the 'expectations of the individual self'? this is a very idealistic scenario because it is asking for a system of socialization that requires us to let go of all that is "known" and not give it up, but relearn it. remove the "should's" and "should nots" and replace them with "can".
i am myself. you are yourself. cool. allow me to learn you, not a label. allow me the same.
i ask anyone who will be critical of the thoughts of changing the belief of gender roles to consider anything festering inside themselves, any wish or desire or past occurance of being hurt or shamed..... all for "stepping out of the box"
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