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Children and Gender Identity

© Dawn Friedman

About a year ago I wrote an article for my friend at Wears the Baby about whether or not a customer should buy her preschool son a skirt. My answer (sure, but talk about the possible consequences of wearing it outside of dress-up together) garnered a ton of mail. Most of the mail came from moms who wanted to know more about gender identity. How do children learn about gender? How can the explore their own gender? When does exploration end and transgenderism begin?

It's complicated and I certainly don't have all or even most of the answers. My own son, at four, is becoming more and more aware of cultural gender roles and he is trying to figure out what it all means.

I thought I'd grab some links to illuminate the ways that children learn about gender and also some that give parents some tools to talk about gender bias.

Enjoy!

Getting Past "Sugar & Spice": Are you blind to gender stereotyping? -- an article that discusses the way that children build a gender identity.
http://www.glfamily.com/html/ma-99/ma-99...

The Boy Who Wears Dresses -- a BabyCenter essay about cross-dressing preschoolers.
http://www.babycenter.com/essay/7353.htm...

Books illustrating non traditional gender roles -- a long, long list to take along on your next visit to the library
http://fuji.acpl.lib.in.us/Childrens_Ser...

Children, Television, and Gender Roles -- how does t.v. impact our kids' perception of gender? An academic article looks at some of the studies.
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/hzi...

Sexual Orientations: How Comfortable are You? -- some information about a display to help us confront our own biases about sexual orientation. I wish there was more abou the display, but there is a nice list of references.
http://prometheus.ed.csuohio.edu/mcf/mcw...

Non-traditional Pursuits of Girls and Boys -- another excellent list of picture books
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~mjoseph/chil...

What is Anti-bias Education? -- a nice article that explains what anti-bias means along with information for parents about talking with their children.
http://www.adl.org/ctboh/tip_antibias_ed...

Women's Equity Resource Center -- good resources for parents talking about gender bias.
http://www.edc.org/WomensEquity/

Beyond Dolls & Guns: 101 Ways to Help Children Avoid Gender Bias -- a link to this book.
http://npin.org/books/crawford.html

Helping Parents with their Cross-Gender Children -- If your children are doing more than exploring other gender roles, you may want to check out this article.
http://www.genderpsychology.org/introduc...

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