Starting young
I was doing a puzzle with D this evening (who is just 3). It was about a farm, and he asked me "where is the farmer?". I pointed out the woman who was putting hay in a wheelbarrow. He said "girls aren't farmers".I'm amazed by this, as we have a series of books about "Mrs Boot the Farmer" (who appears to be a single parent of two children), as well as quite a few picture books with a mix of male and female farmers. We had a discussion about it, and he appeared dubiously convinced that both men and women are farmers. C tried to help me by saying from his older brother position of superiority that girls and boys aren't farmers, but I think that made D more determined to stick to his position.
I really thought that we were doing well in subverting the dominant gender stereotypes. Clearly more effort is needed.
posted by Jennifer @ 8:02 pm
4 Comments:
It's scary, eh? It must be out there in the air, the way they pick it up.
But he's only three! He does go to preschool three days a week, though.
I've heard so many stories like this...I wouldn't beat yourself up about it too much. I mean, we survived our childhood influences and made up our own minds, didn't we?
cf this afternoon's episode of Play School, where one of the presenters introduced a little plastic farm tableau - "Here are two farmers. This is Jill and this is Steve."
We are wondering why our 2 year old thinks a small spiky animal is a hedgehog when all but one of the books in this house feature echidnas.
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