Paranoia in Pre-K

Stereotypes are irresistible to children, but it's not as bad as we fear

Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

“I don’t know why she does this!’’ It was 2007 and I was standing around with a bunch of moms (and one token dad) waiting to drop our kids off at the pre-k. “I try to get her gender-neutral stuff but my mother-in-law gave her this… thing.”   

The “thing” was a bright pink plastic board book about Barbie. It was National Read a Book Day, and each child had been invited to bring in a book to read in class. Every little girl had chosen a book about Barbie or a Disney princess, and each of the boys had chosen books about construction vehicles, trains and, in one instance, a dinosaur. All these books came equipped with attached speakers, which issued tinny approximations of tumbling bricks, or chirpy princess voices at the press of a button.  

“I almost convinced Josh to take Where the Wild Things Are.” Another mom explained, “That used to be his favorite, but he went for Monster Trucks.” She rolled her eyes. Then someone joked, “The teachers are going to think our kids are normal, damn it!” We laughed nervously.  

This was in the days before the great gender obsession when nobody was doing “gender-neutral parenting,” no forestland had yet been lost to gender reveals gone wrong, and no one blinked an eye at phrases like “Good morning boys and girls.” But we were still uneasy about gender stereotypes. We wanted our kids to be themselves and were determined that they would be—even if it killed us. We went out of our way not to push them in any direction and indulged their interests, the quirkier the better. We believed it was our job to provide them with a smorgasbord of toys of all sorts, to encourage them to explore, and most of all, not to direct them into gendered boxes.  

And then one day, out of the blue, they were obsessed with princesses or toy guns.  

Earlier generations understood this as a phase that kids grow out of, but we were “mature parents.” We had not spent time with families or young children for decades, and even if we had, we were confident that our parents and all the parents who came before us were unscientific troglodytes who had no idea what they were doing.   

Instead, we read—a lot. There were baby manuals, especially the Sears’s books, endless short-form articles, books of essays, and mommy blogs. We had read, or at least thumbed through Peggy Orenstein’s, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Cordelia Fine’s, Delusions of Gender, and Christia Spears Brown’s Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue. We had dabbled in gender neutrality and bragged about our kid’s gender nonconformity. “Jaden is breastfeeding his doll!” We reflected on how we were the most enlightened generation of parents ever, how our girls would be “fierce,” and our boys would be sensitive and how, if any of our kids turned out to be gay, we would not just be accepting. We would be thrilled.  

That is why the sudden onset of extreme gender conformity felt so odd, as if our kids had fallen asleep beside some alien green pod and woken up members of the Borg. What was really going on was that our children, aged between 3 and 4 years old were at the sweet spot for gender stereotypes. Having mastered the basics of how things work at home, they had become intensely curious about the social world. They were especially interested in social categories like male and female. And because this is also the time when they begin to self-identify by sex, they were trying to understand how they might fit into them. We did not understand that they were gravitating toward extreme gender stereotypes precisely because they were so oversimplified and crude.  

It is easy to forget that everything is new for children. The first years of their lives are taken up with exploring the world around them. In the wonderful book about child development, The Scientist in the Crib, the authors describe how children are born with an instinct to explore and test the world around them, usually by attempting to put things - hands, feet, electrical cords, dog food - in their mouths. From there they move on to learning the basics of self-control: potty training, learning to go to sleep on their own, figuring out how to play cooperatively (not just in parallel) with other kids.  

By the time they reach around 3 years, the wider world engages their attention. They are driven to understand how it works, and how they fit into it. Children, and humans generally, are “hardwired” to notice two distinctions in particular: those between children and adults, and between men and women. Stereotypes, especially gender stereotypes, act as an on-ramp for understanding these social categories. Their newly acquired taste for feather boas or man-car hybrids might seem perplexing, especially when the men and women around them dress the same, but they are not interested in real people. They are interested in manhood and womanhood. Not only are stereotypes not harmful, they are essential for helping them to understand what kind of man or woman they will eventually become.  

Why stereotypes?  

All stereotypes are crude and superficial because they are based on extraordinarily little information, and yet, they are extremely useful. We all resort to thinking in stereotypes in unfamiliar situations, like a foreign train station. We choose to ask directions from a well-dressed middle-aged woman, and not from a young guy with skulls tattooed on his neck, based on stereotypes about who is safe and who is knowledgeable. But these quickly give way when we start to engage with people as individuals, for instance, when we wind up sitting next to the tattooed man and learn that he is a Rhodes scholar and concert violinist. 

The same is true for children except that it takes longer, years usually, and the stakes are higher because they are not just interested in learning about social categories. They are trying to learn about themselves. They have lots of false starts and sometimes the things they believe make no sense at all to adults.  

There is an apocryphal story of the female physician whose young daughter one day informs her that “only boys can be doctors.” When her mother explains that “Mommy is a doctor,” her daughter simply shrugs. This is because in her daughter’s mind the category of “girls” is different to the category of “mommy.” She knows about mommy. What she is interested in finding out about is “girls’ especially because she is a girl. But how do children figure out they are boys or girls to begin with?  

Children learn they are male or female because people have indicated as much in big ways and small throughout their lives. Leaving aside obvious things like dressing them differently, it is almost impossible not to treat children differently according to their sex. The instinct to notice sex and to impose expectations accordingly is so strong that psychologists who study sex differences in babies must design their experiments with this in mind. Any indication of a baby’s sex will lead observers to record the same behaviors differently. This happens regardless of whether parents embrace pink for girls and blue for boys, or, like the parents in the schoolyard, consciously try to avoid stereotypical themes.  

It is likely that our propensity to distinguish between male and female serves an evolutionary purpose beyond the obvious of finding a potential mate. The physical and mental changes that occur at human puberty are so profound, for girls especially, that it helps to know what is coming. And, like everything about human life, this preparation is heavily mediated by culture and indeed, every human culture has its own set of beliefs about what is typical for men and women. These beliefs are the stereotypes that help set children on the path to manhood and womanhood. But they are not destiny. Children gravitate toward stereotypes because they are trying to understand social categories, but this is only part of the story. Understanding categories is part of the broader project of understanding norms.  

Norms versus Stereotypes  

Simply stated, social norms are shared assumptions and patterns of behavior that make it possible for human beings to live in social groups. Norms or conventions help to situate individuals relative to others within their group, to distinguish one group from another, and help to bring order to social experiences.   

Norms create stability and continuity between multiple generations because they embody history and culture and are reinforced by institutions. They are not static but evolve slowly over time and are a crucial reference point that helps put our relationships with other people into context. They have an internal logic all their own, and understanding them, like mastering the mechanics of a language, serves as the basis for communication, self-expression, and creativity.  

Stereotypes, by contrast, are oversimplified ideas or impressions about people or groups. Unlike norms, which are the product of repeated social interactions, stereotypes are superficial impressions that have their genesis in a lack of practical knowledge. Children are especially prone to describe the world in terms of stereotypes simply because they lack knowledge, but adults also fall back on stereotypes when they find themselves in unfamiliar situations.  

It is children’s first “job” to learn about and become part of the society they have been born into. We call this process socialization, and children do it spontaneously. Parents and other adults help them—even if they do not know they are doing it. Sex is one of the first categories kids recognize and identify with. Figuring out which category they belong to is a crucial starting point for making sense of the world and in the development of their unique personality. Stereotypes and norms help them to do this. Children’s understanding of social norms grows exponentially throughout their childhood. Left to their own devices, their tastes and beliefs mellow over time, especially as they begin to develop individual preferences. The young woman who wants to study medicine like her mother has forgotten that she ever thought “only boys can be doctors.”   

But what happens when something goes wrong in the process of socialization?  

Next time: The Problem with Gender Neutral Parenting 

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