my son go to school here you know it's wonderful to see the school communities in the should've been the scuffing topics that are significant to our children da pick you know about both their perception of who they  are and who others are and can be so you know i want to continue these challenging get important discussions and talk about gender based message of the role of parents and transmitting to transmitting the  to their kids so before i start i want to share you know i have an anecdote i have a conversation i overheard at the bark that i want to you know that i want to share with you  so i was at my son's baseball practice at the playground the other day and i sort of overheard the mothers who were also there for their sons  function function for boys which means that that that the clothes that are functional mean that they are useful that they perform a function you know that they make the wearer do something language to kids and so you know i want to talk about about three things at least as the title suggests i want to talk about gender based messages in general what do we mean by this phrase what indeed is gender and i want to talk about what are gender based messages and ways of being what are the gender based messages that we are transmitting to our kids you know what are we telling them about gender has shown that children receive direct messages about appropriate behavior for girls and boys from their parents and they also see gendered behavior modeled and reinforced by adult behavior by how finances and then the third of the not if that of cathexis which is really the emotional realm of relationships so matters of interpersonal problems listening discussion emotional a very early stage in the child's life and i want to discuss how bad and teach children to feed gender roles and gender and identity i also want to talk about how parents teach children to do gender which is really to live out and act out or to perform gender in their lives publicly and privately hardly i want to discuss the consequences of this transmission of gender continue to try and shape their lives so far girls and boys my underlying aim for this discussion is to motivate parents to pink about the need to disrupt the transmission of conventional ideas about gender roles and replace cvs with more complex notions of gender and i really am using the calm with the word complex with all its meanings something that's messy something that's creative something that's sort of more productive something that has nuance of tensions and so on and so forth to sort of no need to categorize station you know so complex notions of gender that don't perpetuate by a sense you know typing but yes so if the social construction of characteristics associated with meals and females in other words and once a child of born aside from the biological differences that determine whether the baby for he or she norms idea and beliefs also contribute to its identity as a man and woman or girl and boy so we become men and women by being in our transferred to the child i relive in society so we have certain ideas about gender about what it means to be a man or a woman that before only believe in and we translate these ideas across our transfer these understand that this is how things are and we accept it as bad and we think that this is the norm this kind of gender identification or gender thing off our children and our children observe absorb these strange that for a boy you don't like sports boys don't cry that's another assumption we tell our four year olds to be men play like a man or be like a  man or to be jocks equally stupid typical and troubling and nattering notions of masculinity you know when you tell a person to be a man you have a very set understanding of what it means to be a man and that it's a daily choice because we want to be part of our society and we want to be part of our culture especially dominant and mainstream culture we definitely do a lot of picking around ourselves you know we to certain ways of being a woman over certain others even though we know that our lives are again more complex and more messy than the binary constructions of gender they just want to ask us to be ans the media yes yes definitely cultural forms of representation images we are surrounded by are constantly on our phones now we're surrounded by these images and often look at something that seems to be breaking the conversation and then we talk about the waves in which it ends up the inscribing you know sort of not bad being not that different from traditional wors and so yes films books as well as just months even seemingly harmless depictions of boys and girls in movies you know the little sister who takes care of her baby brother when the  about gender grandparents our own bed and political institutions social media friends extended family scifi about appropriate behavior for our children  constantly conscious of your body and yourself studies have shown that kids of younger to imbibe gender based messages from parents and they carry these ideas into adulthood  daybreak across the traditional boundaries of gender roles they will not feel happy that they will always feel that it's this nagging guilt or at least they will feel that they're doing something totally out of the women continue to perform the bulk of household chores and caregiving tasks as they have seen their own mother stew i am by a message about women's homely duty even domestic work for my own mother now some particular cultural context what is interesting is that i grew up in a very liberal household my mother was a doctor and she practiced for thirty six years before she retired he also managed and ran a hospital in in delhi the capital of india she was educated she was assertive she was independent and yet she found it very hard to shake off gender based messages about her role as a woman and so with immense guilt or perhaps because of that she compared herself to other mothers some of them stayed at home some of them didn't but ought to do so she always felt she couldn't keep up with others she did no matter how hard she worked and she was working outside and inside the house and my eyes she felt she was never keeping up with the idea work in a demanding field and cook three meals i wonder now what if someone had told her that just because she was a woman didn't mean that the task of completing bulk of domestic chores belong to her you know my father shared mean that she let him do the bulk of the household work and she expected him to do certain things but she always felt the guilt that he was doing something that was against the gender norms because her own thought of her own family and her own social context had instilled certain values and her i grew up thinking that my role as a woman was to pursue a c academically but also get married and have kids so i absorbed the same ideas from my parents nurture my family at home and i knew that i needed to learn cooking as a wife and  nurturers and household workers right that that's not their natural normal role it's not a given it's a construct and i know that this is true of many of us think that certain roles are exceptional while certain others are the norm when children continue to see mothers performing bulk of domestic and caregiving tasks like picking up and dropping off those stuff themselves if they are girls studies have shown that over generations women have continued to participate in what are considered softer professions the research shows that there are more  subtle way it's but the message is very clear for children and they do absorb those messages well not just our performance of what we do but also our responses convey make money they are the ones who go out there and if anything all the movies they watch on the shore steffi are telling them outside of where you have all the adventures right so if mom is cleaning the house care quite a bit about their physical appearance mother is an advertisement are slim pretty well groomed they are shown to care about the detergent they use the cleaning products stay you choice of cereal that's important to masculinity are and they make kids unsure of themselves and just about not fitting into the right mood and unable to be themselves unable to have gas and messier personalities than those created by the strict traditional gender norms again we probably know all these things and yet transmit the social cultural expectations to our kids often through our actions and of expression you just have to express yourself it's neither you know it doesn't mean your being a girl or a girly boy or doing anything out of the ordinary or the other way around right it's ok for  cry it's not necessarily because they are girls how many of us tell our girls from a very young age that they don't have to like the dark like dons or music that they can like mat we feed this we learn this from our culture so when we go to a restaurant we will see that the host of more likely to be a young girl so there is both age of them and you know gender bias here cheerleaders will at products for boys of well what do all these messages to from now discussing the effects and i think i've already illustrated some of the effects but i want to underscore that children's actions are affected by what they've seen the household so boys who see fathers perform the mastic chores will be willing to do so and wifely versa studies have shown that children whose fathers housework by the age of eighteen they were more likely to believe that men should participate in those kinds of tasks so what they saw growing up as a fifteen year old fourteen year old by eighteen they really believed that right so they had already formed an idea and a belief that could not sort of be changed about the particular thing mothers in the kitchen more often than they see their fathers then the most modern parents talk about gender equality and the media has also begun to discuss this issue in a sustained fashion what they see and hear confucius confuses them if i have a college professor and a feminist scholar i'm doing the bulk of the household tasks because i'm a woman in the house i'm setting certain ideas in my child if ideas find an echo in the other moms he thieves who work or stay at home and when my boy sees me do bulk of the grocery shopping undertake a flexible job while his father works full time in a competitive and linemen he begins to understand gender division from me as a parent women compromise are go getters almost all studies emphasize that the significance of gender based messages that the most significant of gender based methods of the notion that women continue to perform household tasks and caregiving roles more often than men all the research that i did for the star talks i think the most important lessons we are teaching our kids is this that women do  and you feel women doing that chances are when you grow up you will more likely to be either to be in a profession where you can express that particular function right so you will caregiver or say in a nursing profession our teaching profession and again statistically more women and those professions than others so yes children are learning how to be  overrepresented in office patients that are associated with babbar physical strength status and then age and tick personality which means their you pick agency right so examples are management engineering e tend to transfer these messages to their children especially girls because it seems that you know children are more likely to identify with people who share their gender or who share their sexual identity so goals will tend to look up to their mothers and learn from them behaviors that are gender appropriate and boys will do the same and i do think that sometimes parents also tend to divide instruction in that way i will tell my child how to be a good or right or a woman and my husband's going to tell or my partner is going to tell the child how to be a likely are girls to be the same and suffer from eating problems and anxiety parents implicitly embed gender based assumptions in children also through combatives and between ma and female or even comparisons between traditional gender types and non conforming gender types so i don't have i have you seen washed big bang theory there talk to her party child about how you really needed to be like benny if you wanted to make friends and it was interesting to me because the idea  that the more nerdy in me of a socially awkward and again i felt that you know what the band could have done was talk about how these are very interactions with others you know how do you behave with others and how you appear to others even then they are expected to do well academically and burs of study suggests that by age six girls especially start to express concerns about their own weight or shape and forty to sixty percent of elementary school school  girls age of six to twelve are concerned about their weight or about becoming too fat and this concern research has shown and yours through life so that not all assumptions to confusion depression anorexia body shaming bullying i'm not like that but i'm going to pick on someone like that says low self esteem substance abuse even girls are less likely to confide to fathers about their interpersonal problems and boys feel immensely uncomfortable communicating at all i want to conclude my discussion by talking about why all this is relevant why do we need to understand our complicity in the perpetuation of conventional ideas about gender and the work we can do to destruct the circulation so suggest that children who have had why their understanding of gender divisions and roles perform better within and outside the house without resorting to or being inhibited by forming social relations with others out already young age and it's nice when that understanding of others is broad rather than nat'l they are more successful in achieving comfort and different settings and accomplishing a broad range of facets without identifying even the facets of masculine or feminine because that's happening too it's not just it's not just that the kid thinking about himself or herself as a girl or boy he or she is also true thing things and tasks that them so the research shows that children with a broader understanding of gender identity of better problem solvers in diverse scenarios they don't think of things emotions  learn how to cook or go to our learn the ballet indeed increasingly girls and boys are doing tasks that have been traditionally divided to specif genders and i see that around me of well know girls are thinking of active roles in politics decision making taking an interest in stem personality and these are the ways in which we disrupt traditional gender norms in an increasingly diverse work an academic i mean our children are likely to confront confront children grow up they will be a fart of these conversations they are more likely to be at peace with themselves and others and be happier and productive then these don't seem alien to their race of being differently from of i think it's a good strategy of normalizing certain ways of being for children also thought of it's good for parents themselves roles within their own relations with others such children are also at even different social settings and are more likely to have a positive outlook about b b ations from constricting norms so a child would say yes this is fine this is not exceptional i don't have to be guilty about it or what ex wife eaves doing is not anything special that what he or she is doing is it's one more way of being a boy or a girl i want to end by emphasizing again that promoted at all levels of society through the enforcement of expectations or limitations placed on both genders these expectations prevent individuals from becoming fully actualized they limit people's emotional expression professional aspirations family dynamics and so on and enactment of the the expectations the thousand bothered to friend show split between men and that we disrupted this channeling thank you absolutely i think as a mother of four boys and i you know i i like i said i grew up in a very liberal and i was one of three sisters my dad was in the only son selene pretty much had the reins of the house my mother was a very we were the norm but then when i was confronted with my own son and his own anxieties about fitting in and expectations about what he should be and how he should behave that's when i started thinking that it's not just girls who you know who suffer from gender inequality as was to be the popular assumption their gender equality is only for women you know and i feel very strongly that if this for well and we do a great disservice to our kids when we sort of overlook that you know what our boys going through because of the pressure to be a boy you know whatever of women wotton leadership positions but by the time they leave elementary school those references disappear and they become pretty sort of sad and certain ideas  right but then i and with transgender kids you change and you identify right and you start doing things that boys are doing and not necessarily all of it because you think that that's the social the issue i think for me what is important it's making the child feel comfortable with whatever they are seething and whoever they want to be what saddens and educators really need to sort of it's kind of a tightrope walk and what you really need to navigate is you're not you watch out for things that you know are that go against the grain of all of them achieving their full potential so if i am telling my garters you have to do that and i can clearly see that there are other things that she is interested in us about and i'm telling her to do what because i know that's my society and my cultural context as me that's far far i think that's when i really need to sort of step back and say you know what i must ask her what she feels and watching things and what she life and all that that and i mean for me personally and that's the best i can say in this situation i them socially and culturally and they feel safest and most accepted whereas in places where they see that they are far off the population in the main normal way right and the normal way i think a very complex and messy way it's not this or that a the university i change i become a mom because i go home i change my clothes i read mom clothes you know change change out of my pants and i'm like i'm supposed to talk about gender inequality and see things as sometimes we just need to see them make up ask make up side it's not it's not necessarily girlie i said that if it's something people do you know you like that the other things think of the other than think of the work you do right and this is just one aspect of who you are in the larger sort of aspects that said you know what we actually love household chores that that is something we don't associate with the oppression the actually taking that we just enjoy it and i got i think it should be a question of choice basically no and the fact is that women do house both of the house or walk and the dust gets to be a choice or some point regardless of what people say we do it because of our  want people to associate with the chain or with something that's bad or with something that sticks them mines i mean from warsaw to you know meaningful are symbols and yes these things change their meanings change depending on the contact so if you're going for the job interview where you was required to look a certain way make updates a whole new meaning right when you're going out socially with friends to make up  children to live up to to to think about gender equality and gender inequality so my wondering you know why they are asking you the risk i think and i don't have a so i think that that does a lot of and right now which isn't finding sort of the right channels and i don't know how to address that yeah being i think that's important a swell can be strong like that you know gardley there are so many i think are really like jocks with such a stupid difficult notion but it's ok for boys to like for you know it doesn't mean that the spectrum of emotions are activities they doesn't mean that i'm not interested in something else but i think that that those are just feelings that we can and still less than make them seem more comfortable with them and talking to them about social expectations i think it's important you know talking up to them about how others see and what others expect you know what talking about as a kind of mix of pain with simple by what happens a lot of gender assumptions are so ingrained that they just become normal and dandy barbara father lie so when we talk to our kids about them and we talk to them how to use you know how these are are that it's going to be seen that that could be seen by people outside in a certain way because of the gender assumptions that they have i think that that helps i do that sometimes with my