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Social and environmental factors
Gender identity also has a strong correlation to social and environmental factors; such as what type of parents raise the child and what kind of culture they grow up in. Parents and authoritative figure's views on sexuality and gender will have a great influence on children's behaviors, interests, and self-identity. Children learn by observation and reproductions, and will repeat actions and ideas that they see from the adults in their lives. Parents who do not support gender nonconformity are more likely to have children with firm views on gender identity as well as stricter views regarding gender roles. Even when parents do support gender nonconformity, they will usually only support it to a point. Recent literature on parental coding of toys as masculine, feminine, or neutral indicates that parents are increasingly coding kitchens and in some cases dolls as neutral rather than exclusively feminine. But it was more common in Emily Kane’s research for parents to show negative responses to items, activities, or attributes that could be considered icons of femininity. Her research has indicated clearly that the work many parents are doing to accomplish gender with and for their sons is in a manner that distances those sons away from any association with femininity.

It was also brought up in Kane’s research that the connection between gender performance and sexual orientation was not spontaneously raised for daughters. Meaning that parents did not bring up concern for their girls being considered homosexual as a result of identifying with masculine qualities like they did if their sons where to identify with feminine qualities. Regardless is this was connected to gender performance or not, it suggests how closely gender conformity and heterosexuality are linked with hegemonic constructions of masculinity. Especially since a positive response by parents to their sons was primarily limited to a few attributes and abilities of femininity, namely, domestic skills, nurturance, and empathy.”

The environment in which a child is raised in regards to gender is created before the child is even born. Current technology, such as an ultrasound, allows the parents to find out the biological sex of the child before he or she is born and to alter their preparation as parents based on what they find. The child arrives to a decided gender-specific name, games, and even ambitions. When the child's sex is determined, most children are raised to be a man or a woman, with the related social roles based on the parents' beliefs. Anthropologist LaFreniere states, "By the time children are 3 to 4 years old, they have already formed an image of themselves as boy or girl." According to Emily Kane, “children themselves become active participants in this gendering process by the time they are conscious of the social relevance of gender, typically before the age of 2 Children form these thoughts through parents, teachers, peers, and the games and toys that they play with at a young age. Sociologist Doob states that by the age of 5, girls show a preference for dolls, doll accessories, drawing, painting, and soft toys while boys will tend to prefer blocks, small vehicles, tools and rough-house play. Many parents invoke biology in explaining their children’s gendered tendencies. Children are going to act in ways that receive a positive response from their parents and will change their behavior accordingly if given a negative response. Research from Emily Kane has found that “the parental boundary maintenance work evident for sons represents a crucial obstacle limiting boys options, separating boys from girls, devaluing activities marked as feminine for both boys and girls, and thus bolstering gender inequality and heteronormativity.”

Balancing gender roles and identity are not easy. And identity work is not something that just ends once one identifies themselves as masculine or feminine. Gender identity work is done throughout one’s life. Studies have deemed identity work successful if individuals manage to craft identities that sustain their self-esteem and grant them social validation in their roles. One area where gendered identity work is prevalent is in career transitions. Identity work is gendered during a work transition in three ways. These ways are, the culturally available master narrative of career change are heroic stories, some interviewees adopt gendered identity positioning in accounting for the need to change careers, and identity work results in struggles between conflicting identity positions that may be gendered. By heroic stories, it is meant that position as a career changer serves identity work in legitimizing unwanted career problems and strengthening identity, whether a change is made or not. This means that talk about career change is a way of moving from a victim position and adopting a temporary position as an active and heroic career actor. Adopting gendered identity positioning to account for the need of a career change can happen when the reason for not being able to feel authentic at work may be due to gender. The role of gender in the timing of the transition also applies to life renewal narratives, where the transition is explained by changes in personal life. In these cases, the narrator has been content with a past career but the need for career development has emerged due to a divorce, age crisis, or children growing up. Finally, the struggle between conflicting identity positions may invoke negotiation between an identity position in which one has been place and a newly desired one or between two desired but incompatible positions. An example of this would be becoming a student at an older age in order to become self sufficient but while in school you are at the mercy of your spouse financially. These are two conflicting identities but can sometimes account for the transition that also fuels an identity struggle. This struggle results from differing concepts of a good career and life that the identity positions encompass When learning about the social construction of gender identity work, it is important though to remember that “the way in which identity work can be done and how it’s resources are gendered is dependent on the particular cultural context.” This means that it is necessary to take in the cultural context of the individual when studying or looking at gender identity work.

I just wanted to note that the two citations that are not correct are not my citations. I edited this article and didn't want to just start deleting everything that had already been said. Any comments or suggestions are welcome and appreciated!

AlexiJo91 (talk) 03:24, 8 November 2013 (UTC)