The Gender Trap: Parents and the Pitfalls of Raising Boys and Girls [Hardcover]

A detailed account of how gender is learned and unlearned in the home

From the selection of toys, clothes, and activities to styles of play and emotional expression, the family is ground zero for where children learn about gender. Despite recent awareness that girls are not too fragile to play sports and that boys can benefit from learning to cook, we still find ourselves surrounded by limited gender expectations and persistent gender inequalities. Through the lively and engaging stories of parents from a wide range of backgrounds,The Gender Trapprovides a detailed account of how todays parents understand, enforce, and resist the gendering of their children. Emily Kane shows how most parents make efforts to loosen gendered constraints for their children, while also engaging in a variety of behaviors that reproduce traditionally gendered childhoods, ultimately arguing that conventional gender expectations are deeply entrenched and that there is great tension in attempting to undo them while letting 'boys be boys' and 'girls be girls.'

Fundamentally, this book delves deeply into the meanings and practices of gender in parenting, offering concrete examples of the daily bargains and compromises that parents and children make and situating their negotiations in a palpable world of witnesses whose gaze parents feel upon them. Undergraduates will enjoy the real-world stories of gendered structures coming alive in interaction. The rest of us are likely to be surprised by what Kane found, either so much gender resistance or so much gender retrenchment- with both ably chronicled here. A fascinating and important exploration and analysis of how parents navigate the gender trap. Emily Kane shows clearly that most parents understand childrens personality to be some combination of nature and nurture, and many wish they could help nurture their children to escape gender traps. Yet these parents are themselves trapped by the gender structure itself, el““