+

Chapter 7 Communicating Gender Diversity

+

Gender Roles “The term gender roles is commonly used to refer to feminine and masculine social expectations in a family based on a person’s sex” (p 154)

Moms are expected to be feminize and to

take of the house and the children.

Dads are expected to financially

support their family and be

leaders

+“Communication that occurs in family settings influences a person’s understandings of gender and family” (p 153)

When we think of a family, we think of a mom

who is a female, a dad who is a male, and children.

Grandmother’s are females

and grandfathers

are males. Girls play with dolls and boys

play with trucks.

“Families and gender are so

intertwined that it is impossible to understand one

without reference to the other”

+Gender Role Socialization

The divisions of labor that parents take part in at home often are passed down to their children. When a mother works in the kitchen while a father does the yard work, children begin to form gender socialization.

“Family communication practices construct gender” (p 154)

+

Gendered Social Scripts “Rules that people carry around in their heads about what they ought to be like as men or women and what others ought to be like as men or women” (p 154)

+

Nuclear Family “Composed of two parents (one male and one female) and biological children, with the male as the primary wage earner and the female as the primary homemaker” (p 155)

+Interlocking Institutions

  “If gender/sex appear in the workplace, they likely will appear in families and vice versa” (p 157)

  “Part of the nuclear family myth is that it is self-sufficient, but in reality extended family, work, religion, schools, social services, media, and law influence it” (p 157)

+Interlocking Institutions

  Politics uses the slogan “family values”, which refers to a nuclear family. It’s assumed to be a heterosexual, married, Christian couple with children.

  There is a ‘leisure gap’ in the home, where men and women both work the ‘first shift’ at work, but then women come home and work the ‘second shift’ by caring for their family.

  A ‘nuclear family’ suggests that there is only one type of family, excluding people who are homosexual, widowed, or without children.

  Work produces both the household goods and services and it also produces gender. Women spend much more time doing housework than men do.

(p 158-159)

+

Social Learning and Modeling

“Through often unconscious social learning, children observe and internalize particular types of behaviors” (p160)

Parent-Child Communication

+Gender/Sex Interaction: Parents’ Influence “Children learn gender/sex identities not only by watching their parents but also by interacting with them” (p 161).

Both mothers and fathers are likely to reward their children for sex related behavior, such as daughters being rewarded for using manners and sons being rewarded for aggression.

+ Gender/Sex Interaction: Children’s Influence Children start to recognize their role of gender between the ages of 2 and 3. With this, they begin to choose gender related toys and hobbies. Studies show that children interact with their parents differently, showing that sons are more withdrawn from conversations with their mothers and are more likely to interrupt their mothers than daughters are.

+Adult Friends and Lovers

  Heteronormativity: “the cultural assumption that everyone is heterosexual and wants to be married” (p 164)

  Starting at a young age, children are encouraged to engage with the opposite sex

  Children are exposed to fairytales with prince charming and happy ever afters.

+Dating Relationships

  Women spend a lot of time making themselves look attractive for men. “Their choice to focus on their attractiveness to men is one indication that they value heterosexual romance above everything else, including friendships, career, and even family” (p 166)

  Studies show that “women believed they could not gain prestige from academic successes, organized extracurricular activities, participation in political causes, or relationships with other women. The only way these women were able to raise their self-esteem and social prestige was through romantic relationships with men” (p 166)

+

Marital Communication “Family therapists and marriage counselors call for shared partnership, equitable relational power, and ongoing metatalk about one’s relationship”

“Substantial research shows that wives tend to approach husbands to demand that some need be met, and the husbands withdraw, refusing to engage” (p 168)

+

Domestic Violence

“The family [is] one of the United States’ most violent social institutions and women and children the most common victims”

“Family is supposed to provide safe

haven for members”

+Domestic Violence

  Every day in the United States, four children die as a result of child abuse and neglect that occurs in a family.

  Every day in the United States, four women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends.

  Women are ten times more likely than men to be victims of domestic violence.

  Yearly in the United States, more than 4 million children are abused or neglected by family members; 27% of women and 16% of men report having been victimized as children

  One in four women reports having been raped or physically assaulted by an intimate partner. This statistic is true both for the United States and globally.

(p 169)

+“Safe and healthy families require effort on the part of the individuals in them and the society in which they are situated” (p 171)

+Emancipatory

Families • The stereotype has been created that men are “emotionally distant” and “wage earning” fathers. In order to create more flexible gender roles, men have to do the opposite.

• “We spend more time as parents trying to create clear gender roles which are actually destructive than trying to create more flexible gender roles that are libratory and responsive to each person’s individuality and lived experience”

• “Reality is that men are primary caregivers”

• “Fathers can do housework and nurture children, even when they are not single parents”

• “Mothers must let go of the desire to privilege their relationships with their children over the fathers’”. Unlike mothers, society gives men “the option to be involved with parenting”. Men “realized they needed to give up the privilege of noninvolvement. The changes toward shared parenting worked because these couples were resourceful and found the changes rewarding. They recognized they were capable of re-envisioning family and parenting in a way that was healthy and equitable”.

(p 172-173)

+ My Family