The Social Context of Sex Role Socialisation

Abstract

‘When a child is born parents first look at its genitals. If it’s a boy they spoil it, if it’s a girl they discipline it.’ So spoke a Brazilian physician who, in describing the way parents rear children in rural Brazil, expressly pointed up the early age at which sex role socialisation begins in a pre-industrial community. For pre-industrial parents know that gender critically affects a child in almost every arena of activity: in the home when relating to parents and siblings, at school when responding to teachers and other persons of authority, on the playground when interacting with peers. And on becoming an adult, the child’s gender will fix its status in the family and community, dictate or limit the work it will perform, and shape the way it will relate to people of either sex. Hence conscientious parents, and even others not as dutiful, early on teach their children the attitudes and values, and the skills and competencies it will need to function as a male or female throughout the course of life.