“I’m a big boy now, and big boys don’t cry!”: Peer reinforcement of gender stereotypes within pre-school settings
January 29, 2022
Blog post based on my ECSDN conference presentation.
A little boy was standing on the climbing frame in front of me and started to talk to me.
“I don’t cry” he said,
“what do you mean?” I asked him
“I’m a big boy now, and big boys don’t cry!” he replied
This was my first day in a nursery where I had arranged to collect data about children’s experiences of gender policing, who was policed, who did the policing and what techniques do children use to police their peers. It was also the boys fourth birthday and he was keen to share this information with me. Standing close by, also on the climbing frame, was a girl. She obviously heard what the boy said to me because she then asked if it was ok for big girls to cry. He confirmed that girls could cry but big boys don’t cry. A week later, I watched as he fell over in the garden, he slowly stood up with a look of pain on his face and obviously biting his lip, with a bad graze on his leg but he didn’t cry, he also refused to go to a practitioner for help and tried to tell me that he was fine.
In my research, the term policing is used to mean the steps taken to ensure the maintenance of societal rules. Whilst this example is of verbal gender policing, initially from an unknown person on the boy, his repetition of the information to a peer was also a form of policing.
The focus of this blog post is the subtle nature of the non-verbal communication that children use, in order to raise practitioner awareness of the challenge they face when working to provide a gender-equitable education and to challenge gender stereotypes for the children in their care.
When considering gender stereotypes, it is the specific characteristics and behaviours that are believed to be desirable or appropriate due to a person's gender that are the focus (Skočajić et al., 2019). When thinking about pre-school children, societal expectations are that girls enjoy drawing, playing with dolls and reading, whereas boys enjoy construction activities, toy cars and physical play.
Reinforcement of these stereotypes has an impact on children’s access to the nursery environment and the curriculum. For instance construction play is linked to an understanding of shape and space, whilst drawing and other mark making activities support fine motor development.
But these gender stereotypes also link to the types of employment and roles that are believed to be appropriate for men and women. For example, the children who participated in my research held strong beliefs about the gender appropriateness of certain occupations. I was told by participants that car mechanics are men and that women don’t fix cars because they might make it worse, whereas even when one of the children said that the nurse at their doctors was male, the majority of children felt that only women could be nurses and that men would be doctors. Research by the OECD found that children’s career aspirations are as gendered at 14 years old as they are at 4 years old. The gender stereotypes that young children hold about appropriate careers doesn’t change greatly, even with exposure to wider experiences throughout their schooling.
Additionally, the use of gender stereotypes and norms to control or punish non-conforming peers has been shown to lead to continued gender-based discrimination in adult life, for instance with parents questioning why a man would want to work in early childhood.
Whilst, in my experience, most early childhood practitioners challenge gender stereotypes when they hear them, for instance, “boys don’t play with dolls” or “urgh, that’s a girls colour” and settings aim to provide and encourage an inclusive environment for the children, the use of gendered language within early childhood settings by practitioners unintentionally reinforces the gender binary and gender differences. In my experience as a practitioner, as well as during my recent data collection periods, I have heard practitioners asking for strong boys or for some helpful girls to complete a job for them. This language, while not appearing to be harmful to the practitioner, reinforces that boys are strong and girls aren’t and that girls can be relied on to help others whilst boys can’t. Additionally, if there is a child in the setting who doesn’t identify as, or isn’t sure of, their assigned gender the reinforcement of the gender binary can cause them additional anxiety about being different.
During conversations with practitioners, pre-school children’s awareness of gender and therefore knowledge of gender stereotypes was often raised by the practitioners. A view held by a few of the practitioners I spoke to was that pre-school children are innocent or naïve, that they don’t see gender differences and don’t know about gender stereotypes. This belief was often used as a reason to explain the value of using gendered language with the children and asking them whether they were a boy or a girl. However, Prioletta (2019) suggests that by assuming children are not aware of gender stereotypes practitioners may “limit the support children may require to navigate unequal power relations in their play at school, which may not only maintain a patriarchal culture in the preschool classroom, but also adversely affect children’s learning opportunities in preschool.” (p10)
Warin and Adriany (2015) take this further and state that practitioners must be aware of their own gender beliefs and the children’s gender beliefs in order to reduce their impact on the children’s development. However, once practitioners are aware of the gendered practices that are being performed within a setting, they can “confront and disrupt” (p384) this behaviour and teach children to be gender conscious. By changing the culture of the setting in this way practitioners can create situations where children feel able to challenge the gender stereotypes that they encounter through their play with peers for themselves (Lyttleton-Smith, 2017).
Young children are expert users of non-verbal communication, studies show that verbal communication only makes up about 35% of the information we receive from a person, with the other 65% of the communication coming from the use of non-verbal cues. These non-verbal cues include facial expressions, tone of voice, eye contact, body position and movement among many others. These cues are often fleeting which makes it difficult for a person who is outside of the conversation to spot them. The elusive nature of non-verbal communication means that practitioners may miss the signs and techniques that are being used to reinforce gender stereotypes within their setting.
The first example of non-verbal communication that I saw was children looking to their peers for a reaction during play and while they were speaking. The response they received then impacted their behaviour, in one example a child was talking about gender and was watching their peer as they spoke, as soon as their friend’s expression changed, the first child ‘corrected’ themselves in order to please their friend.
Children use their facial expressions to show how they feel about other children who are playing in the same area. In one incident that I observed, two boys looked at each other and pulled a face when a girl asked to join their play in the small world area. She reacted by turning away and leaving the area, this incident of policing behaviour may have reinforced several negative and limiting thoughts, that:
· Girls and boys don’t play together
A little boy was standing on the climbing frame in front of me and started to talk to me.
“I don’t cry” he said,
“what do you mean?” I asked him
“I’m a big boy now, and big boys don’t cry!” he replied
This was my first day in a nursery where I had arranged to collect data about children’s experiences of gender policing, who was policed, who did the policing and what techniques do children use to police their peers. It was also the boys fourth birthday and he was keen to share this information with me. Standing close by, also on the climbing frame, was a girl. She obviously heard what the boy said to me because she then asked if it was ok for big girls to cry. He confirmed that girls could cry but big boys don’t cry. A week later, I watched as he fell over in the garden, he slowly stood up with a look of pain on his face and obviously biting his lip, with a bad graze on his leg but he didn’t cry, he also refused to go to a practitioner for help and tried to tell me that he was fine.
In my research, the term policing is used to mean the steps taken to ensure the maintenance of societal rules. Whilst this example is of verbal gender policing, initially from an unknown person on the boy, his repetition of the information to a peer was also a form of policing.
The focus of this blog post is the subtle nature of the non-verbal communication that children use, in order to raise practitioner awareness of the challenge they face when working to provide a gender-equitable education and to challenge gender stereotypes for the children in their care.
When considering gender stereotypes, it is the specific characteristics and behaviours that are believed to be desirable or appropriate due to a person's gender that are the focus (Skočajić et al., 2019). When thinking about pre-school children, societal expectations are that girls enjoy drawing, playing with dolls and reading, whereas boys enjoy construction activities, toy cars and physical play.
Reinforcement of these stereotypes has an impact on children’s access to the nursery environment and the curriculum. For instance construction play is linked to an understanding of shape and space, whilst drawing and other mark making activities support fine motor development.
But these gender stereotypes also link to the types of employment and roles that are believed to be appropriate for men and women. For example, the children who participated in my research held strong beliefs about the gender appropriateness of certain occupations. I was told by participants that car mechanics are men and that women don’t fix cars because they might make it worse, whereas even when one of the children said that the nurse at their doctors was male, the majority of children felt that only women could be nurses and that men would be doctors. Research by the OECD found that children’s career aspirations are as gendered at 14 years old as they are at 4 years old. The gender stereotypes that young children hold about appropriate careers doesn’t change greatly, even with exposure to wider experiences throughout their schooling.
Additionally, the use of gender stereotypes and norms to control or punish non-conforming peers has been shown to lead to continued gender-based discrimination in adult life, for instance with parents questioning why a man would want to work in early childhood.
Whilst, in my experience, most early childhood practitioners challenge gender stereotypes when they hear them, for instance, “boys don’t play with dolls” or “urgh, that’s a girls colour” and settings aim to provide and encourage an inclusive environment for the children, the use of gendered language within early childhood settings by practitioners unintentionally reinforces the gender binary and gender differences. In my experience as a practitioner, as well as during my recent data collection periods, I have heard practitioners asking for strong boys or for some helpful girls to complete a job for them. This language, while not appearing to be harmful to the practitioner, reinforces that boys are strong and girls aren’t and that girls can be relied on to help others whilst boys can’t. Additionally, if there is a child in the setting who doesn’t identify as, or isn’t sure of, their assigned gender the reinforcement of the gender binary can cause them additional anxiety about being different.
During conversations with practitioners, pre-school children’s awareness of gender and therefore knowledge of gender stereotypes was often raised by the practitioners. A view held by a few of the practitioners I spoke to was that pre-school children are innocent or naïve, that they don’t see gender differences and don’t know about gender stereotypes. This belief was often used as a reason to explain the value of using gendered language with the children and asking them whether they were a boy or a girl. However, Prioletta (2019) suggests that by assuming children are not aware of gender stereotypes practitioners may “limit the support children may require to navigate unequal power relations in their play at school, which may not only maintain a patriarchal culture in the preschool classroom, but also adversely affect children’s learning opportunities in preschool.” (p10)
Warin and Adriany (2015) take this further and state that practitioners must be aware of their own gender beliefs and the children’s gender beliefs in order to reduce their impact on the children’s development. However, once practitioners are aware of the gendered practices that are being performed within a setting, they can “confront and disrupt” (p384) this behaviour and teach children to be gender conscious. By changing the culture of the setting in this way practitioners can create situations where children feel able to challenge the gender stereotypes that they encounter through their play with peers for themselves (Lyttleton-Smith, 2017).
Young children are expert users of non-verbal communication, studies show that verbal communication only makes up about 35% of the information we receive from a person, with the other 65% of the communication coming from the use of non-verbal cues. These non-verbal cues include facial expressions, tone of voice, eye contact, body position and movement among many others. These cues are often fleeting which makes it difficult for a person who is outside of the conversation to spot them. The elusive nature of non-verbal communication means that practitioners may miss the signs and techniques that are being used to reinforce gender stereotypes within their setting.
The first example of non-verbal communication that I saw was children looking to their peers for a reaction during play and while they were speaking. The response they received then impacted their behaviour, in one example a child was talking about gender and was watching their peer as they spoke, as soon as their friend’s expression changed, the first child ‘corrected’ themselves in order to please their friend.
Children use their facial expressions to show how they feel about other children who are playing in the same area. In one incident that I observed, two boys looked at each other and pulled a face when a girl asked to join their play in the small world area. She reacted by turning away and leaving the area, this incident of policing behaviour may have reinforced several negative and limiting thoughts, that:
· Girls and boys don’t play together
· That she shouldn’t play in the small world area with the cars
· That she wasn’t wanted
However, the boys’ response was fleeting and would not have been seen had I not been in a position to observe the interaction.
Children’s body position can also be used to police their peers' inclusion, whether this is by turning their body so that they do not acknowledge or see the other children, or by leaning towards their peer in an intimidating move to ensure that the child response in the way they want.
Whilst children’s use of non-verbal communication makes it difficult for practitioners to identify when children are experiencing gender policing or being exposed to gender stereotypical rules there are steps that practitioners can take to raise their awareness of what is happening around them and what they can do.
The first is to step back and watch what is going on, practitioners are skilled observers and can use this skill to question:
· Are there children playing in awkward or unusual positions within the area?
· Does a child who was previously engaged in play suddenly stop playing or go elsewhere when someone new joins the play?
· Is a child being blocked from accessing the resources?
Observe the children when they are talking:
· Do they look to a peer for a reaction either before they engage or change their words or actions in response to a peer’s reaction?
· Take action when children let you know that they cannot play in a particular area, don’t just remind children that all children in the setting can play with all of the resources. This form of adult intervention doesn’t identify the potential gender policing that is going on, but by asking what is happening in the play, joining in and ensuring that all of the children are involved, you are modelling inclusive play and teaching the children that gender is not a limit.
Finally, practitioners need to remember that pre-school children are not naïve when it comes to gender. Gender is a salient characteristic for early years children and they use their knowledge of gender to identify who to play with, what to play with and how to be a boy or girl.
