In late June a major newspaper ran the headline “Tiny tots sex agenda” criticising a “professional development course, for preschool teachers, that requires them to ‘secretly’ study subjects …” and I won’t finish that sentence.
Firstly, let’s be clear that the course is not “secret” – it’s on full display here https://multiverse.com.au/my-friend-has-two-mums/
Secondly, it’s been widely studied that the societal construct of gender (and subsequent gender-focussed marketing) has negative and lifelong effects on children as young as 18 months old.
Can we consider for a moment that all things associated with gender stereotyping may have a significant impact on inequality, one of the key precursors to domestic violence?
Let’s do a quick exercise:
- Picture a man about to hit someone – a woman, a man, a child, a wall. Is it at this moment he has decided he is more important, more relevant than the person he is about to abuse? Maybe no.
- Go back, see him as a younger man at work where he’s received someone else’s payslip, a female colleague. They have the same job, the same experience, the same qualifications. Is it in this moment he decides he is more important than her? Perhaps a little.
- Watch him, as a teenager, when he sees his sister assigned household chores for pocket money and he gets to mow the lawn. Is it then?
- His sister isn’t allowed to go out by herself, her dad grills her on a date who’s picking her up, he gets to go out, no questions asked. Is it then?
- He’s 9, and he notices his mum gives him more pocket money than his sister for the same amount of work. Is it then?
- Now go back further. He’s a boy of 3. He’s with his mum in the girl’s section of a department store looking up at a white shirt that “Happy and Smiley”. Later, they’re in the boy’s section where the T-shirt says “Brave and Strong”. It’s right here that the imbalance and social structures of stereotyping start.
From 18 months to 6 years of age are some of the most formative years when it comes to how boys and girls see themselves and how they view their peers. The messaging that girls should be happy and smiley, and boys should be brave and strong sounds so simple, but those messages set kids up for failure in how they view themselves (particularly in the way they deal with their own emotional wellbeing) and how they view others.
That messaging starts when they’re young and continues all the way through their lives. Early education is perfectly positioned to help navigate our children through the complexities of our society – whether that’s with two mums, two dads, a mum and a dad or a single parent.
