Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference

The final part of Delusions of Gender begins with a return to the beginning, looking at gender assumptions around parenting. According to one sociological study, when parents who try to avoid providing gendered toys and messages see their children adopting gender-stereotyped behavior, they’ll often ultimately turn to essentialist explanations (190).

However, “the obstacles to gender-neutral parenting begin well before a baby is born” (192). Parents tend to have strong stereotypical expectations of even hypothetical children (being excited for a boy to play baseball with, or a girl to dress up). Pregnant women describe the movements of their unborn children differently depending on whether they know the fetus’s sex. Even a gender studies scholar, “well-versed in the negative consequences of gender socialization,” noticed herself changing the way she spoke to and of her fetus when she learned she was having a boy (193). In short, even those parents who are most consciously trying to provide a gender-neutral environment for their child may not have the ability to do it. Implicit assumptions strike again.

Building on previous evidence about the plasticity of behavior and the pressure of implicit versus explicit attitudes, Fine examines early-childhood gendering. Even very young babies can be shown to have a preference for the familiar; infants prefer their familial mother tongue (perhaps from having heard it in utero), and by three months of age, babies prefer the faces of the races and sexes they’re most familiar with (197).