Sunday, June 2, 2013

Gender, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation

Throughout our society, homophobia and heterosexism permeate the world of young children through various books, movies, toys, stores, culture of early childhood centers, and schools by only encouraging heterosexual relationships.  For example, children’s toys tend to be gender specific that focus on boys doing more hands-on activities to promote masculinity and girls toys that focus on nurturing and cleaning.  In early childhood centers, the visual aids in the classroom environment tend to show women taking care of others; whereas, the men are displayed by working in construction or working with some form of tools.  These various bias in children’s learning environment are only encouraging one life style that is created by the dominate culture of society.  I am completely against allowing the dominate culture to determine what is in the best interest of children during early development due to the fact that children should be free to explore all aspects of society and not be sheltered from ideas that are different from the dominate culture.  In my opinion, people who are against exposing children to homosexuality are doing it out of fear because they believe by exposing children to such ideas will determine their sexuality.  These conclusions are false and we as early childhood professionals should share with families and their children the realities of early development as an attempt to be a better resource for children and their families. 


No comments:

Post a Comment