Abstract
As a sociologist of gender and childhood, I hear many off-the-cuff stories from friends and family about children and gender. These stories frequently take the form of “we tried giving our daughter trucks to play with, but she really just loved dolls and glittery dresses.” Those off-the-cuff stories often discourage me. I hear in them the relentless ideology of biology and its natural explanation for gender difference. Thus, Emily Kane’s The Gender Trap: Parents and the Pitfalls of Raising Boys and Girls was an insightful and liberating read. Kane’s careful research reveals that I had not been listening carefully enough.
Relying on detailed data from 42 in-depth interviews (rather than off-the-cuff remarks) with a diverse group of parents, Kane delicately untangles the variation in parents’ ideas and practices regarding gender in childhood. Where previous research and everyday anecdotes suggest uniformity, The Gender Trap reveals nuanced and crucial differences in how parents perceive, respond to, and construct their children’s gendered pathways. Kane finds that by no means are parents solely wedded to biological explanations for understanding gender (all but two parents in her study recognized some social aspect of gender), nor are they all wedded to promoting gender-typical behavior.
Kane’s thorough analysis of her interviews allowed her to develop a clear sense of the differences in how parents understood and practiced gender with regard to their children. She finds five types of parents among her 42 interview subjects. Naturalizers are parents who are primarily committed to biological accounts of gender. What most distinguishes Naturalizers is their strong inclination to discourage gender-atypical behavior in their children and their high sense of accountability to others with regard to gender. Cultivators are also interested in having traditionally gendered children. Yet, unlike Naturalizers, Cultivators understand gender as fairly social and think parents figure prominently in the development of children’s gendered pathways. Kane calls parents who adhere equally to biology and society for explanations for gender Refiners. These parents are interested in modest change to gender categories and practices, but not in significant shifts in the gender structure. Innovators and Resisters are the groups most interested in change. Kane describes Innovators as an optimistic group who believe they can raise children in less gendered ways. Innovators adhere least to biological explanations for gender and feel least accountable to others. They also are the group most committed to changing gender for girls and boys. Finally, Resisters, the smallest group, are similar to Innovators. They not only accept gender-nonnormative behavior, but they also most actively reject traditional gender behavior. At the same time, this group is less optimistic than the Innovators and they “deeply felt [a] sense of accountability to others” (p. 172).
The ways that subgroups are clustered within these categories is also fascinating. Kane mentions many of these patterns, but is reasonably reluctant to follow up on them beyond speculation because of the small sample size. She finds that eight of nine Naturalizers had a son; eight of 10 Cultivators had daughters; the largest cluster of gay parents is among the Resisters (is this why Resisters feel accountability so strongly?); the Naturalizers seemingly all have gender-traditional occupations, and much more. Part of why these patterns are compelling is because we want to know more about how parents end up as Naturalizers or Refiners or Resisters. What demographic patterns might exist? Or, are these parenting categories embedded in larger gender ideologies such as those described by Hochschild in The Second Shift? It is not the main thrust of the book to answer this question, but Kane occasionally approaches answering it when she describes these patterns of subgroups and, less satisfyingly, when she describes the “personal preferences” of parents.
The Gender Trap describes the parenting types through a set of cases in a chapter for each type. These stories are readable, fascinating, recognizable, and sometimes painful accounts of daily life with children. They describe the varying importance of mundane, daily parenting events. For example, some parents weigh the decision to give a child a requested toy lightly and some with grave introspection and seriousness. Sometimes it’s a gender-normative toy and sometimes a gender-atypical toy that presents the most perplexing decision. Kane’s analysis reveals why such mundane gendered moments matter not only to gender scholars but to the future of gender equity. Thus, this book should find a broad audience including parents themselves, researchers of gender, family, or childhood, and undergraduates in courses on gender, family, and childhood across a variety of social science disciplines.