Quote:
Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate
I remember my Grade 11 English teacher telling us a story about going to the doctor's office. She was taking her 4 year old boy into a clinic because she couldn't get an appointment with her regular doctor and the boy was quite sick. They went into the room and the female doctor came in and the boy looked up at his mother and asked "Now that the nurse is here, is the doctor coming soon?". My English teacher said she was absolutely aghast. She had never taught her son that women could not be doctors. Where he picked that up from she hadn't the foggiest idea. She thought she had been raising her son to believe that women were equal to men and could do any job they wanted. But here she was, shocked that despite her best intentions, her son had picked up from somewhere that men are doctors and women are nurses. Too often in our society kids pick up these traditional gender stereotypes and it only hurts our society.
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Kids have to understand the world from the ground up, so they categorize things. It's nothing to worry about let along be "absolutely aghast". My 1 year old calls the daycare lady "mom" all the time. That word doesn't mean the same thing... likely in his mind "mom" is a nice, safe person that takes care of him. He also calls everything that's fluffy by our dogs name because he doesn't know that all fluffy things belong to different groups. Most nurses in books or real life are women, so it's 100% expected that the kid would think that.
IMO you aren't forced into being tolerant, kind or respectful. The degree to which you are those things is dependent on how your parents display tolerance, kindness and respect. It is likely my kid will grow up thinking that homosexuals are no different than heterosexuals because those are my values. Truthfully I don't think I need to dress him up in ass-less chaps to get that point across.
