What Our Research Project is About

For some parents, the underlying issues that affect child rearing are the gender inequalities due to socialization and diverse disciplinary methods used in the United States in relation to gender. In our group we discussed how children are raised differently depending on their gender. Though parents may do it unwillingly, in the long run it will result in different effects based on the way their gender determined how they would be brought up.
One of the main examples that we agreed with was how in Hispanic families girls are brought up as the homemakers and are taught this at a very young age (we know this because 3 out of 4 of us are Hispanic). Girls are raised to help mom with the cooking and be by her side every step along the way, whether it be tending to the father or cleaning.
In regards to the diverse disciplinary methods in the United States, our group is interested in finding a pattern that tells us which parent uses which disciplinary methods on their children, the mother or the father? Most importantly we would also like to find if parents are harsher with their disciplinary methods on boys or on girls.

Girls go to the Left; Boys go to the Right

(door on the left is the Day care room and door on the right is the Kindergarten classroom)

My daughter is in Kindergarten and attends a private school. Usually I'm waiting in front of her classroom before her class is dismissed. And this time, thanks to the Anthropology class I'm taking, I noticed that the girls backpacks were separated from the boys. I tried to think of a reason, like, maybe there are not enough hooks for the girls to hang their backpacks in front of their classroom like the boys, but that was not it. So I left it at that. The next morning I take my daughter to school and hang her backpack in front of her classroom, but she said, "No Mom, the girls backpacks go on this side. Away from the boys!" "Why," I asked her. "Because teacher says so," was her reply.

-Wanda Hernandez

gender roles interview

Do parents tend to be more protective with girls than with boys?

We've started our research and i have observed the following activities:

I recently moved to a new apartment complex where I observed many kids coming out from my next door neighbor's apartment. I paid close attention and noticed that there are about 4 families living in the same home. In total, there are about 9 kids varying from ages 1 to 10. While observing their activities during the day, I noticed that the boys engaged in rough play outside with no adult supervision. I walked outside to the laundry room and noticed that they were hiding and pointing their index fingers at each other. "What are you guys playing?" I asked the boys. "We are playing guns!" a little boy said. I then watched them chase each other and pretend to shoot one another. "Play dead, play dead!", one of them yelled at another boy "I shot you, so you need to play dead!"

On a separate occasion the boys were kicking, using profanity, and throwing each other on the floor. I noticed that when the girls go out to play, the mothers are outside watching them if not through the kitchen window, they are outside with the girls. The mothers also hang out outside when both the boys and the girls are outside. However, every time I see the boys playing outside without the girls, there are no parents outside supervising them.

-Nalleli Garrido