or masculinity; it is to engage in behavior at the risk of gender assessment.” I argue that many parents make efforts to stray from and thus expand normative conceptions of gender. But for their sons in particular, they balance this effort with conscious attention to producing a masculinity approximating hegemonic ideals. This balancing act is evident across many parents I interviewed regardless of gender, race/ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation, and partnership status. But I also argue that within that broader pattern are notable variations. Heterosexual fathers play a particularly central role in accomplishing their sons’ masculinity and, in the process, reinforce their own as well. Their expressed motivations for that accomplishment work often involve personal endorsement of hegemonic masculinity. Heterosexual mothers and gay parents, on the other hand, are more likely to report motivations that invoke accountability to others for crafting their sons’ masculinity in accordance with hegemonic ideals.
Source: Emily W. Kane, “No Way My Boys Are Going to Be Like That!”: Parents’ Responses to Children’s Gender Nonconformity.” Gender & Society, Vol. 20, No. 2, April 2006, pp. 149–176. Copyright © 2006 Sociologists for Women in Society. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications, Inc.
Three bodies of literature provide foundations for this argument. Along with the body of work documenting parental behaviors in relation to gendering children, I draw on interactionist approaches that view gender as a situated accomplishment and scholarship outlining the contours of normative conceptions of masculinity. These latter two literatures offer a framework for understanding the significance of the patterns evident in my analysis of interview data.
Parents and the Social Construction of Gender
Scholars of gender and childhood are increasingly interested in the role of peers in the process of gendering children, viewing children themselves as active agents rather than passive recipients of adult influence. However, they also continue to recognize parents as important in the gendering of children (Coltrane and Adams 1997; Maccoby 1998). Lytton and Romney’s (1991) metaanalysis of the substantial quantitative and experimental literature on gender and parents’ behavior toward their sons and daughters documents that parents do not always enforce gendered expectations for their children, nor do they consistently treat sons and daughters differently. Some researchers have highlighted subgroups of parents who actively seek to disrupt traditional gendered expectations for their children…. But as a whole, the literature documents definite parental tendencies toward gendered treatment of children. These tendencies are evident beginning at birth and in the early childhood years. For example, the literature indicates differential treatment of sons and daughters in terms of parental selection of toys … clothing … and décor for children’s rooms … as well as parental emphasis on emotions versus autonomy in family stories. Across this literature, gender typing by parents is well documented, as are two patterns within that gender typing. First, fathers appear to engage in more differential treatment of sons and daughters and more enforcement of gender boundaries than do mothers; second, for both mothers and fathers, such boundary maintenance appears to be more evident in the treatment of sons than daughters (… Coltrane and Adams 1997; Maccoby 1998).
The large literature on gender typing by parents is predominantly quantitative and often based on experiments, closed-ended surveys, and/or counting the frequency of various parental behaviors. This literature is valuable in documenting the role that parents play in gendering their children. However, it does less to explore the nuances of how parents make meaning around gender, to document in detail what kinds of attributes and behaviors are accepted and sanctioned by parents of young children, to reveal what motivates parents as they participate in the social construction of their children’s gender, or to illuminate how aware parents are of their role in these processes. Parents are clearly gendering their children, but what are the subtleties of the gendered outcomes they seek to construct, why do they seek to construct those, and how aware are they of that construction process?
Doing Gender: Accomplishment and Accountability
The interactionist approach to gender as accomplishment (West and Fenstermaker 1993, 1995; West and Zimmerman 1987) provides a powerful framework for understanding what I heard about gender nonconformity in my interviews with parents of young children. This approach allows us to view parents not simply as agents of gender socialization but rather as actors involved in a more complex process of accomplishing gender with and for their children. Along with the notion of gender as accomplished, equally central is the concept of accountability. Accountability is relevant not only when people are doing gender in accordance with the expectations of others but also when they resist or stray from such expectations…. Fenstermaker and West (2002) … note that their focus on the process by which gender is accomplished places activity, agency, and the possibility of resistance in the foreground. But the accomplishment of such change takes place within the context of, and is constrained by, accountability to gendered assessment….
While accomplishment and accountability are key concepts framing my analysis of parents’ responses to their children’s gender nonconformity, it is also crucial to note the importance of normative conceptions…. Normative conceptions of appropriate masculine conduct are particularly relevant to my analysis, and to explore that domain, I turn briefly to scholarship on the history of masculinity as a social construct.
Normative Conceptions of Masculinity: Hegemonic Masculinity
Connell (1995: 77) has argued persuasively that “at any given time, one form of masculinity rather than others is culturally exalted.” This hegemonic masculinity is cross-culturally and historically variable and offers a clear example of a locally specific normative conception of gender. It stands as a normative conception to which men are accountable, a form of masculinity in relation to which subordinated masculinities, as well as femininities, are defined. Connell (1987: 187) argues that there is no need for a concept of hegemonic femininity, because the fundamental purpose of hegemonic masculinity is to legitimate male domination. The subordination of non-hegemonic masculinities is crucial as well, as it allows hegemonic masculinity to legitimate not only male privilege but also race, class, and sexual orientation–based privileges as well.
Several elements of Connell’s theory are especially relevant to my analysis of how parents think about their preschool sons’ gender nonconformity. He argues that among the features of hegemonic masculinity in this particular time and place are aggression, limited emotionality, and heterosexuality. In addition, he and other scholars interested in the social construction of masculinity emphasize its relational meaning: “‘masculinity’ does not exist except in contrast with ‘femininity’” (Connell 1995: 68). As Kimmel notes, the “notion of anti-femininity lies at the heart of contemporary and historical constructions of manhood, so that masculinity is defined more by what one is not rather than who one is” (1994: 119). Passivity and excessive emotionality, as well as more material adornments of femininity, are precisely what must be avoided in this hegemonic version of masculinity. Both Connell and Kimmel view homophobia as central to this rejection of femininity. Connell (1987: 186) states this bluntly when he notes that “the most important feature of contemporary hegemonic masculinity is that it is heterosexual…. Contempt for homosexuality and homosexual men … is part of the ideological package of hegemonic masculinity.”
Data and Method
Participants and Interviewing
The analyses presented here are based on data from 42 interviews with a diverse sample of parents, each of whom has at least one preschool-aged child (three to five years old). Interviews focused on parents’ perceptions of their children’s gendered attributes and behaviors. The preschool age range is emphasized because this is the period when most children begin to develop a clear understanding of the gender expectations around them, as evidenced in the development of gender
