Are Sex Roles Socially Constructed by Children?

We all know the evidence that sex tendencies are innates.  Baby chimp girls play with dolls, baby chimp males play with trucks.  And so on and so on and so on.

But also clearly there is a lot of social construction going on.

What we all overlook though is how the social construction occurs.  We think of social construction as something, probably oppressive, that “Society” does.

I think in truth a lot of it is done by your children.

the villainous mastermind of social construction

This post was inspired by yesterday’s round up on the concept of “righteous dominion” and D&C 121.  I was thinking about what it means that unconditional love and conditional love (glory) map to womanhood and manhood respectively.

I remembered a study I saw recently.  Children laugh harder and have more fun when Dad romps with them.  Children are more comforted when Mom comforts them.   Why?

I think one reason is because children are trying to understand the world and they are just children.  They can only understand things in simple terms.  I have two parents.   They must be different.  How are they different?  Mommy holds me and feeds me a lot.  That must be what mommies are for.  Daddy [who is trying to find a way to interact with the kid that doesn’t involve breastfeeding] plays around with me more.  That must be what daddies are for.  Mommy is more sympathetic when I’m sad.  Daddy tries to fix it.  Mommies are sympathizers, Daddies are fixers.  Mommies are soft, Daddies are strong.  And so on.  This won’t always be the same for each home, but it will tend in that direction.  And then even at a very young age children get exposed to other children’s viewpoints and try to standardize their own with theirs.

Children want there to be a principle of unconditional love in their home. and they want there to be a principle of rules and order and conditional love in their home.  By the nature of the child’s experience, these will tend to map to Mom and Dad respectively.  Even when, in the nature of things, Mommy has rules and Daddy forgives them unconditionally, they experience it differently and they want to experience it differently.  “Even Love expects something from me.  Even Justice forgives me.”

And we parents fall in with it.  It works, why fight what works, we are struggling to figure this whole thing out anyway, and both mother and father are  undergoing big biological and hormonal changes that allow for personality shifts and changes of direction personally.

Parenthood is a profound meditation on what power is and how it actually works.  So much of what the authority does actually comes from below.

I don’t know what it means in this context that God’s number-one identifier for Himself is as our parent, but I am pretty sure it means something important.