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Stephanie Esquivel

Moerbeek

Gender Studies

15 September 2021

My Childhood

Gender Socialization is basically a process by which children or anyone develop.

Gender socialization plays a big part in children's viewpoints as the grow up because children

having only two option really if they are a boy their parents family members etc are going to get

them “boy thing” such as car toys , trucks , action figures , thing with the color blue , red , green

etc as for girls they will receive “girl things” such as dolls , beauty toys and wear skirts , dresses ,

pinks and purples. This makes kids feel like they have to be a certain way and have to like

certain things. I was born in 2004 and when my parents found out I was a girl they went all out.

The structure of my family is my mom, my dad and myself. As I was growing up with

having my parents around I tended to notice that some “roles” in the house were both played by

my mom and my dad. My mom and dad were both working and making money to keep us living

healthy , my mom and dad would both make breakfast , lunch , and dinner. My dad would help

my mom clean the house and do the laundry. I grew up having to know that just like women have

responsibilities to do around the house men have them as well and if they don't help out around

the house they are considered “lazy.” Although this can be true, I grew up with two hard working

parents. This made an impact in my life right now and in the future because my parents showed
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me that both couples in the relationship have to help each other out in order to succeed in life and

be a healthy couple.

When my parents had me they made sure I had all the girl experiences and made sure that

I would be treated and respected like the special girl I was. My parents raised me by having me

play with dolls such as barbies , lalaloopsies , fairies etc. For halloween they would dress me up

as a princess or fairy , I think I was a princess for every halloween. The shows I enjoyed

watching were Dora and Elmo. Elmo can be known as a “boy” show but it's really for both

genders. Personally I think that shows shouldnt matter especially kid shows because most kids

shows main priority/goal is to teach kids something new. Whenever we had a party to go to or

just somewhere where you needed to dress up nice my parents would make sure I would be in

dresses , skirts , or girly clothing attire. I grew up being a “daddy's girl” which for me means

being my dad's favorite thing ever and he always made sure that I would get everything that I

ever wanted.

Looking back to my childhood A show I would have my parents put on replay was

Strawberry Shortcake , Dora , and Elmo. Those three were my favorite shows to ever watch.

According to my parents I would and could sit on the couch all day watching Dora. When me

and my parents would go on roadtrips I always took my little DVD player and would watch

Strawberry Shortcake the whole ride and not get tired of it. Now that I am grown and have

learned more about gender based things I have realized that shows like Strawberry Shortcake are

just shows that make the characters dumb and have the other characters of characters that are the

oppisite gender help them out. The main girl character can never figure out her own problems

like an indepent woman. There always has to be a “prince” to either save her or help her realize
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something. This is a bad example for kids because they grow up to think that they need someone

to help them with their problems or get rescued.

While doing this essay and having to remember my childhood this made me realize that I

was raised like a “stereotype girl” meaning I was dressed super girly , I would play with girly

toys , I was forced to learn how to clean , for parties I would get girly clothes or girly toys. This

will really help me out in the long run with my future children by teaching them that they can

play , watch , wear and do whatever they want. That they don't have to do a certain thing just

because the same gender as them is doing it.

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Work Cited

Foxx, R M, et al. “An Analysis of Social Skills Generalization in Two Natural Settings.”

Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 1986,

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1308075/.

“Generalizing from Social Media Data: A Formal Theory Approach.” Taylor & Francis,

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1555610?journalCode=rics

20.

Winner, Michelle Garcia. “Social Thinking Articles.” Socialthinking.com, 19 Sept. 2015,

https://www.socialthinking.com/Articles?name=strategies-encourage-generalizing-social-th

inking-skills.