Gender stereotypes have always had a strong and influential presence in the lives of young women.
From a young age, parents condition girls to accept motherhood as an inevitable part of their lives. Later in life, these same girls face discrimination and criticism for choosing to be mothers.s. We need to allow girls to be girls and mend our society’s toxic relationship with motherhood.
The Journal of Adolescent Health recently published that rigid gender stereotypes are damaging to adolescents’ mental and physical health.
“Adolescent health risks are shaped by behaviors rooted in gender roles that can be well-established in kids by the time they are 10 or 11 years old,” Kristin Mmari, associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said. It’s not surprising that one of the major adolescent health risks that girls most commonly face is pregnancy.”
In her book “Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow Into Troublesome Gaps – And What We Can Do About It,” neuroscientist Lise Eliot explains how their parents, babysitters, teachers, toys and the media all impact children’s development. Parents give young girls baby dolls, toy kitchen sets and dollhouses, all of which encourage the idea that they should aspire to motherhood. From infancy, children absorb information about gender norms.
“It is not long before this implicit understanding starts shaping their own behavior, actions and emotional style, and boys and girls begin growing into the sex roles they see modeled all around them,” Eliot wrote.
Alex Nardo, a senior at Hiram College and president and founder of Hiram Feminism in Action, spoke on the American society’s relationship with motherhood.
“In the 1950s to 1970s, it was very common for women to not tell their employer until they were ‘showing’ because as soon as they realized you were pregnant, you were outed from your workplace,” Nardo said.
“Ruth Bader Ginsburg changed a hundred years of precedent when she fought for the Pregnancy Discrimination Act,” Nardo said.
Kimanii Hollis is an entrepreneur, a senior Georgia State pre-law student and a single mother. Kimanii has experienced severe judgment while in previous jobs and was treated poorly by her boss, colleagues and customers for being a young mother making ends meet. Even in classes, the discrimination didn’t cease. She explained that some of her professors have been unaccommodating of her needs as a mother and student.
On one occasion, Kimanii’s child needed to be brought to one of her classes as nobody could watch her. Her professor refused to allow her into class and tried to fail Kimanii for that day.
Insisting that young girls must fulfill traditional gender roles of being a mother is damaging and wrong. Systematically discriminating against women who choose to become mothers is horrifying and, unfortunately, very common.
Raise your daughters with the understanding that motherhood is a choice, not an expectation, and that they are just as capable of finding professional success as a man is. Help to create a society that does not discriminate against mothers for merely existing.
Allow little girls to be girls and treat mothers with the respect they deserve.
