Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue Quotes

“That assumption—that labeling and sorting children based on gender doesn’t really matter as long as everyone is treated fairly—would hold true if children only paid attention to the more overt, obvious messages we adults send. If children only listened to our purposeful messages, parenting would be easy. Most (but not all) parents and teachers take great effort in treating their children fairly, regardless of gender. Parents don’t need to say to their daughters, “You probably won’t enjoy math” or say to their sons, “Real boys don’t play with dolls.” Most parents wouldn’t dream of saying these blatant stereotypes to their kids. But research has shown that when we label (and sort and color-code) by gender, children do notice. And it matters—children are learning whether you mean to be teaching them or not.”
― Christia Spears Brown, Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes

“The reality is that kids are complicated, far too complicated and distinct to be sorted into only one of two bins.”
― Christia Spears Brown, Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes

“8. Teach that intelligence comes from trying hard, rather than innate talents. People have one of two views of intelligence. Some people think it is fixed and can never change. You are either born with a lot or a little of it. If you are born with a lot of it, hooray! You will do well in school. Everyone else, sorry about your luck. Other people think intelligence can be increased with hard work, studying, and focus on academics. They think of intelligence like a muscle that gets stronger with work. Kids who have the “muscle” theory of intelligence are protected from stereotype threat.”
― Christia Spears Brown, Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes

“A little side note: Culturally, American kids, parents, and teachers typically view intelligence as something innate. We talk about people being “smart” and “not so smart.” As a group, Chinese kids, parents, and teachers view intelligence as more malleable, increasing with work and effort. Some education researchers argue that this basic difference explains why Chinese students do so much better at school than American students.”
― Christia Spears Brown, Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes

“7. Provide alternative explanations for anxiety. One of the primary reasons stereotype threat reduces performance is that the ensuing anxiety distracts a student from the task at hand. So one way to keep performance high is to help kids explain away the anxiety. For example, one study taught middle school students about the difficulties of transitioning to middle school and about the anxiety and worry that many students feel in their classes. They emphasized that this was normal and temporary and would get better over time. Those students were no longer vulnerable to stereotype threat. Some kids have been taught that the anxiety they feel may actually boost their performance (in other words, it is good anxiety). Those kids were also protected from stereotype threat.”
― Christia Spears Brown, Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes

“5. Emphasize high standards, and assure kids that they are capable of meeting them. As I discussed in chapter 9, offering kids constructive feedback is important. This tells them that you know they can excel at what they work hard at. No one wants an unearned pat on the head. When kids do well, they know it. When they do poorly, they know that, too. No one likes condescension, even kids. So when their performance is subpar, offer feedback that helps them improve and then expect improvements. This is a powerful message about your belief in your child’s capacity to be great. This is much more powerful than a hollow “Good job.”
― Christia Spears Brown, Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes

“3. Discuss stereotype threat. Teach kids that they may feel anxious when they are taking a test, and that is a normal feeling that lots of people experience. Because there is a stereotype that boys aren’t as good in school as girls (or fill in the blank for another stereotype), some boys think they have to do extra well on a test just to prove that stereotype wrong. But, remind him that the test isn’t a perfect test of everything he is capable of and he shouldn’t worry too much about”
― Christia Spears Brown, Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes

“The eight tips below can help protect your kids from stereotype threat. All have been shown by research studies to be effective and all are helpful for kids, regardless of the situation. They are good for every kid to hear, even in the absence of stereotype threat, but are especially helpful for a child doing work in a field of stereotype landmines. 1. De-emphasize gender. Encourage your kids to think of themselves in terms other than gender. There are two good ways to do this that reduce stereotype threat vulnerability. One is to encourage your kids to think of themselves as complex, multifaceted individuals. Have them create a self-concept map, where they draw a circle in the center of the page to represent themselves. Then draw as many smaller circles as possible coming off the main circle. In each of the smaller circles, children should write a description of themselves (such as smart, funny, kind, good at soccer, like SpongeBob SquarePants, hate broccoli, fast runner, good at school, ticklish, and so on). They can include anything they can think of that describes themselves without including gender. The goal is to fill up the page with unique and specific qualities that make your child special. Focusing on the many parts of themselves that aren’t linked to stereotypes helps reduce the power of those stereotypes.”
― Christia Spears Brown, Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes

“(I am sometimes overwhelmed by how tough it is to raise kids! You try to praise them to boost them up and all you do is make them feel bad about themselves.) Instead, tell your children that you have high expectations for them. Then, offer constructive feedback if they have poor performance. Offering constructive feedback (which is not the same as criticism) shows that you have high expectations and that you think your child has the ability to meet those expectations. For example, if your son is writing an essay for homework and it isn’t very good, instead of assuming he can’t do better, tell him that he can do better. Offer specific places where he could improve, such as “Why don’t you start with a topic sentence?” or “Perhaps you can describe this part in a little more detail.” Constructive feedback is specific and focused on how to improve, and it is the kind of encouragement that helps kids both believe in their own abilities and improve, which, in turn, helps children stick with activities they might otherwise have struggled with.”
― Christia Spears Brown, Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes

“When kids enjoy something and feel good at it, they are more likely to continue doing it and will continue to improve. For example, a child who is encouraged to read will begin to enjoy reading more and view themselves as good at reading, which means they will read more frequently. Reading more frequently is the best way to improve at reading. This really matters, for example, in contexts like signing up for high school math classes: kids who felt more competent in math, largely predicted by mom’s beliefs early on, were more likely to be taking advanced math classes in high school.”
― Christia Spears Brown, Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes

“If I tried to parent the stereotype of a girl, I would be missing the joy of parenting Maya. I would miss what makes my daughter unique, albeit kind of gross.”
― Christia Spears Brown, Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes

“At this point, I can boil down everything from previous chapters into two main lessons: 1. Part I: We are obsessed with gender, in every situation, with every person, whether it is relevant or not. We seem to make everything about boys versus girls. This division is less about gender per se and more about fitting people neatly into a category. The problem is that children latch on to gender and make it an important, and limiting, part of their lives. 2. Part II: Constant use of gender to define and the repeated quoting of “innate gender differences” is simply misguided. It doesn’t reflect actual gender differences or the accurate size of those gender differences (which are usually quite small). This matters because treating children differently can lead their brains to develop differently—in ways that permanently limit their capabilities.”
― Christia Spears Brown, Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes

“From about four months of age until puberty, boys and girls don’t differ in their levels of testosterone, estrogen, and other sex-related hormones. So please correct parents who blame their seven-year-old son’s crazy behavior on testosterone. Until puberty, his testosterone level doesn’t differ from that of girls.”
― Christia Spears Brown, Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes

“If boys don’t cry, then you shouldn’t have to tell your son that boys don’t cry. I never have to tell my dog that dogs don’t meow. She doesn’t meow, will never meow, and me telling her this tidbit is pretty irrelevant. Repeatedly telling a crying boy that boys don’t cry is ignoring the obvious: that boys do, in fact, cry. What these admonitions do, besides defy logic, is teach boys that negative or sad emotions are something only girls are allowed to express. This shapes their emotion schemas, the ideas we hold about what emotions feel like, how they should be labeled, and how they should be expressed. We aren’t born with these schemas; we are taught them. Boys are taught that sadness is not okay, and expressing sadness is definitely not okay, despite sadness being a normal human emotion experienced by people around the world. We all know that emotions don’t disappear; they have to come out in some way. For boys, while crying and sadness are not okay, anger is allowable.”
― Christia Spears Brown, Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes

“In the largest and most thorough analyses to date, with the sample of more than one million people and comparisons of 124 possible gender differences, Hyde found that 78 percent of the studies found either nonexistent or very few gender differences. In other words, the vast majority of studies conducted to look for differences between males and females found, in fact, no or very few differences. This is ironic because most of these studies were looking for gender differences in those areas where we are most likely to think we are different, such as emotions, verbal skills, and math abilities.”
― Christia Spears Brown, Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes

“Knowing what the actual differences are (and are not) helps us as parents better recognize our individual children’s strengths and weaknesses. Imagine two moms, both of whom have third-grade daughters struggling in math class. One mom chalks it up to innate differences between boys and girls in math ability and tells her daughter not to worry too much about it. She might even say, “Don’t worry—I wasn’t very good at math either.” The second mom knows that there are no meaningful gender differences in math abilities in elementary school, recognizes that her daughter has a specific problem understanding multiplication, and spends extra time going over math facts at night. Those two girls will have very different academic experiences of math.”
― Christia Spears Brown, Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes

“Children also assume that girls always play with makeup and tea sets and boys always collect baseball cards and play with fire trucks, even if the girls and boys were never exposed to these things. A cow can’t do pig things, just like a girl can’t do boy things and a boy can’t do girl things. Children, based on the findings in this study, assume that girls are born with innate and unchangeable characteristics that fundamentally differ from the innate and unchangeable characteristics that boys are born with. No amount of exposure or teaching can change our traits and interests. In other words, boys and girls are as different as cows and pigs. This is an important study because it points out how rigid children’s thinking is when it comes to gender differences. It is similar to the old saying “Give him an inch and he will take a mile.” Give kids a little push toward focusing on gender differences (and, in fact, we are giving them a massive push with our constant use of gender), and they will run with it—making us entirely different species in the process.”
― Christia Spears Brown, Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes

“Parents should accept all the variations that children come in. If children feel accepted by their parents and have the freedom to express themselves in ways that feel natural to them, they are much less likely to be depressed. That should be more important than fitting neatly into a box.”
― Christia Spears Brown, Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes

“Schools, in a noble effort to interest more girls in math and science, often try to combat stereotypes by showing children images of famous female scientists. “See, they did it. You can do it, too!” Unfortunately, these attempts rarely work, according to the research. Girls are more likely to remember the women as lab assistants. This is frustrating for those of us who try to combat gender stereotypes in children.”
― Christia Spears Brown, Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes

“It isn't about denying that children are girls or boys. It is about children not being defined by gender.”
― Christia Spears Brown, Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes