Abstract
This is a study of children in families in which both the responsibility for income production and the household division of labor is actually post-gendered. Our data come from a larger study of privileged white parents who intentionally organize their households fairly, sharing housework, child care, and emotion work. These parents deconstruct gender not only by encouraging their daughters and sons to develop free from stereotypes but also by modeling such behavior in their own social roles. The data reported here are based on interviews with the children themselves and home observations. We have drawn two main conclusions. First, children do seem to adopt, uniformly, their parent's non-sexist attitudes but then they must negotiate serious inconsistencies between their beliefs and their lived experiences with peers. They resolve this with a dichotomy: men and women are similar and equal, but boys and girls are different and unequal Second, personal identities seem to be forged more from lived experiences than from ideology.
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Risman, B.J., Myers, K. As the Twig Is Bent: Children Reared in Feminist Households. Qualitative Sociology 20, 229–252 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024713702365
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024713702365