Nobody wakes up one morning and decides to teach children a detailed programme of womanhood and manhood. The role is learned not through explanation but through repetition, reward, shaming and example.
Nobody wakes up one morning and decides to teach children a detailed programme of womanhood and manhood. In most homes there is no lesson called “today’s topic is gender.” Even so, children sense which behaviour is thought to suit them before they have fully learned to speak. They see into whose lap a doll is placed, who is expected to fall and get up again, whose body is covered more, and who may stay out later in the street. The role is usually learned not through explanation but through repetition, reward, shaming and example.
Gender roles are therefore not only a matter of explicit prohibition. As instructive as “girls can’t do that” is the surprise shown when a girl takes an interest in repair work. Even without saying “boys don’t cry,” our impatience with a crying boy while comforting a girl carries a message. Children watch less what adults say than what they expect from whom. If equality is spoken of at home while the same person clears the table every evening, the silent lesson has already been given.
The first classroom: the everyday order of the home
The home is one of the earliest and most powerful places where gender roles are learned. A child watches who prepares the food, who brings in the money, whose anger silences the whole house, and who has to calm everyone down. When these tasks are repeated as though they were biological necessities, a girl may grow up as the natural custodian of care and order, and a boy as someone who receives care without needing to notice that labour.
Moreover the task is not only washing dishes or doing the shopping. There is also mental and emotional work: remembering birthdays, tracking what has run out at home, arranging a relative’s medical appointment, repairing grievances within the family. A child does not see most of this as visible “work,” because no wage is paid, there are no working hours and it is usually considered a natural extension of love. As an adult, they may then struggle to question why this burden accumulates on particular people.
Toys, colours and small steerings
For years the shelves of toy shops designed two separate futures: on one side kitchen sets, dolls and beauty accessories; on the other vehicles, weapons, experiment kits and construction toys. One group was offered care, appearance and the domestic world; the other movement, technical skill, competition and the public sphere. It would be an exaggeration to say a single toy determines a destiny. But when hundreds of small steerings combine, they influence which skills develop in whom.
Children of course do not simply accept what is offered; they break the rules, turn to other toys and invent their own games. Yet the cost of crossing the line is not the same for everyone. A girl’s interest in a “boy’s toy” is sometimes found strong and brave, while a boy turning to a “girl’s toy” may face heavier ridicule. For society not only sees traits it deems feminine as belonging to women; it may also place them below manhood.
The school’s open and hidden curriculum
At school, while learning mathematics, history and language, children also meet an unwritten curriculum. To whom does the teacher give more speaking time, whom do they find authoritative for class president, to whom do they assign cleaning and decoration and to whom technical tasks? In textbooks, with which gender are the scientist, the leader, the worker and the parent shown? Why does a girl’s clothing become a problem of order in the corridor while boys’ persistent behaviour is passed over as “childishness”?
Even when educational opportunities are equalised, expectations may not change at the same pace. When a girl succeeds, her diligence may be emphasised; when a boy succeeds, his talent. In some fields the scarcity of women may be explained as “lack of interest,” and men’s distance from care professions as “natural selection.” Yet children find their direction also according to where they see adults who resemble them, how they are met when they make mistakes, and how their successes are named.
The peer group and the power of shaming
In adolescence a significant part of role teaching is taken over by peers. A boy who is not hard enough, a girl who is not pretty or measured enough, can easily become the group’s target. Nicknames, jokes and exclusion often work more effectively than rules set by adults. People fear not only punishment but being cut off from the circle they belong to. So even without openly suppressing their own wishes, they learn to behave according to the group’s expectation.
Today this supervision does not end at the school gate. The phone screen can become an uninterrupted corridor in which bodies and relationships are evaluated all day. Like counts, comments, filters and short videos rapidly multiply images of “acceptable womanhood” and “acceptable manhood.” Yet the same digital space also offers the possibility of seeing different lives and realising one is not alone. The tool does not liberate or oppress by itself; what matters is which voices it amplifies and which behaviour it rewards.
Is it possible not to teach the role?
It is not possible to isolate a child from all of society’s gender expectations. However careful a family may be, school, relatives, advertising, religious narrative, television and friends come into play. Moreover pressing a child with “you must have no role” can itself turn into another rigid role. Freedom is not preventing a child from choosing particular toys, clothes or behaviours; it is ensuring their worth is not diminished because of that choice.
Perhaps the most honest thing we can do begins with noticing the automatic reactions at home and within ourselves. Why do we read the same behaviour differently in two children? Why do we teach courage to one and caution to the other? From whom do we ask for help, and whose help do we take for granted? Just as gender roles are not established by grand speeches, they are not dissolved by a single one. They are learned within small relations repeated every day; and within those same relations they can be loosened — by sharing tasks, making room for feelings and offering children real options instead of a life written in advance.
This change cannot be limited to the words said to children; the everyday order of adults must offer another example too. If one person does all the planning at home, if repairs and money matters are left to the other as a matter of course, and the child sees this division every day, conversation about equality remains weak. Children usually learn the repeated relation rather than the advice. Not teaching the role is therefore not merely saying “you may choose whichever toy you like”; it is rearranging how care, decision, income and the right to rest are shared within the home.
Moreover freedom is genuinely tested when a child’s choice disturbs the adults. It is easy to accept preferences that fit the familiar mould; it is harder to stand beside a child who behaves otherwise despite the fear of ridicule. Rather than forcing them into a new correct identity, they need a safe space in which they can be curious and can change their mind. The loosening of gender roles is not other adults deciding this time who children will be; it is their being able to explore their own lives with less fear.