The Best Person They Can Be: Katherine on Gender Roles

Dear Kathleen,
I really like that picture of Calder .
In a few years he probably won’t be caught dead in a purple tutu.

Sam had a nice little friend named Lindsay he liked to play with until they were about 8, when he figured out it was not okay to play with kids of the opposite sex. Anna’s little friends Jason and Don both moved away just before this might have happened. (Wonder what would have happened if they stayed around?).

It’s pretty impossible to figure out for each child–how much is nature and how much is nurture. There are so many factors we just can’t control–birth order, genetics, how we respond to a particular child’s personality; and I suspect that societal and cultural influences could somehow be different even for children in the same family.

But what seems most important is to try to let the child you happen to be raising have some choices, and to try not to bend their will too much; to ask good questions and to listen to their answers about the things they want to do and to learn about. And to hope that they each find some things to love that are fascinating and positive , that in the end helps them grow into the “best person they can possibly be”.

Love, Katherine