Feminist Children: A Purple Cow?
- 1 Institute for Research on Social Problems, North Miami, USA
Abstract
Three questions are addressed with regard to raising feminist children: The first is why we should try to instill feminism, the second is what our goals should be, and the third is how best to accomplish them. Considering how the concept of feminism might be operationalized in children, we draw from both general observations and ideas, as well as empirical data. The data are drawn from a longitudinal study of over 200 children that began when they were six months of age, and continued for 5-1/2 years. Results show that despite the over-determined and inevitable learning of gender stereotypes, even young children vary in the degree to which they subscribe to stereotypes.
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