Talking About Sexuality
Developed by Margie Brickley and Aimee Gelnaw for the Family Pride Coalition
Children's understanding of gender, gender identity and sexual orientation unfolds over time. They naturally pass through various stages of interpreting the information that they receive through their experiences and interactions with others around gender roles and expression.
Children's interaction with gender roles begins at birth. Parents and family attach meaning and expectations for children based on the sex of the child and on their own conscious and unconscious understanding and assumptions about maleness and femaleness. Throughout the first few years of life, children are constructing their ideas of what it means to be a boy or a girl.
The beliefs, attitudes and responses of parents and extended family influence the level of freedom that children have to explore the full range of possibilities. As children test out different forms of gender expression, messages are both given and received; children gather this information as they determine what is expected of them.
At times, because of the oppression experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, parents become concerned about raising children who conform to expected gender roles as if to prove they can raise "normal" children. Because of this, children might experience conflict between what they see (in gender non-conformity) and what they are expected to become, as stereotypical "boys" and "girls."
