A recent British pop survey had parents conveying what adjectives they thought described boy children and girl children in general. Whilst boys were considered to be playful and enterprising, girl were considered to be "serious" as well as "stroppy" and "argumentative".
Let us think about the contexts in which people are "stroppy" and "argumentative". These responses normally come about when one is denied the right to have one's own views or to follow through on one's own course of action. It is apparent that an estimation of the impact of existing patriarchal social systems on the personality of women is expressed in the adjectives that are applied to girl children in general (rather than to any girl child in particular). This systematisation of thinking about gender in terms of gender stereotyping replicates the systematised nature of material patriarchal systems. (Observe, in terms of gender, the typical structure of a corporation, for instance.)
Is the acquisition of this negative character-set the anticipated destiny of the girl child, in the subconscious minds of British parents? If so, it would seem that these parent's anticipating an inevitable outcome of internal maladjustment in relation to an artificial and externally imposed role of subordination to males.
Since parents were asked to apply these adjectives to boy children and girl children in general, the characteristics of any particular individual were conceptually subordinated to overarching notions about gender. What would be the ramifications for the individual child's development, if the parents really did subscribe to such gender stereotyping?
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