Children can also see things the other way around. Today society is changing into one where either parent can be a stay at home parent; 20 years ago this was not the case.
Children can learn a lot by watching their parents. I was raised mainly by my father, while my mother was always away on business trips, this could contribute a great deal to the reason I turned out so much like him. Children today can learn to cook from their mothers and throw a baseball from their fathers.
Also in today society children learn a lot by commercials. This is the main basis of my paper; how much commercials affect the gender roles that children learn. When you turn the television on to a children's station, or a cartoon station, you can be guaranteed that you are going to find that every commercial is trying to sell the latest and the greatest toy for children. If you watch a commercial for a kitchen set, there are more likely to be girls playing with the pots, pans, and stove. If there is a commercial for action figures there will be all boys. Any type of doll commercial will have all girls holding and playing with the doll, any type of video game, then boys are going to be in the commercial. Many of the toys that boys play with are ones that they see boys playing on television, the same goes for the toys that girls play with.
Boys and girls by the age of four understand the difference between being a boy and being a girl, in fact in an article titled, "I'm a Boy and You're a Girl!- in Early Childhood Today magazine it is stated that by the age of four many children prefer to play with their same sex peers and can be strongly influenced by and judgmental of playmates' clothes, accessories, and toys. Because of this, their behavior might seem rigid even in dramatic play. Girls can clean house, but they can't be soldiers. Boys can be train engineers but they can't bake cookies "or carry a purse. (Early Childhood Today, 2002, p.
