The Impact of Gender Stereotypes on Children

“Girls can’t like the color black.”

“You can’t be a superhero AND a princess.”

“Flutes aren’t for boys.”

These are just a few of the gender stereotyped comments overheard by my 8 year-old from preschool to grade three. Is it easy to dismiss as silly kid stuff? Unfortunately, gender stereotypes have tangible impacts – they’re shown to influence 51% of people’s career choices, and 40% of relationships.

Sometimes the pink-and-blue baby showers, beauty spa parties for girls, and street fighting video games for boys feel like no big deal – it’s harmless. It’s just fun. They’re just clothes. They’re just toys. 

But what is the impact of gender stereotypes on children? Repeated exposure to these societal norms can actually impact children’s life choices, exposure to violence, mental health, overall happiness, and well being. 

Gender Stereotypes Impact Children’s Career Choices:

“I wish I’d studied marine biology,” a friend once shared. But her mom encouraged her to pursue fashion and beauty – areas that seemed inherently linked with femininity. So she tried fashion school but had regrets years later, wondering what might have happened if adults had encouraged the science career she’d dreamed of.

Parental bias about careers may happen even more subtly, and arise as early as 11 months into parenthood.  Parents view construction as a possibility 22% of the time for their sons but only 3% for daughters. The Geena Davis Institute reveals that parents are six times as likely to think of scientists and athletes as men, and eight times more likely to think of an engineer as a man than a woman. These attitudes prevail, regardless of whether the parent has a son, daughter, or both.

Children need role modeling and toys that provide a wide variety of possibilities for hobbies and careers. But they also need teachers, parents, coaches, and caregivers who dissect their own hidden gender bias, which is more influential than they might realize.

Boys’ Well being

Parents often hear “feminist parenting” and think – “that’s for girls. Boys don’t need that.” After all, subconsciously we know that boys, especially white boys, are growing up in a world created for them, where they’ll be welcomed and respected. 

But gender stereotypes can have a serious impact on boys’ and men’s mental health. Children who hold stereotyped views about gender – for example, boys should be tough – have lower overall  well-being, especially when their friend groups emphasize these stereotypes. 

Importantly, boys’ reported well-being has continued to dip over the last several years – especially in the areas of: life as a whole, friends, and happiness. 

Equating emotions with weakness is harmful, also. Conformity to traditional masculinity norms are linked with higher physical aggression by age 13,  depressive symptoms, risk-taking behavior and workplace accidents, and increased risk of committing intimate partner violence.

Men’s Self-Identity & Willingness to Seek Help

When boys grow into men, these concerns are pronounced. During major periods of unemployment, the suicide rate typically also increases. During the Great Recession of 2007-2009, suicide rates spiked, especially for older and middle-aged men. While certainly not the only factor, for men, job loss often intersects deeply with masculinity. Society continues to tie men’s self-identity so deeply to a good job, earning money, and breadwinning – ideas that start young. 

But men are less likely to seek help for depression and mental health needs, even though they are 3.6 more likely to die by suicide in Western countries than women.  And why would they seek help? We tell boys from a young age not to cry. “You’re fine,” we say. “Suck it up. Be tough.” They learn quickly that stoicism and toughness are important, both to earn praise from adults and validation from their peers. So, as adults, they often numb the pain with substance and alcohol abuse instead. The “every man is an island” conformity to traditional masculine gender norms is quite literally hurting our boys.

Related: How to teach boys it’s okay to cry

The Mental Health Crisis for Girls:

Just a few months ago, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released an alarming report about the mental health of girls and LGBTQ+ youth. Shockingly, 3 out of 5 teen girls in the U.S. felt persistently sad or hopeless. This is a 60% increase – double that of boys – and it’s the highest level reported in over a decade.  

GirlGuiding’s 2023 report echoes this. Over the past 14 years, the number of girls who say they’re unhappy has surged from 9% to 25% today. More than half say they feel “not good enough” or “the need to be perfect” most of the time or often. 

What role do gender stereotypes play in girls’ persistent sadness and unhappiness?

Mental health is a complicated topic, and one that doesn’t have simple causation or easy answers. It might be easy to blame the dramatic decline in girls’ overall happiness solely on social media or the pandemic. After all, the CDC study occurred in 2021. 

But both studies contain noteworthy information regarding attitudes about gender, appearance, and safety. One in five girls experienced sexual violence in the past year (up 20% over five years), with 1 in 10 being forced to have sex. The GirlGuiding report reveals that 43% of girls ages 11-16 experience street harassment based on appearance and 69% of young women ages 17-21 experience comments from boys at school that make them uncomfortable. 

Emma, an 18 year-old quoted quoted by AP about this issue said, “a lot of people view women and girls’ bodies as sexual. It’s overwhelming to have all these things pushed on us.”

And yet, fewer girls than before learn in school about being safe online, healthy relationships, gender stereotypes, and harmful attitudes toward women. It’s high time that we change the gender norms that encourage boys to seek dominance, power, and control over the bodies of girls and young women, and provide them with a healthier approach to masculinity.

Impacts of Gender Stereotypes on LGBTQ+ Youth

LGBTQ+ students faced poor mental health, too, with 1 in 5 attempting suicide in the past year. (CDC, 2023). The reasons aren’t simple or straightforward, but The Trevor Project cites LGBTQ-based victimization, parental rejection, lack of affirming spaces, discrimination, physical harm and bullying, and the harmful practice of conversion therapy as contributing factors.

According to the Fawcett Society Report on Gender Stereotypes in Early Childhood, “gender norms can contribute to the abuse and harassment of LGBT young people and adults.” When trans and non-binary youth don’t conform to the tidy pink-and-blue boxes bestowed even before birth, they face “policing” and harassment from other students for straying from prescriptive roles.

But in order to make youth feel like they belong, we need to change attitudes to increase parental support, affirm youth identities, provide safe spaces, and question pervasive gender stereotypes that dictate how someone should act, appear, dress, or love based on their anatomy.

What’s next?

The princessification of girls and “boys will be boys” attitude over the past several decades have evolved into slightly more sophisticated bias. Today, we hear, “girls are just more mature” or “boys break everything in sight.”

These gender stereotypes, which may seem harmless or neutral, and our unaddressed bias, are doing a disservice to the next generation. It’s clear that the impact of gender stereotypes on children is a tangible one. Let’s undo outdated beliefs to support our children’s happiness, wellbeing, relationships, and future.

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