Buried Talents

Overcoming Gendered Socialization to Answer God's Call

Susan Harris Howell

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781514002513
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Estudios de género

Reader's Choice Award WinnerIf God is calling women to lead, what's holding them back? Susan Harris Howell has spent years helping students investigate this question. In Buried Talents, she makes clear how gender disparity in leadership is directly connected to a larger, less overt issue: gendered socialization. Howell examines gendered messages people encounter inside and outside the church in each stage of life, showing how they often create misconceptions about who women are, what they're capable of, and how they fit into God's work. As these messages pull men toward leadership, they push women away from it. God's call to leadership doesn't come in a vacuum. It comes to particular people who have, from childhood through adulthood, been shaped by subtle forms of socialization. Using social science research and interviews to explain these forces, Howell offers psychological and practical tools for both women and men to make more balanced vocational decisions. A discussion guide and suggested reading lists are also included to help readers engage and apply the content. As opportunities for women continue to expand, too many still hold back in responding to God's call. Buried Talents provides compelling guidance for how we can remove obstacles that keep women from fully using their gifts.

THIS CHAPTER EXPLORES gendered socialization in childhood and its impact on achievement motivation. Preschool children are socialized primarily through family members and those over whom caregivers have some control. As children enter school, however, their world broadens to include teachers, coaches, and a larger pool from which they can choose friends. These children are now influenced by people their primary caregivers don’t know as well, and systems (e.g., the school and religious community) over which they have less control. In addition, greater access to television, movies, and books supply these children with gendered expectations from an increasingly larger community.

In this chapter, we will examine the messages these preschool and elementary school children are given through toys selected for them, a gendered division of labor, the education system, the English language, and media (books, television, and movies) regarding their place in the world as boys and girls. We will explore how this socialization impacts their occupational goals and the likelihood they will achieve those goals.

TOY SELECTION

One trip down the aisle of any toy store will convince even the casual observer that boys and girls are encouraged to play with different toys.1 However, before children are old enough to choose the pink package with the girl on the front or the blue one with the boy, the choices are made for them. Parents and others bearing gifts supply boys with cars and trucks, sports paraphernalia, and tool sets, and they provide girls with dolls, kitchen sets, and toy appliances. If children are less than enthused, someone will encourage her to “rock the baby” or him to “throw the ball.”

Preschool boys are often given leeway in picking up the occasional doll or pretending to fix dinner. However, they often age out of this luxury within a few short years. Not long after entering school, they will encounter subtle reprimands and even ridicule for playing with a toy vacuum cleaner or dish set. Girls, however, are given more than leeway; their parents often show pride when they pick up a ball and bat. I’ve taught many women who boasted of their tomboy days. Any men labeled as sissies haven’t announced it in my classes.2

Of course, when children begin playing with other boys and girls, they quickly learn which toys are considered appropriate for their own sex and specifically ask for them. The first time our daughter attended a friend’s birthday party, she came home excited about all the Barbie dolls her friend had received and told me the ones she wanted for her own birthday. We entered a new era that day. She would no longer blindly accept the toys we selected for her. From here on, we would work harder to balance out the pink-aisle toys that are the staple of girls’ birthday parties.

Students ask me, “What’s wrong with any of these toys?” Nothing, I tell them. We gave our daughter a kitchen set and a tool set. We gave our son Matchbox cars and dolls. My husband and I made a variety of toys available and tried not to push one kind on our daughter and another on our son. It’s the restrictiveness, I tell them, that creates the problem.

When the little boy is consistently shamed for picking up a doll or his attention diverted when he pretends to fix dinner, he learns that housework and childcare are women’s work. With this message confirmed in everything from commercials to magazine covers, is it any wonder that as a new father he’s uncomfortable caring for his own infant? Fearful of holding her, lest she break? He doesn’t have the mindset nor the experience to feel comfortable as caregiver to a newborn.

The girl, however, learns that housework and childcare are for her and, what’s more, are unacceptable for boys. Her mindset tells her, Boys shouldn’t take care of children. They don’t know how. I should; I’m better at it. And in fact, she will get better at it than the boys she knows. She will learn what to do with babies: the soft voice to use when they cry, and the way to hold them, give them a bottle, or rock them to sleep.

Now, imagine her as an adult. She and hubby have their first baby. Daddy picks up the newborn for the first time and is scared and clueless. Why is he crying?! I don’t know what I’m doing! It’s easy for him to assume: Caring for young children is not for me! Handing the baby to Mommy seems the humane thing to do. While she is likely just as scared—because her childhood dolls didn’t cry as often or relentlessly as this tiny human!—her mindset tells her, I better figure this out. I’m the Mommy.

So, she does.

And he does not.

The next time baby cries, who picks him up? Probably the one who had more success last time. The Mommy. And after a while, it becomes easier and easier for her because she’s getting practice, learning what does and doesn’t work. Meanwhile, he’s in awe of how she just knows what to do! Must be instinct, he says. God’s design. He will read somewhere that the best thing he can do for his children is to love their mother, so he goes back to work and tries to stay out of the way. And with that, his status is reduced to auxiliary parent. Support staff.

No surprise then that she’s reluctant to leave the baby with Daddy. When she tells her friends that he’s watching the little guy, she says it with an eye roll and a playful gritting of the teeth. What she’ll find when she gets home is anybody’s guess. She better not be gone long!

What is taken as instinct is more likely her having learned childcare skills through countless opportunities to practice them beginning the moment she was given her first doll. And more important, she was given the message early on that childcare was something she could and should do. It was her job.

But it doesn’t stop there. Believing she is naturally better at meeting her child’s needs, she might find it difficult to release infant care to another capable person when she goes back to work. It feels unnatural, a disservice to her child. So, she might do what many others do: switch to part-time work or give up working outside the home entirely while her baby is little. However, removing herself from the workforce will slow her career progression if not derail it entirely. Even the part-time alternative narrows her options, typically to jobs with less responsibility, lower status, reduced pay, and fewer chances for promotion.

Understand that I’m not calling for children to take a backseat to career advancement. Parenting is arguably one of the most important tasks we can take on. In fact, women are told that raising children is far more important than any job, or even ministry, they could otherwise pursue. Yet, if it were that simple, couples everywhere would vie for who gets to stay home with children. But they don’t. In fact, fathers are virtually never told to sideline their work in favor of the more important role as their child’s primary caregiver. Why not? Because for men to do so would risk their occupational future and the opportunities that entails.

I’ve taught this enough to know that this is where a student will remind me that we are all called to serve and to raise good children. Why are women balking at doing something God has called us all to do? To that I say, precisely—we are all called to serve, and if we have children, we are called to raise them well. These aren’t jobs just assigned to women. Rather, I contend that mothers carry the lion’s share of childcare responsibilities because of an inaccurate belief that they are naturally better at it, and that men can’t, or shouldn’t, learn those skills.

This mindset has far-reaching consequences for the time a mother can devote to ministry or any occupation to which she is called. Doors will close for her that remain open for the father of the same child.

DIVISION OF LABOR

Children observe and often take part in the division of labor at home. Even with more women in the workforce than in previous generations, women still do most of the household work with the same gender differences reflected in children’s chore assignments.3 Children typically see men perform outdoor tasks, such as lawn care and building repair, along with indoor maintenance, such as painting or appliance maintenance. They see women care for children and complete indoor chores, such as cleaning, laundry, and food preparation. In this division of labor, women and girls complete tasks that need to be done regularly, sometimes daily. Men and boys do tasks that need to be done sporadically. Grass isn’t cut as often as food is prepared or dishes washed. Rooms aren’t painted as frequently as clothes are laundered.

A newlywed student told me she and her husband agreed to a similar arrangement before they married. But before long she noticed that her after-work hours were spent cooking, doing laundry, and cleaning while her husband sat in the recliner watching TV. Evidently, he was paying a teenager to mow the grass once a week during warm weather. Until snow fell on the driveway or leaves from the trees, he had completed his share of household responsibilities. They could afford it and, as he reminded her, she had agreed to the arrangement. However, they could not afford to hire someone to do all her chores, nor did he offer to pick up any of them to create a more equitable arrangement. This division of labor results in more work for women and girls, less for men and boys.

What will Dad do with his extra time? He will probably devote it to a job that keeps him away from home for a major portion of each day. He won’t need to leave work early to shop for groceries and make dinner, do laundry, or provide homework assistance. Likewise, the son will consider a wide range of career options since even the most time consuming and educationally intensive will not pose an obstacle to his having a family of his own one day. (Incidentally, these careers will probably pay more, too.) He will assume, as will his employer, that someone else will be the primary caregiver for his young children and at home when the older ones return from school.

This second shift4 of work awaiting Mother at home often limits the amount of time she will devote to an occupation. When asked to work late or apply for a promotion, she will question the wisdom of being away from home for long periods of time. Who will take the older child to the dentist then soccer practice or make sure the younger one starts on that science project right after piano lessons? Or maybe she won’...