Is Your Homophobia Affecting How You Raise Your Child?

Is your homophobia affecting the way you parent your child? Do you make sure that your little boy plays with trucks and cars? Do you scold him if he picks up a baby doll? Do you tease or display displeasure if he does things that would be typical of a little girl?

We have an idea of how we want our children to act, we as a society chose to impose on our children gender specific roles. We want our little girls to be feminine, sweet and nice. Dancing around in the little princess or playing the role of mother with her baby dolls fulfills our expectations, we encourage her to act out her female role. Our little boys on the other hand are to be brutes, rough and tough. It is just natural to us to hear truck sounds coming out of his mouth or to see him high in a tree.

How we react when our children reverse these roles are different according to gender. We feel it is OK for a little girl to be a "tomboy", she can play with the trucks and cars, she can climb the trees, she can put down the fluffy princess dress and pick up the camouflage any time she wants. We find it cute that she is "daddy's little girl". On the other hand if our little boys put on the princess outfit or pick up a doll we freak out, as if he caught some kind of virus or something.

How does sending this double message affect the way our children respond to us. Is it confusing that one can do it and the other can't. Do children understand gender? Probably not enough to care or understand what we are fearing. Letting a child play with gender assumed toys is not going to affect his or her sexuality. Scolding or discouraging can be harmful to a child's development. A little boy cuddling a doll may just be what he has learned from bonding with his mother. It does not mean he will be gay. Do we want to program our children that caring or showing any kind of emotion is wrong or dubbed homosexual.

We are so ingrained in this idea that it is actually put into a child's nursery rhyme, "What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice" and "What are little boys made of? Snips and snails and puppy dog tails". In our children's cartoons we send the same message, Bob the Builder, not Barbie the builder, Barbie is a glamorous doll who would have Ken come over and do the manly chores. Seem like since the dark ages we have been sending the same messages to our children, we pass these notions down from generation to generation.

Raise your children how you like, this is a personal choice, but keep in mind that a child's psyche is not as complex as ours. They are thinking about play and fun, not if picking up the wrong toy will label them or commit them to a sexual origin in the future. Using the opportunity to talk to your child may be a way to really investigate how they are feeling. I am sure if you ask your little boy when he picks up a doll or your little girl when she picks up a truck, "are you gay?" They may answer "Yes, I am very happy." Just be careful you don't give your child the wrong impression, that you would not accept them because of behavior, you can't predict the future. What will you do if your child is gay? It won't be because he or she play with the wrong toy. It won't be because you parented one way or another, you have no control over it, so just relax, lighten up and let your child be a child.