After reading “Gender Differences inTemperament: Real or Imagined?” I believe that this generation is doing everything it can to eradicate gender stereotypes as much as possible from birth. However although they may still exist today, in the past gender stereotypes were much more common as people did not accept things that are accepted in today’s world.

Adults subconsciously made, and still can make, generalisations about infant girls and boys. For example, boys wear blue and girls wear pink. This generalisation is probably the biggest stereotype that still exists today in shops everywhere. Perhaps a person may see a baby in blue clothes and assume it is a boy when in fact it may be a girl.

From the article, it speaks about how boys are less fearful and girls are more sociable, when in reality both boys and girls feel exactly the same emotions as each other. With the parents following the social norms they are moulding the child into a stereotype rather than encouraging the child’s individual personality. Today, it is expressed and reinforced much more that boys are not supposed to be big and strong all the time, and that they are actively encouraged to let their feelings out and be as emotional as they need.

Furthermore, adults may also subconsciously treat the same behaviour in infant boys and girls differently. For example, parents encourage the stereotype of ‘ladylike’ behaviour in girls and ‘boisterous’ behaviour in boys. This attributes typical boy’s behaviour of ‘being male’ rather than seeing both boys and girls as individuals as you can get girls who are louder and boys who are quieter.

Another point in the article stated that temperamental stereotyping may affect the quality of the parent-infant relationship. For example a parent may give their daughter more affection if she is more ‘feminine’ and less if their daughter is more ‘masculine’ from perhaps enjoying active activities such as sports. I feel that this is much more rare now as we as a society today teach children to be who they want to be and enjoy whatever they want to enjoy no matter what it is or who they are.

Lastly, back to the colour point,  boys and girls have stereotyped toys (girls like dolls/prams and boys like cars/lego). Although this still exists today through packaging of toys (girls are pink and boys are blue) it has been addressed more and toy companies are trying to change the stereotypes through putting boys and girls together on packaging. In addition, people are becoming much more open minded on buying their children any toy they want to play with, for example if a boy wants to play with prams they can and if a girl wants to play with lego they can too.

I feel that in todays society people’s opinions are changing which is a very good thing and it should continue to change for the better.