How to Talk to Children to Dispel Stereotypes
How can modern parents bring up the next generation free from corrosive gender and racial stereotypes? By the time children start elementary school, gender and race will largely determine their lives, and parents may want to prevent this from happening. Already in the first grade, girls are less likely than boys to think that members of the same sex are “really very smart.” By the age of three, white children in the United States unreservedly support the stereotypes that African American faces are meaner than whites .
This post was originally published in The Conversation .
These stereotypes are deeper than children’s beliefs – they can also shape a child’s behavior. By age six, girls are less likely than boys to choose activities that seem to require them to be truly smart , which can contribute to long-term gender differences in science and math performance .
Why do these young children develop stereotypes? As a professor of early cognitive and social development, I have seen my research show how surprisingly subtle language features contribute to a child’s tendency to view the world through the lens of social stereotypes.
Generalization problem
Many parents try to prevent children from developing stereotypes by avoiding words such as “boys are good at math” or “girls cannot be leaders.” Instead, parents can make sure to say something positive, such as, “Girls can be anything.”
But our research has shown that even these positive statements can have negative consequences for the developing mind.
For young children, how we speak is often more important than what we say. Generalizations, even if they only say positive or neutral things, such as “Girls can be anything,” “Latinos live in the Bronx,” or “Muslims eat different foods,” suggest that we can say what someone does. similar. knowing your gender, nationality or religion.
In our study, published in the journal Child Development , we found that auditory generalizations lead children at age two to assume that groups are making stable and important differences between individuals.
In this study, children were introduced to a new fictional way of categorizing people: “Zarpi.” If they only heard statements about specific people (for example, “These zarpi whisper when they speak”), the children continued to treat these people as individuals, even if they were all tagged with the same label and wore the same clothes. But if they heard the same information as a generalization (for example, “Zarpies whisper when they speak”), they began to think that “Zarpies” were very different from everyone else. Auditory generalizations made the children think that group membership determines what the group members will be like.
In another recent study, we found that hearing about these types of generalizations – even if none of them were negative – caused 5-year-olds to share fewer resources (in this case, colorful stickers) with participants outside their own social group.
These results indicate that hearing generalizations, even positive or neutral ones, contribute to the tendency to view the world through the prism of social stereotypes. For young children, the form of the sentence is important, not what it says.
From groups to individuals
Our research shows that generalizations are problematic even if children don’t understand them.
If a young child hears an offensive generalization like “Muslims are terrorists,” the child may not know what it means to be a Muslim or a terrorist. But a child can still learn something problematic – that Muslims, whoever they are, are a special type of people. That one can make assumptions about what a person is, simply by knowing whether he is a Muslim or not.
A language that uses specifics rather than general statements avoids these problems. Sentences such as “Her family is Hispanic and lives in the Bronx,” “This Muslim family eats a variety of foods,” “These girls are good at math,” “You can be anything,” all avoid general group statements.
Using a particular language can also teach children to challenge their own and others’ generalizations. My three-year-old daughter recently announced that “boys play the guitar,” even though I know a lot of guitar players. This bothered me not because it is very important what he thinks about playing the guitar, but because this way of talking means that he begins to think that gender determines what a person can do.
But there is a very simple and natural way to respond to such statements, which, as our research shows , reduces stereotypes. Just say, “Oh? Who do you think about? Who have you seen playing the guitar? “Children usually mean someone. “Yes, that man in the restaurant was playing guitar tonight. And yes, grandpa too. ” This response encourages children to think individually rather than in groups.
This approach also works for more delicate generalizations – things a child might say, such as “Older boys are mean” or “Muslims wear funny clothes.” Parents can ask their children who they are thinking of and discuss any specific incident they have in mind. Sometimes children say this because they are testing whether it is reasonable to draw a generalization. By bringing them back to a specific incident, we inform them that this is not the case.
Every interaction counts
How important is this small change in language? Parents, teachers, and other caring adults cannot control everything their children hear, and exposure to overtly racist, sexist, or xenophobic ideas can also affect a child’s perception of social norms and values.
But children develop their perception of the world through minute-to-minute conversations with the important adults in their lives. These adults have powerful platforms with their kids. As parents and guardians, we can use our language carefully to help children learn to see themselves and others as individuals, freely choosing their own path. Through our language, we can help children develop mental habits that challenge, rather than support, stereotyped views of people around us.