Gay parents and skirts on boys

2 interesting articles in the Sunday Times this past week:

The Way We Live Now - What Gay Parenting Teaches All of Us
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/magazine/08fob-wwln-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine

"There are data that show, for instance, that daughters of lesbian mothers are more likely to aspire to professions that are traditionally considered male, like doctors or lawyers — 52 percent in one study said that was their goal, compared with 21 percent of daughters of heterosexual mothers, who are still more likely to say they want to be nurses or teachers when they grow up. (The same study found that 95 percent of boys from both types of families choose the more masculine jobs.) Girls raised by lesbians are also more likely to engage in “roughhousing” and to play with “male-gendered-type toys” than girls raised by straight mothers." There is also data to support that "adult children of gay parents appear more likely than the average adult to work in the fields of social justice and to have more gay friends in their social mix"

Apparently the people who compiled the data seem to chalk this up to the differences in the domestic roles of heterosexual and homosexual couples, "lesbian mothers (there’s little data here on gay dads) tend not to divide chores and responsibilities according to gender-based roles" and have "fewer worries about conforming to perceived norms." - wouldn't that be nice?

Can a Boy Wear a Skirt to School?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/fashion/08cross.html?ref=fashion

This one doesnt have any good figures to quote but I did find it really interesting - just because I went to a high school that had a dress code like the one described and I never questioned the gender-charged nature of it.

argument: " “This generation is really challenging the gender norms we grew up with,” said Diane Ehrensaft, an Oakland psychologist who writes about gender. “A lot of youths say they won’t be bound by boys having to wear this or girls wearing that. For them, gender is a creative playing field.” Adults, she added, “become the gender police through dress codes.”"

woah: "safety is a critical concern. In February 2008, Lawrence King, an eighth-grader from Oxnard, Calif., who occasionally wore high-heeled boots and makeup, was shot to death in class by another student." , "“There are other places where there are real safety issues,” said Barbara Risman, a sociologist at the University of Illinois who studies adolescent gender identity. “Most boys still very much feel the need to repress whole parts of themselves to avoid peer harassment.”"

reasonable counter-argument: "All this is too much for some educators, who say high school should not be a public stage to work out private identity issues. School, they say, is a rigorous academic and social training ground for the world of adults and employment.

“It’s hard enough to get kids to concentrate on an algorithm — even without Jimmy sitting there in lipstick and fake eyelashes,” said Kay Hymowitz, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Because schools are communal, she wrote in an e-mail message, “self-expression will always have to be at least partially limited, just as it is in the workplace.” Principals need leeway in determining how students present themselves, she added. “You can understand why a lot of principals get fed up with these sorts of fights and just decide on school uniforms.”"

the reality: "But generally, courts give local administrators great latitude. In Marion County, Fla., students must dress “in keeping with their gender.” Last spring, when a boy came to school wearing high-heeled boots, a stuffed bra, and a V-neck T-shirt, he was sent home to change."

interesting: "When a principal asks a boy to leave his handbag at home, is the request an attempt to protect a student from harassment or harassment itself?"

poor emo kids: "“The emo kids get a lot of grief,” said Marty Hulsey, a guidance counselor at a school near Auburn, Ala. “Even teachers say things and I had to stop it.""