Doing Family through Gender, Doing Gender through Family. Exploring Social Inequalities and Cultural Changes in Everyday Parenting. An Introduction

As one of the main agents of socialization, family has been traditionally considered as the first domain where children interiorize and reproduce gender roles and ideology, developing gender identity in boys and girls. According to this view, parents influence children’s gender development through role modelling and encouraging different behaviours and activities in sons and daughters. Notwithstanding its widespread approval, this “plain” explanation has been recently challenged by empirical research for two main aspects. First, it does not recognize children’s agency in deconstructing, reconstructing and resisting traditional gender stereotypes: a focus on children as actors, and not only as beneficiaries of parents’ care, does enrich the portray of the contemporary family. Secondly, it fails to take into account the impact of new family configurations (in household structures, migrant parents, lone-parenting, blended-families, homoparental family, new parenting cultures, work-life balance, child care arrangements, etc) on children’ socialisation to gender roles and ideology. More exactly, it fails to explain the enduring resistance of gender models notwithstanding new “parenting cultures” (e.g. intensive motherhood and involved fatherhood) and structural changes in demographic, economic and cultural spheres. As a matter of fact, studies show that despite children’s agency and parental role changes, there remain relatively few truly egalitarian parenting arrangements. Also, sociological enquiries suggest that parents with gender-egalitarian attitudes may nonetheless act differently with daughters and sons. The symposium examins the significant role that current ways of parenting interact with children’ socialisation to gender roles in family life. It enriches current research on family through empirical works showing gender as a daily practical accomplishment which is achieved through children and adults’ active relational and emotional “work” within the domestic sphere.