The Role of Parents and Family in Gender Socialisation: From Birth to Adulthood

The way a child learns to walk, talk, dress, and even dream is shaped long before they understand the word “gender.” From the colour of a newborn’s blanket to the proverbs whispered at family gatherings, parents and relatives quietly script what it means to be a “boy” or a “girl.” This silent curriculum, often invisible to those teaching it, forms the foundation of gender identity and continues to shape decisions well into adulthood. Understanding how this works helps us see why changing gender norms requires looking beyond schools and laws, right into the everyday rhythms of family life.

Why the family is the first classroom of gender 🔗

Sociologists call the family the primary agent of socialisation, and for good reason. It is the first space where a child encounters rules about behaviour, emotion, and identity. Long before a child can read a textbook or watch a film, they are absorbing cues from how their mother speaks to them, how their father plays with them, and how grandparents react to their tears or tantrums.

Gender socialisation begins not at birth, but often before it. The moment a sonogram reveals the sex of a foetus, families begin imagining futures: a daughter’s wedding, a son’s career, the colour of the nursery walls. In many Indian households, this anticipation is also marked by a preference for sons, who are expected to carry forward the family name, support parents in old age, and perform funeral rites. Daughters, in contrast, are sometimes viewed as paraya dhan, or “another’s wealth,” destined to leave the natal home after marriage.

Different treatment from day one 🔗

Studies of parent-infant interaction show that mothers tend to handle baby girls more gently and dress them more elaborately, while baby boys are bounced more vigorously and spoken to in louder, more assertive tones. The clothes, the lullabies, the way a child is held – each act communicates expectations about strength, softness, modesty, and independence.

Toys reinforce this further. Dolls, kitchen sets, and miniature jewellery teach girls about caregiving, domestic work, and appearance. Trucks, blocks, and toy guns push boys toward exploration, problem-solving, and aggression. Research from the University of Hong Kong found that gender-typed liking for pink versus blue is not just a Western construct but exists in urban Asian societies too, and that gender labels alone can shape children’s preferences for colours and objects.

Ann Oakley’s four mechanisms of gender socialisation 🔗

The British sociologist Ann Oakley, in her 1972 book Sex, Gender and Society, gave us one of the clearest frameworks for understanding how families construct gender. She argued that gender roles are cultural rather than biological, and learned through childhood in ways that maintain male dominance and female subservience. She identified four key mechanisms.

Manipulation 🔗

Manipulation refers to the way parents physically and verbally encourage behaviour they consider appropriate for the child’s sex. Mothers, for instance, often fuss over a baby girl’s hair, skin, and clothing, dressing her in frills and ornaments. A boy’s appearance, meanwhile, is treated more functionally. A girl may be discouraged from running wildly or climbing trees, while a boy crying after a fall is told to “be brave.” Through these small, repeated acts, children learn which behaviours earn praise and which invite correction.

Canalisation 🔗

Canalisation is the channelling of a child’s attention towards “gender-appropriate” objects and activities. Girls are typically given dolls, soft toys, and miniature domestic appliances, while boys receive bricks, guns, and trains. Toys are not neutral; they rehearse future roles. A doll prepares a girl to nurture, a kitchen set prepares her to cook, and a truck prepares a boy for mobility and the world outside the home. Over time, these objects build very different mental landscapes for what is possible and pleasurable.

Verbal appellation 🔗

Verbal appellation is the use of language to label and reinforce gender identity. Pet names like “little princess,” “rajkumari,” “munna,” or “sher” carry coded messages about expected traits. Girls are often called sweet, delicate, or pretty; boys are called brave, strong, or sharp. The constant repetition of these labels shapes how children see themselves. A girl praised for being “good” and “quiet” learns that compliance is valuable, while a boy praised for being “tough” learns that dominance is rewarded.

Activity exposure 🔗

The fourth mechanism, differential activity exposure, involves directing children towards different kinds of work and play. Girls are pulled into kitchen tasks, the care of younger siblings, and household chores, while boys are sent on errands outside the home or encouraged to play sports. Housework is a significant part of children’s labour in India, and research using UNICEF data shows that son preference is associated with a heavier housework burden on daughters. By adolescence, this division has hardened into a clear script: the domestic sphere for women, the public sphere for men.

Leela Dube and the cultural repertoire of kinship 🔗

While Oakley’s framework is powerful, it was developed in a Western context. To understand how gender socialisation operates in India, we turn to the work of Leela Dube, a pioneering anthropologist whose research transformed how scholars think about kinship and gender in South Asia. Dube argued that the formation of a gendered identity begins well before a child is born, as part of the collective cultural consciousness of a particular group or society.

Kinship systems and patriarchal reinforcement 🔗

Dube showed that kinship – the network of relationships through blood, marriage, and descent – is not just a social structure but a powerful machine for transmitting gender norms. In patrilineal kinship systems, which dominate most of India, descent, inheritance, and family name pass through the male line. A daughter is socialised from infancy to understand that her stay in her natal home is temporary. She will eventually be “given away” through marriage and absorbed into her husband’s family.

This shapes everything from how she is fed to how she is educated. Parents may invest less in a daughter’s schooling because she will “belong to another family.” They may save aggressively for her dowry. They may train her in cooking, cleaning, and deference because these are the skills her marital family will judge her on. Sons, meanwhile, are groomed as future patriarchs – providers, decision-makers, and ritual heirs.

The seed and earth metaphor 🔗

One of Dube’s most influential contributions is her analysis of the seed and earth metaphor, drawn from her 1986 essay of the same name. In many Indian communities, biological reproduction is symbolically explained through agriculture: the man provides the seed, the active and generative principle, while the woman provides the earth, the passive, nurturing receptacle. This asymmetry is not just a poetic image; it appears in production relations, domestic organisation, and even claims of paternal rights over children.

The implications are far-reaching. If the seed determines the essential identity of the child, then the father’s lineage becomes paramount, and the mother’s contribution is reduced to providing space for growth. This metaphor justifies why children take the father’s name, why property passes through sons, and why a woman’s “purity” – the purity of the field – is so heavily policed. Sexual control over women becomes essential to ensure that the “seed” is not contaminated, feeding into practices like early marriage, restrictions on mobility, and caste endogamy.

Rituals, proverbs, and everyday symbolism 🔗

Dube also drew attention to how rituals and language carry these beliefs into everyday life. Wedding ceremonies in patrilineal Hindu communities often include the kanyadaan, the “gifting” of the daughter, the circumambulation of fire, and the formal send-off from her natal home. Each step reinforces a girl’s secondary status, with proverbs and idioms in many Indian languages comparing the raising of a daughter to watering a plant in someone else’s courtyard. Festivals like Karva Chauth centre on a wife’s devotion to her husband’s longevity, while sons are celebrated through rituals like annaprashan and thread ceremonies that mark their entry into adult roles.

Even casual phrases carry weight. Telling a boy “don’t cry like a girl” or praising a girl for being “as obedient as a good bahu” plants assumptions that the child will carry into adolescence and marriage.

From childhood to adulthood: the long shadow of family socialisation 🔗

The lessons learned in childhood do not stay in childhood. They shape career choices, marriage decisions, and how adults raise their own children. Women who were trained as caregivers often feel guilty pursuing demanding careers. Men who were taught not to cry struggle with emotional expression and mental health. Son preference and daughter aversion, rooted in gender inequality, continue to drive deeply unequal outcomes in nutrition, education, healthcare, and even survival.

However, families are also where change can begin. Parents who consciously challenge stereotypes – sharing housework equally, encouraging daughters to play sports, allowing sons to cook or cry – disrupt the cycle. Schools, peers, and media play their part, but the family remains the first and most lasting teacher of gender.

Rethinking the family as a site of transformation 🔗

Recognising the family as the first site of gender socialisation is not about blaming parents. Most parents are themselves products of the same system, raising children according to scripts they inherited. The point is awareness. Once we see how manipulation, canalisation, verbal appellation, and activity exposure operate – and how deeply kinship rituals and metaphors like seed and earth shape our worldview – we can begin to make different choices. A toy chosen, a chore reassigned, a proverb questioned: small acts that quietly rewrite the script for the next generation.

What do you think? Looking back at your own childhood, can you identify moments when you were “manipulated” or “canalised” into gendered behaviour by your family? And if you ever raise children, what is one gendered practice from your upbringing that you would consciously choose to change?

References

1. https://www.unfpa.org/resources/son-preference-and-daughter-neglect-india
2. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180104120331.htm
3. https://revisesociology.com/2023/03/17/feminist-perspectives-on-socialisation/
4. https://egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/41899/3/Unit-1.pdf
5. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3728018/
6. https://www.learnsociology.in/blog/q-explain-leela-dube-s-concept-of-seed-and-earth-2022
7. https://www.scribd.com/document/733652666/leela-dube-seed-and-earth-ns
8. https://triumphias.com/blog/explain-leela-dube-concept-of-seed-and-earth-2/
9. https://www.unfpa.org/son-preference