Baby X

Sociology 250

16 April 2010

Summary

(Provide a detailed summary of the article in you our words with no direct quotes.)

Lois Gould examined a fascinating issue of how parents expect or require their children to engage in gender-role-appropriate behavior. So Gould devised and published a fanatical, illusory story-scenario.

So just like a book the story begins and Baby X was born. The scientist invested 23 billion dollars and 72 cents to The Baby X Experiment and wrote a Manuel that was 85759 pages long. The scientist was through thousands of volunteers to find the perfect parents to raise Baby X and finally the Joneses were discovered. The most important thing that the Joneses had to remember was to never tell anyone the sex of the child or Baby X could find out and to Experiment would be ruined.

So the Joneses took Baby X home and instantly hit troubles. Friends and relatives became angry and embarrassed as all the Joneses would say is that the baby was a X. none of the friends and family would buy gifts for Baby X because they did not know what sex it was so the Joneses had to get everything. At first it was a challenge but, they just gave lots of boy and girl toys, edited its storybooks, and found gender neutral clothes.

So eventually, the first day of school comes around and seemed to be the most difficult thus far and eventually the Parent’s association forced X to see a psychiatrist. Needless to say X came out with flying colors and the psychiatrist came out crying from joy.

Problems

(Describe two problems related to gender role stereotypes that the Joneses encountered in raising Baby X because it was an X rather than a boy or girl.)

            Two of many problems that the Joneses experienced due to gender role stereotypes was buying toys, clothes, books and such because it was all gender specific or bias. Secondly, and the biggest issues, were school rules such as bathrooms, lining up and games. Some were easy to fix others were not. With the bathrooms, X was allowed to use the principal’s bathroom because all it said on the door was BATHROOM. When lining up the children would use alphabetical order, but as for the games it took a while before child broke away from gender role stereotypes and excepted X but that is when parents became upset.

Beliefs

(Identify two beliefs about boys and two beliefs about girls that come from the traditional sex role expectations or assumptions about gender differences that the story explores.)

Each sex has their own traditional sex role expectations or assumptions, for boys there was there was the fact that boys are supposed to mown the lawn and take out the trash and then it seemed that basketball and relay races were only for boys. For girls they were expected to wear dress and just like a good little house wife would.

Attitudes

(Give an example of a positive attitude and a negative attitude that X encountered from the other kids in the class.)

Most of the children had negative attitudes towards the children but eventually, after learning and observing, they all had positive attitudes. One negative attitude was when the children did not want to do opposite sex events with X, such as when it ask the boys to do basket weaving or for the girls to play some basketball. Though eventually the positive attitude is when the children did not mind X participating in boy and girl events and embraced the idea.

Effect

(Do you think this experiment had a positive or negative effect on X? Give reasons for your answer.)

            I believe this experiment had a very positive effect, in that community there were some gender biases broken, X finally found its place in school and the Joneses were asked to become part of the Parent’s Association. This will make X stronger as a person and hopefully raise its children in the same gender neutral way.

Changing

(Eventually the world will learn whether X is a boy or a girl. Do you think that X will remain the same gender-neutral person he/she was as a child or do you think he/she will exhibit more gender roles specific behavior? Why?

            Eventually X will have to pick a gender to live by because there are too many rules that cannot be broken. Such as, some schools do not allow boys to wearing earrings, skirts, dresses, makeup or hair dye because they believe it is a distraction, yet girls can wear pants and have boy style haircuts. Also, many schools frown on same sex relations and if X looked like a certain sex and then had relations with someone of that sex X could risk be expelled.

            Moreover there are other things such as car insurance were a boys have higher rates than girls based upon statistics or say X looked like a boy (masculine features) and wears clothes that are sex neutral or even feminine and goes to an interview, some people could be offended or angered and ask X to just leave. Finally some things are just gender specific such as girls wear bras-boys wear cups and girls shave their legs while boys shave their face.