Un blue helmet with unicorns. Fuchsia knee pads. The request to enroll in dance. Simple choices. Common, if it were a little girl doing them. But when it’s a child asking… Even parents who say they are open, who share care and reject stereotypes can hesitate. Why does adherence to equality become fragile precisely with sons? «That hesitation comes from afar, from an education that still today draws clear, often invisible, boundaries between what is considered suitable for a male and what is not» says Maria Giuseppina Pacilli, professor of Social Psychology at the University of Perugia and author of Tough men. The dark side of masculinity (The Mill).
«Although a lot is changing, girls and boys continue to grow, in most contexts, according to different educational scripts». Which are transmitted in gestures and education. «The first ones are taught to care, to please; to the seconds, to command. Even in play: boys are pushed towards physical strength, girls towards verbal confrontation. Males are asked to do, females are asked to say».
To raise doubts about the opportunity to flatly translate into practice what seem to us to be indisputable beliefs, we start early. Maybe buying the first gift for a newborn.«When my nephew was born, I chose a small aviator bomber jacket, a military item! For the little sister I had taken t-shirts and shorts from both the boys’ and girls’ aisles. With him I didn’t feel free. That self-censorship made me think” he says Francesca Cavallo, queer activist and author of Bedtime stories for rebellious girls (Mondadori) e Space stories for men of the future (Undercats).
Over the last ten years, we have expanded the space of imagination for girls. We have introduced new models: courageous heroines, active protagonists capable of deciding for themselves. But the same did not happen for children. There is still an almost complete lack of male characters capable of questioning their own emotional life. Figures who know how to navigate frustration and disappointment without resorting to anger, closure, violence. According to Cavallo, «lmasculinity is much more prescriptive. A male who breaks away from stereotypes risks running into a taboo.” If it does not exhibit strength, it is restless. Others and himself. «Why does a plié scare us more than a punch?»
Does the child ask for dance? We prefer karate…
In the last ten years the space of the imagination has been expanded especially for girls. For children, there is still an almost complete lack of male characters capable of questioning their own emotional life. (Getty Images)
«Saying that we want free children is easy – observes Stefano Rossi, educational psychologist – but it is when that freedom takes concrete shape that we surprise ourselves by proposing “safer” alternatives». An example? «Parents who say: “he asked for dance, but… for now we’ll enroll him in karate. Maybe he’ll feel better there. With the other comrades, I mean. With dance… I don’t know, maybe someone would make fun of him. The plie can wait. Then… we’ll seeIt is in those moments” he continues “that a subtle fracture emerges between the values we say we believe in and what we are really ready to supportconsistently, in practice. Without wanting to, we teach children to change themselves a little to fit in, to choose what is most acceptable, not what they really want. We teach compromise, not freedom. But truly teaching freedom also means putting up with our restlessness. Remaining steadfast next to our children when they make unscripted choices.”
In gender education, the parent’s identity hangs in the balance
Sometimes, behind those hesitations, there is not only the fear that a child will be excluded or ridiculed. It’s not just social pressure, but something that touches the parent’s identity. A silent discomfort, which we struggle to recognise. «It’s one thing to call yourself a feminist. It’s another to remain consistent when that freedom enters our home: questioning our certainties, our idea of normality, the educational models with which we grew up, the implicit expectations, the deep fears” observes Lorenzo Gasparrini, feminist philosopher, in the bookshop with Parents, we grow up. Designing a world of united and free people (Einaudi).
Yet, he adds «it is precisely in those moments that the real educational challenge takes place. Society may seem to be evolving, but the contexts in which people are formed – family, school, the media – change much more slowly. And even if today we are more aware of the damage of the dominant male model – the one that rewards strength, control, invulnerability – we have not yet built a concrete, shared alternative that can guide children and young people towards another idea of masculine. So, when a child deviates from what is more usual, we find ourselves in the balance. Divided between what we desire for him and what we fear. We would like to support him, but then we hold back. And masculinity continues to be formed this way: by omission. Through the requests that we drop, the choices that we do not encourage”. Of course, the path is not easy. “But equality is not a slogan, nor an abstract ideal. It is a daily, tiring, internal commitment.”
The role of the school in gender education
To really change our gaze and the scripts – which we entrust to children, good intentions are not enough. We need tools, contexts and educational alliances. And the school has a central role in this. Yet in Italy, unlike much of Europe, emotional and sexual education is not yet compulsory.
In Sweden it has been so since 1955. Here, as explained by Paola Marmocchi, psychotherapist and co-author of the book Emotional and sexual education courses for pre-adolescents (Erickson) and promoter of the project “W love“, active in Emilia-Romagna since 2013, “everything depends on the sensitivity of individual managers and teachers. The result is a fragmented panorama, often entrusted to good will or associations, without national coordination”.
Teachers and educators are key figures. But to be so, they should be trained, supported, helped to recognize stereotypes and their own internalized prejudices. Not to be “neutral”, but aware. Stereotypes, observes Riccarda Zezza, author of Maam – Motherhood is a master’s degree (2014) and founder of Lifed«they are mental shortcuts: they help us read reality quickly, but they oversimplify and lock us into rigid frames. They make us feel safe, but leave little room for what we don’t immediately recognize as “normal”.
The problem, as the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reminds us, it is not that they are fake, but that they are incomplete: they tell only one part of reality. And when we reduce people, male and female, to a single story, we end up limiting their possibilities. We can change perspective, simply, by telling more stories: more experiences, more ways of being in the world.”