Gender Role Conformity Analysis

I can point to several experiences in my life that have been critical in shaping my current gender role conformity. Having been raised in a matriarchal family structure, I was imbued from an early age with the idea of women as equal to men and simultaneously powerful and strong in their own way. My mother, who worked full-time while completing her associate’s and bachelor’s degree, was the primary achiever and breadwinner in our nuclear family. Rather than babysitters or preschool, I was raised by my grandmother, who cared for each and every one of her grandchildren, and in this I was taught to view her as the matriarch. As the oldest living member of our family lineage, my great-grandmother was respected and revered. In these ways, I think

My entirely-immigrant family had arrived at a position of personal, professional, and social comfort from virtually nothing: no connections, few advantages, and many odds against them. My father was a high school dropout who succeeded by taking advantage of opportunities that presented themselves until he reached a position that brought him satisfaction and success. He never asked for help but he always offered it. My mother simultaneously raised two young children, worked full-time, and completed her undergraduate degrees. These images and examples of self-reliance and success instilled in me, from a young age, the same values. Social learning theory helps to explain this critical experience. The theory posits that gender role behavior is learned through the child’s interactions with others in their environment. Within this socialization model, the child learns vicariously via observation and receives reinforcement or punishment according to subsequent behaviors. I observed the self-reliance, pursuit of achievement, and perseverance in my nuclear and extended family and I acted accordingly. I began reading and writing before entering Kindergarten and received praise from my mother, my teachers, and my family for this success. I began reading newspapers in the first grade and again received positive reinforcement for this

For much of my adolescence, I relied on and hid behind the heterosexual script, a stereotypical enactment of the masculine role in romantic relationships. Due to a confluence of factors, including family values, personal fears and discomforts, and a lack of opportunity to explore and develop sexually, I did not come out to myself or others until midway through college. Up until this point, I abided by traditional masculine gender scripts as best I could, which leads me to wonder whether my conformity inventory would have looked differently then than now. In my sophomore year, when I began to truly explore my sexuality and develop my sexual identity as a man attracted to men, I believe that my perception of, and adherence to, masculine gender expectations changed dramatically. Coming out helped me to feel less bound to masculine norms and, thus, freed me to engage less by them. This, in turn, certainly contributed to my low conformity to masculine norms though, like nursing, the exact relationship between these two things beyond correlation might be harder to