Photo Credit: Photo via http://www.eurcom.org/the-lack-of-children/ under the Creatice Commons License

While watching the sun set on the beach, the family takes a silhouette picture.

Parents have hopes and goals for their children. They have high standards and dreams for their children to achieve when they grow older. However, should parents have different hopes for their sons than daughters?

Males and females are different, but equal. Therefore, we should treat all our children the same way and base goals and standards off of our children as they grow with new interests.

Treating our children differently could be a problem. Daughters and sons may feel inferior to their siblings because of the standards and goals parents give them. So, parents should set rules, standards, and hopes without adding gender biases. Another solution could be to sit down and talk with their kids. When it comes to things like daughters having a curfew and sons finishing their homework on Fridays, there shouldn’t be a difference in rules and parents should work on keeping their expectations equal.

Parents shouldn’t have different expectations for their sons than daughters. Based off of Google searches, parents hope for their sons to be intelligent and their daughters to be pretty and skinny. They were also more likely to search if their daughter is overweight when it is 9% more likely for males to be overweight. Females are also more likely to be “gifted” by 11% while parents search more about boys being gifted. Parents shouldn’t be worrying if their daughter is too overweight and if their son isn’t intelligent unless they are equally concerned for both children. Also, there are also studies showing that female teens were more likely to have an earlier curfew than males.

On the other hand, people might believe it is okay to have different standards. It’s more likely that a parent would want their daughter to be a ballerina than their son; is there a big problem with that? Although sons and daughters should be treated equally, there are some things that are geared more for females than males or the other way around. A daughter might also have stricter rules because parents might fear something to happen more than they fear it with a boy. One in three women worldwide has experienced some type of violence against them. Parents might believe it is less likely for their sons to experience a problem.

Although it might sometimes seem okay to have different hopes and standards for children, it’s best to treat them equally. Daughters and sons shouldn’t have to worry about fighting with their sibling to be smarter or more attractive. Isn’t it better for children to have loving and encouraging parents?