Week 3

I really connected with the course materials this week. In reviewing the article "What's the difference between girls and boys?", I reflected on my own experiences with gender and gender roles. I have an aunt, my dad's oldest sister, who I now know is transgendered. I'm fascinated by this, because I always just knew her as my Aunt Sharon. She would usually bring a girlfriend to our family functions (I never thought anything about it because it was normal to me. Some women have boyfriends, some have girlfriends), and at some point (as a child) I realized that she was what you would call "gay". My grandmother never knew that she was gay, because if she had, my aunt Sharon would have been disowned (They were strict Mormans, with a capital M). What a shame that my grandmother never knew who her child really was.

The past few years, she has asked us to start calling her by different names, first "Shay", then "Shane". I finally asked her this year, and she told me she is transgendered, that her brain was born a different gender than her body (how she explained it). And it all made perfect sense. She is the most masculine woman I've ever met. Her and my dad were really close, and I understand that now. She was more like an older brother to him than a sister. To connect to the course materials, I think that we are much more open these days to letting children be who they are (gender), regardless of what that means. We still have a long long ways to go, but hopefully as the stereotypical "gender roles" become more and more relaxed, people like her will find a greater degree of acceptance and understanding. I can only wish for her that it had been that way when she was a kid.

Week 2

Something that I was struck by this week is just how intricate and dynamic the forces of nature and nurture are in creating our temperaments. I am reminded of my own family when the book delves into adoption studies and differences between siblings. I have two cousins on my fathers side, siblings who share the same mother and father but not the same genetic makeup, as my oldest cousin Jenny is adopted. My younger cousin Erin is not. They could not be more different people, and I wonder how these genetic and familial forces have shaped the people that they are. Erin is over the top, loud, incredibly selfish, and never got over the divorce of her parents. She had her first child at 15, then another at 17. She is content to live at home with her mom and party while grandma stays home with the kids.

Jenny, on the other hand, is laid back, thoughtful, and attending school to become an MD. She is very independent and left home at 18 and never came back. She doesn't resent her parents for their divorce, and is determined to be a different kind of mother than her sister, when she's ready. Jenny has chosen not to know who her biological parents were. How much of her makeup comes from them is the unknown.  Did her genes influence the environment she was raised in? Did her parents have different expectations of her, being the oldest? Very interesting stuff.

Hello everyone!

This will be my blog for our BTC Lifespan Psychology class for winter 2012!

Feel free to comment on or message me about anything I post here. I've had some pretty unique experiences in my life and it's made me who I am today. I see myself as a student of life, and I'm sure this class will be totally fascinating.