Children pick up on the concept of gender identity at an early age. This sex-role image is ingrained into our brains as early as the age of one. Michael Solomon book Consumer Behavior states that by the age of 3 most American children associate driving truck as a males job and cooking and cleaning as a woman's job. There are all sorts of little nudges that help us make this assumptions. Certain cartoons for example,like the Power Rangers, have distinctive colors distinguishing them from which ones are girls and which ones are boys. The girls wear light colors and the males suits are normally darker. Power Rangers wasn't the first to start the color scheme of which colors should be represented by boys and which should be represented by girls, but it would be pretty silly to all of us to have a pink boy power ranger.
The roles that parents have while we grow up has a huge impact on the way we distinguish between sex roles.For me, I was raised with my mom always doing the cooking and cleaning while it was my Dad's responsibility to mow the lawn and change the oil in the cars. It's funny because one time my mom was out of town and I remember getting a call from my Dad, asking me how to cook a hot dog. Really?? It was winter so he couldn't use the grill, and if you can't grill it, or buy it at McDonald's then he is completely clueless.
I also remember dividing out our weekly chores, I have a younger brother and sister and it was always me and my sister's job to clean the bathroom and vacuum and my brothers usally took our trashes and help mow the lawn. It is an interesting concept to think about because both sexes are perfectly capable of cleaning toilets and mowing lawns.
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