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Casting children in school plays can be tricky.
Not all roles are equal: some may have more lines, while others might have better-looking costumes.
Theres always bound to be one or two unhappy kids and parents.
Unfortunately, someones got to play the Tree, right?
We as a society have become more and more aware of gender roles and sexism.
As some commenters said, the mother should be happy the daughter at least gets to play a person.
Many kids might only get the role of a shrub or a sheep in those school plays.
However, theres a deeper issue here if were willing to look into it.
The mothers surprise comes from the fact that the school, even if inadvertently, teaches children gender stereotypes.
The commenters touched upon this as well.
Why couldnt both persons in the couple be The Innkeepers?
Why is the word Wife the identifier?
Theres no Inn Keepers Husband in the script.
There are also always two sides to an argument.
Its unlikely the school plays director and author of the script meant it this way.
A Nativity play could hardly be propaganda by traditionalists to maintain the patriarchy.
Even if it is, its an attempt that will have a fairly low impact.
But that doesnt mean it cant influence the way children understand and internalize gender stereotypes.
She found that dividing schoolchildren into groups will lead them to develop stereotypes about those groups.
Bigler conducted an experiment with elementary school students and teachers.
In the first group, the teachers labeled the kids and organized the classroom using gender.
In the other one, the teachers had to ignore the students gender.
What was the result?
The use of gender dichotomies in the classroom increased childrens gender stereotyping, Bigler wrote in the conclusion.
The kids stereotyped occupations and character traits more in the group where teachers labeled them according to their gender.
It would be true if children only paid attention to what we say to them overtly.
But sometimes we teach things even when were not aware of it.
Brown says that its the parents that make the differences between genders meaningful.
When we repeatedly say, Look at those girls playing!
In fact, it must be the single most important feature of that person.
Otherwise, why would we point it out all the time?
We can make a run at apply this to the OPs concerns about the Nativity play as well.
With gender, children notice the difference and adults make it meaningful, Brown writes.
Children see the category.
We made sure of that with our pink or blue shirts.
Also, the experts in the world, their parents, always label the category.
We put a figurative flashing neon arrow on gender and say Pay Attention!
And guess what, they pay attention.
