Many feminist scholars argue that the seeming naturalness of gender differences, particularly bodily difference, underlies gender inequality. Yet few researchers ask how these bodily differences are constructed. Through semistructured observation in five preschool classrooms, I examine one way that everyday movements, comportment, and use of physical space become gendered. I find that the hidden school curriculum that controls children's bodily practices in order to shape them cognitively serves another purpose as well. This hidden curriculum also turns children who are similar in bodily comportment, movement, and practice into girls and boys-children whose bodily practices differ I identify five sets of practices that create these differences: dressing up, permitting relaxed behaviors or requiring formal behaviors, controlling voices, verbal and physical instructions regarding children's bodies by teachers, and physical interactions among children. This hidden curriculum that (partially) creates bodily differences between the genders also makes these physical differences appear and feel natural. Social science research about bodies often focuses on women's bodies, particularly the parts of women's bodies that are most explicitly different from men's-their reproductive capacities and sexuality (E. Martin 1987; K. Martin 1996; but see Connell 1987, 1995). Men and women in the United States also hold and move their bodies differently (Birdwhistell 1970; Henley 1977; Young 1990); these differences are sometimes related to sexuality (Haug 1987) and sometimes not. On the whole, men and women sit, stand, gesture, walk, and throw differently. Generally, women's bodies are confined, their movements restricted. For example, women take smaller steps than men, sit in closed positions (arms and legs crossed across the body), take up less physical space than men, do not step, twist, or throw from the shoulder when throwing a ball, and are generally tentative when using their bodies

In recent years, social scientists have identified not just heterosexism and homophobia as social problems, but also heteronormativity-the mundane, everyday ways that heterosexuality is privileged and taken for granted as normal and natural. There is little empirical research, however, on how heterosexuality is reproduced and then normalized for individuals. Using survey data from more than 600 mothers of young children, ages 3 to 6 years old, this article examines how mothers normalize heterosexuality for young children. The data suggest that most mothers, who are parenting in a gendered and heteronormative context to begin with, assume that their children are heterosexual, describe romantic and adult relationships to children as only heterosexual, and make gays and lesbians invisible to their children. Those who consider that their children could some day be gay tend to adopt one of three strategies in response: Most pursue a passive strategy of “crossing their fingers” and hoping otherwise. A very few try to prepare their children for the possibility of being gay. A larger group, primarily mothers from conservative Protestant religions, work to prevent homosexuality. I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for understanding sexual identity development and the construction of heteronormativity.

Relational, selfless, caring, polite, nice, and kind are not how we imagine a woman giving birth in U.S. culture. Rather, we picture her as screaming, yelling, self-centered, and demanding drugs or occasionally as numbed and passive from pain-killing medication. Using in-depth interviews with women about their labor and childbirth, the author presents data to suggest that white, middle-class, heterosexual women often worry about being nice, polite, kind, and selfless in their interactions during labor and childbirth. This finding is important not only because it contradicts the dominant cultural image of the birthing woman but because it reveals that an internalized sense of gender plays a role in disciplining women and their bodies during childbirth. The feminist sociological literatures on birth are concerned with how women and their bodies are controlled, yet they have overlooked this other dimension of control that is not institutional but is a product of how gender is internalized. Relational,selfless,caring,polite,nice,andkindarenothowweimagineawomangiving birth in U.S. culture. Rather, in our cultural picture (for example, episodes of ER, Murphy Brown, Chicago Hope, Mad About You, Friends, or any number of new or old television shows' portrayals of birth) she is (sometimes humorously, sometimes not) screaming, yelling, self-centered, and demanding drugs or occasionally is numbed and passive from pain-killing medication. However, I present data to suggest that some white, middle-class, heterosexual women often worry about being and often are nice, polite, kind, and selfless in their interactions during labor and childbirth. This finding is important not only because it contradicts the dominant cultural image of the birthing woman but because it reveals that an internalized sense of gender plays a role in disciplining women and their bodies during childbirth. The (overlapping) feminist and sociological literatures on birth are concerned with how women and their bodies are controlled and disempowered by social institutions during childbirth, yet they have overlooked this other dimension of

In this article, the authors examine accounts of heterosexuality in media for children. The authors analyze all the G-rated films grossing $100 million dollars or more between 1990 and 2005 and find two main accounts of heterosexuality. First, heterosexuality is constructed through hetero-romantic love relationships as exceptional, powerful, magical, and transformative. Second, heterosexuality outside of relationships is constructed through portrayals of men gazing desirously at women's bodies. Both of these findings have implications for our understanding of heteronormativity. The first is seemingly at odds with theories that claim that heterosexuality's mundane, assumed, everyday ordinariness lends heteronormativity its power. In fact, the authors suggest heterosexual exceptionalism may extend the pervasiveness of heterosexuality and serve as a means of inviting investment in it. The second offers ways to begin to think about how heteronormativity is gendered and racialized.