Big and small, girls and boys: intersecting gendered touch practices in early childhood educators’ discourses

ABSTRACT

In this study, we argue that touch is a way of producing gender in preschool and our aim is to explore different kinds of matters that intersect with gendered touch practices in this context. Our theoretical starting points draw on the performativity of gender and the discursively constructed touch practices of early childhood educators. We analyse these discourses by employing intersectional analysis. The data consist of three group discussions among 27 female early childhood educators. The findings suggest that gendered touch practices intersect across children’s age, materiality, time, place, and heteronormative assumptions. Furthermore, cultural conventions affect the ways in which children are touched and the kinds of touch that are considered appropriate in relation to gender.

KEYWORDS:

• Discourse
• early childhood education
• gender
• intersectional analysis
• touch

Introduction

Hedda (teacher): I was in a situation with a mother in which I wanted to touch her, very gently and positively, but since I didn’t know her very well, I wondered whether I should do that. In that situation, I had the time to think about whether I should touch her or what I should do.

Ingrid (nursery nurse): You can tell so much more your feelings though touch than verbally. Like support and sympathy.

Hedda: Yes, but in that situation, I figured that not everyone wants to be touched, or they don’t know how to take a touch. Nevertheless, I am now at this age – I am now a granny, and a granny can give a granny hug. I think that many can relate to the fact that when you are older, at a granny age, a touch is a kind of granny hug, or a granny stroke... I remember that when I was a young teacher in preschool, I took big boys on my lap very briskly, like, ‘Come and sit on aunt Hedda’s lap.’ However, now, after becoming a mother and having worked as a teacher for a long time – not to mention becoming a grandmother – I feel that it is somehow – it might be wrong to say this aloud, but my lap is somehow warmer.

Anja: (laughs) It is warmth in the granny’s lap. (Preschool 3)

In this study, we argue that touch in everyday life in preschool is a way of producing gender. By performing an intersectional analysis of early childhood educators’ discourses on gendered touch practices (e.g. Salskov 2020), we explore different kinds of matters that intersect in such practices in preschool. As Hedda describes in the excerpt above, although touch in educators’ work is a natural part of relationships, it is full of contradictions and tensions. Touch can be comforting, but at the same time, it is something that educators may have to avoid. Hence, it is a contested matter (Keränen, Viljamaa, and Uitto 2021; Keränen 2022). Moreover, Hedda’s pondering shows how touch intersects with age and gender, as Hedda performs herself as a grandmother, mother, and professional educator. She describes how, as a younger teacher, she took big boys briskly on her lap, but now, at an older age, her touch is warmer. Being a grandmother, Hedda can nurture and care through touch, which is linked to motherhood and a feminine care culture (Ylitapio-Mäntylä 2009; Classen 2012; Tainio et al. 2019).

In Finland, gendered touch practices in education have been studied and emphasized (Ylitapio-Mäntylä et al. 2017). For example, gender sensitivity is mentioned in the latest Finnish national core curriculum for ECE (2022). However, further research on gendered practices is needed since they are part of everyday life in preschool. Through such practices, children are guided to act, play, and perform like girls and boys (e.g. Meland and Kaltvedt 2019; Ylitapio-Mäntylä 2009). However, this guidance is usually provided unconsciously (Ylitapio-Mäntylä 2009).

Drawing on discursive research and the performativity of gender our research question is as follows: How do gendered touch practices intersect in early childhood educators’ discourses?

Discourses on gendered touch practices in ECE

When studying gendered touch practices, the key issue is the body. We lean on the Foucauldian idea of a culturally produced body and in relation to other bodies, one learns to discipline and control oneself (Schneck 1987). According to Foucault (2000), the body is the object and subject of power, which is constructed discursively. Bodies are normalized, organized, and constructed through discourses operating in different situations (Arribas-Ayllon and Walkerdine 2017; Miller 1990). Therefore, discourses are constructed in social moments in relation to broader, diverse cultural practices and structures (see Miller 1990). Hence, our understanding of discourses is related to the Foucauldian idea of how the world is constructed discursively (Foucault 1972) and to the ways in which gendered touch practices are created in educators’ discourses, practices, material environments, and encounters with children. These discourses define what types of power adults and children have in terms of touch and gender. Discourses reveal expectations, explanations, and assumptions (Baxter 2003; Davies 1989) about how one should touch and be touched. Thus, in this study, we explore discourses as gendered touch practices.

Issues of gendered practices in ECE have been studied from educators’ perspectives (e.g. Ylitapio-Mäntylä 2009; Blaise 2009; 2010), in childhood memories related to gender (Ylitapio-Mäntylä and Uitto 2018), and in terms of children’s gendered agency in preschool (Paju 2012). Furthermore, children gendered and heterosexual play in preschool has been studied by Huuki and Renold (2016). In addition, gendered practices and touch have been studied in primary education (Tainio et al. 2019) and from preschool teachers’ perspectives (Johansson, Hedlin, and Åberg 2018).

According to Blaise (2014), ‘sex’ refers to the biological body, while ‘gender’ refers to a socially, politically, and culturally produced construct (see also Ylitapio-Mäntylä 2020). Nevertheless, in education, the biological determinism of sex produces stereotypical ways of viewing gender (Robinson and Jones-Díaz 2006). Therefore, gender does not exist in itself. The question, then, is how gender is performed and how the ways of performing a certain sex are learned through culture, interactions, and relations (Delfin 2021; Blaise 2014; Ylitapio-Mäntylä 2009). Moreover, non-human materiality plays a significant role in terms of gender. For example, it has been noted that preschool girls’ accessories help them attract adults’ attention (Paju 2012).

In this study, we lean on Butler’s (1990, 2004) notion that gender is produced and performed in different cultural and social environments. For example, different environments define how it is allowed to act and touch in terms of gender. In this performativity, discourses play a meaningful role. Discourses are ways of feeling, thinking, acting, and knowing that contain ideas about how to perform gender (Blaise 2009), and through these discourses and materiality, people can be positioned in certain categories. However, these categories can also be challenged and resisted (see also Davies 1989).

We understand touch as a fundamental way of being and learning from oneself, others, and the world (Ahmed and Stacey 2001). People experience touch in different ways according to their earlier experiences and histories (Kinnunen and Kolehmainen 2019). Like gender, ways of touching are also shaped and learned through culture (Classen 2012; Howes 2005). For example, touch as part of caring is traditionally associated with femininity; hence, caring is viewed from a gendered perspective (Ylitapio-Mäntylä 2013; Noddings 2001). In addition, the environment and different situations determine how to touch others (Paterson 2007). For instance, the way in which a doctor touches a patient is very different from a grandmother’s touch. Bodies, which touch and are touched, are orientated in their environments, and shaped by materiality. Therefore, bodies should be seen in relation to the inside and the outside as well as to the self and others (Ahmed and Stacey 2001; Paju 2012).

In the field of ECE, touch is seen as a natural part of educators’ work: children are guided and cared for by touching (Keränen, Juutinen, and Estola 2017; see also Tainio et al. 2019). However, touch can also be seen as a means of pedagogical control (Keränen, Viljamaa, and Uitto 2021) but can also show affection (Cekaite and Berghner 2018). Also, children themselves touch each other in different ways. Prior research has shown that children can use touch as an invitation to play and that they can control each other by touching (Keränen, Viljamaa, and Uitto 2021).

When researching touch and gender, we are inevitably faced with the fact that touch is strongly associated with sexuality, heteronormativity, and stereotypical views of gender (Tainio et al. 2019; Piper and Smith 2003). In addition, children’s sexuality remains an invisible and unspoken matter. Children are traditionally seen as innocent and, therefore, unsexual (Blaise 2009; Holford, Renold, and Huuki 2013). Research has also shown that touch is a tensioned phenomenon. Furthermore, previous studies have shown that touch can be considered a self-evident fact (Keränen 2022) but can also be denied in certain educational settings because of the fear of sexual accusations (Piper and Smith 2003). Overall, touch creates tension as it is simultaneously very private and public matter, affecting both the self and other (Grosz 1994; Ahmed and Stacey 2001).

Conducting the research: methods and analysis

This study was conducted at three Finnish preschools. Data collection started when Virve, the first author, contacted the managers of three randomly selected preschools to enquire about the possibility of participating in research on touch as part of everyday work in preschool. The managers discussed with their respective staff, and all three preschools agreed to participate. A voluntary group discussion was organized at each preschool. Each group discussion lasted approximately one hour. Virve attended the discussions as a researcher but also as a former preschool teacher, which helped her participate in the discussions (see Connelly and Clandinin 2006).

Before each discussion, Virve explained the ethical principles involved, such as the right to withdraw from the study at any point and the use of pseudonyms in the data and related papers. All participants signed informed consent forms. She then briefly explained her background as a preschool teacher and shared her experiences in terms of touch. The discussions then started easily and were vivid.

The 27 educators who participated in the group discussions (see Table 1) worked with children aged 0–6 years and had different educational backgrounds. The managers, who performed administrative tasks, had pedagogical backgrounds, as did the early childhood teachers. Nursery nurses had been trained in nursery and care. Assistants in preschool helped and guided children with additional needs. All participants were women, as no men worked at the participating preschools. Overall, the ECE workforce is a female-dominated field (see, e.g. Warin 2019).

Table 1. Study participants.

Preschool	Managers	Early childhood teachers	Nursery nurses	Assistants in preschools	Total
1	1	3	5	–	9
2	1	8	5	1	15
3	–	2	1	–	3
Total	2	13	11	1	27

Intersectional analysis

Intersectional thinking, developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991), inspired our study on gendered touch practices in ECE. Intersectionality aims are to scrutinize diverse in structural, political, and representational phenomena (Crenshaw 1991). At the core of the intersectional approach lies the analysis of power positions (Christensen and Jensen 2012; Salskov 2020). The theory of intersectionality challenges the notion of general norms and experiences and considers the complexities of multiple categories (Price 2018). Accordingly, the intersections of different positions and categories need to be analysed how they intersect case-by-case basis (Salskov 2020). Intersectionality, as an analytic lens, reveals various categories, rules, customs, structures, and systems and provides a tool for asking new questions about them and examining different connections between them and alternative understandings that are produced across those intersections (Cole 2009).

According to Yuval-Davis (2006), intersectional analysis focuses on how different social divisions are constructed. Educators’ attitudes and prejudices towards others play a role in constructing social divisions (Yuval-Davis 2006). Hence, educators’ discourses do not concern only themselves and their work communities but are part of broader cultural discourses.

In the first phase of the analysis, Virve transcribed the discussions. She noticed that the word pair touch and gender was repeatedly used. Outi joined the study at this stage. After reading and discussing the data, we formulated the research question based on our analysis. We paid attention to discourses on gender, age, and children’s physical size. In the discourses, children were described as younger and older, girls and boys, and big and small and they were also described as being touched in different ways based on these categories. We also found that places and non-human materiality, and time produced gendered touch practices. Thus, in our analysis, we focused on what the discourses on gendered touch practices intersected with and how. Moreover, the question of power was also present in the data in terms of who determined whom to touch and when (see also Blaise 2005). To make sense of educators’ touch practices, we focused on how they described touch (or a lack thereof) as part of their work.

Interpretation of intersecting gendered touch practices

Intersections of age, time, and place

Hedda (teacher): The most rewarding thing has been when biggest and oldest boys go to take an afternoon nap and I go to caress them. I tuck them in and stroke them, and they enjoy it. Many times, the tough ones cuddle up. They enjoy it, and they wait for me to come and stroke them. I think that those are the sweetest. At these moments, big boys can be in all peace. There is no one seeing them or laughing at them. They wait for someone to touch and stroke them.

Kirsi (teacher): I just got a feeling of inadequacy. When everyone wants you to touch them – for example, at naptime – I sometimes feel pity for those children who want to be touched and need it at a different level from those who need it to calm down. They need the touch so that they can feel that they are loved and cared for. Today, one girl who is very quiet came to ask me if I could caress her at naptime. I knew then that all the time goes with others, and she falls asleep before I have a chance to go to her and caress her. (Preschool 3)

In this excerpt, Hedda and Kirsi share their experiences in the nap room. In Finnish preschools, naptime is an everyday practice. Although the practice varies between preschools, this discussion shows that even the oldest children, who are six years old, take naps.

The excerpt reveals how gendered touch practices intersect with place and age. First, Hedda describes the nap room as a place where bigger and older boys can enjoy the educator’s caring touch. In this place, physical closeness to the educator is permitted and makes it possible to experience care and security (see also Tahhan 2008). For Hedda, the most rewarding experience is when the biggest and oldest boys enjoy her stroking their back. Nap room appears here as a place in which touch is sought by almost everyone even the biggest, oldest, and toughest boys.

Second, according to Kirsi, the younger and quiet girls are easily left without a touch and a sense of being cared for. Prior research has shown that the quiet and kind girls are portrayed as normal and good preschool children (Alasuutari and Markström 2011) and that they are often the ones who do not disturb others and thus remain in the shadows (Lanas 2019). In line with these findings, Kirsi’s notion strengthens this idea as she describes how a quiet girl falls asleep before Kirsi has the time to go and stroke her.

According to Yuval-Davis (2006), discourses produce categories, and individuals assigned to certain categories are treated in certain ways. Exploring these categories through an intersectionality lens shows that gendered touch practices intersect with age and categories of what kinds of boys and girls are, such as big and tough boys and little and quiet girls. They also intersect with place and time – in this case, the nap room and naptime. The nap room emerges as a place in which the ideal of masculinity is shattered and big boys can enjoy care and love; they are not required to be big and tough (see also Lunabba 2015).

An ECE educator has the power to choose who to touch. According to Foucauldian idea, power is present in all relationships and is revealed through discourses. Thus, it is important to understand how power works (Blaise 2009) also in gendered touch practices. Requests from little, kind girls are ignored, as the excerpt above suggests, except when they refuse to be touched:

Inga (nursery nurse): When it is naptime, I have a habit of going to every child and tuck them in. One girl said to me, that she didn’t want to be touched. Well, it was OK for me. However, I told her that I had a habit of tucking children in and asked if I could touch her legs. She said ‘no’.

Miina (nursery nurse): She is very clear about tucking herself in and not wanting us to go near her. She wants to do things by herself. (Preschool 1)

While the previous excerpt suggests that the power to choose is in educators’ hands, this excerpt suggests that this girl, who does not want to be touched, has power over her own body. The power to choose who to touch or not to touch intersects not only with gender but also with time and place. Power can be seen here as a positive force (see also Ylitapio-Mäntylä 2013). Children themselves challenge gender norms and construct their own ways of and autonomy in performing gender (Ylitapio-Mäntylä 2009). In the following excerpt, Hedda and Marja describe how touch in everyday moments can be occasional and gendered.

Hedda (teacher): Early in the morning, a two-year-old sat on my lap. We watched others play and talked for a long time. She is such a kind and lively girl and doesn’t make a fuss about herself. It was such a nice moment, and it should happen more often […] I felt so good, but then I thought, ‘This is a little girl, and here we sit close to each other, and she doesn’t rush away.’ Then I thought, ‘Why can’t I do this more often?’

Marja (nursery nurse): I feel so bad when I think of these bigger boys. They don’t come to ask for a touch, and the others attract all the attention. When they hurt themselves and cry, they come and sit on your lap for a long time – long after they’ve stopped crying. But besides this they seem like they don’t need to be touched during the day. (Preschool 3)

Here, gendered touch practices intersect with morning time in the playroom as a place. According to Hedda and Marja, moments of closeness to kind and little girls and big boys should be more frequent. In educators’ discourses, both touch and a lack thereof are related to time. They are also related to cultural norms and assumptions according to which boys are allowed comfort and closeness only when they are hurt. However, Marja recounts how they also break the cultural expectations of ‘tough boys’ by crying and sitting on the educator’s lap when they need closeness. Morning time in the playroom serves as a place where children can receive a caring touch from an educator, as Hedda and Marja points out.

Materials give permission to touch

Hanna (teacher): When children introduce their own toys to others, everyone comes and sits on your lap – especially the boys. They climb on your lap like, ‘Now I can come here.’

Birgit (nursery nurse): Doesn’t it sometimes feel that they are bigger than you? I mean, occasionally it feels like you can’t see Hanna behind the boys because they are so big and heavy. (Preschool 2)

In this excerpt, Hanna and Birgit discuss how introducing a toy to others can become a situation in which children come into physical contact with the educators. The excerpt indicates how gendered touch practices intersect with materiality and age. Materials and objects play important roles in human touch and gendered practices in ECE (Lyttleton-Smith 2019; Paju 2012). The extract above is from a preschool where once a week, children can bring their own toy from home to preschool; this is called the ‘toy-day’. During the day, children introduce this toy to others.

The extract reveals how the toys, as part of non-human materiality, create a place in which boys can sit on educators’ laps. While touch at naptime is more hidden, introducing a toy sitting on an educator’s lap is a more public event and becomes a reason to come into physical contact with an educator (see also Holford, Renold, and Huuki 2013).

According to Grosz (1994), touch is both a private and a public matter. Hence, it is important to become aware of what kind of model is constructed through this discourse. It is suitable to sit on an adult’s lap and be touched by a toy, but is it possible to experience such contact without a toy? Different forms of touch in body work/care have been created through time and history (Cohen and Wolkowitz 2018), like a ‘toy day’ at a preschool. These habits of touch, such as sitting on an adult’s lap with a toy, also need to be reflected upon as gendered touch practices, especially in terms of what becomes visible or invisible and included or excluded in ECE.

In the above excerpt, Hanna and Birgit also illustrate how gender intersects with the physical body: big and heavy boys sit on the laps of educators, who seem smaller than these boys. The feeling of touch is more intense with big and heavy boys than with girls, as the following excerpt reveals:

Miina: […] When I ask, ‘Do you want [to come and sit on my lap]?’ and the child says ‘no’, and I would have just grab her and put her on my lap, I think that the child will have been petrified. I think that not wanting to sit on someone’s lap is just as allowed.

Mona (nursery nurse): With her, we must start with less.

Miina: Than a lap.

Mona: With her hair.

Miina: Yes, the hair perhaps, like, ‘Oh, how beautiful hair you have; what a lovely bow you have there on your shirt.’ Like this, not like, ‘Come and sit on my lap.’ (Preschool 1)

According to Paju (2012), girls possess a whole category of decorations and accessories that invite touch. Hairpins, jewellery, and make-up are items that are flipped and tried on. A girlish and permissible way to touch someone is to comb their hair or put a hairpin on it. In addition, girls receive more attention than boys because of the material designs of their clothes – for example, glittering dresses (Paju 2012).

To summarize, an educator’s lap is a place in which big boys can come into physical contact with the educator, and toys give permission to boys to be nearby. Instead, girls can have the opportunity to be touched at any time through hairpins and other ‘girly’ materials.

Assumptions of heteronormative touch

Hanna (teacher): Last spring, two children were kissing each other at preschool. Parents said that this wasn’t necessarily a nice thing, and we agreed.

Virve (interviewer): What kind of discussions did you had?

Hanna: Well, one boy had a cap on his head, and he was lying on the grass [lifts her arms behind her neck, showing how the boy was lying] as if he were sunbathing. A girl came to him and put her face under his cap. I went to ask whether she had kissed the boy, and she said ‘no’. I told her mother about this incident, and she said that she didn’t like children kissing each other on the lips.

Hilkka (teacher): On the other hand, isn’t this a private matter between children? Is it a matter of parents liking it or not? (Preschool 2)

This excerpt reveals how gendered touch practices intersect with heterosexuality assumptions and age. The excerpt illustrates how a kiss on the lips between a girl and a boy is interpreted as sexual and hence inappropriate at preschool. This is indicative of the assumption that fondness and sexuality do not befit childhood because childhood is considered a time of innocence (Blaise 2010; Renold 2002). This discourse on innocence can produce practices in which sexuality and gender are inappropriate and invisible in everyday life in ECE (see also Chapman 2022).

However, according to Blaise (2010), children’s heterosexual relationships are appropriate expressions of sexuality and gender performativity. As Blaise (2009) showed, heteronormativity is part of everyday life in children’s play; however, children also challenge discourses of femininity and masculinity (Blaise 2009). Heteronormativity is particularly emphasized in kissing games between children, and touch – a kiss in this case – is a natural way of being in a heterosexual relationship (Tainio et al. 2019). However, kissing games can be considered problematic in ECE, as the excerpt above reveals.

Denying children the possibility of kissing and touching means that an important way of showing affection is forbidden. By seeing a kiss as a heteronormative act and a ‘one-directional force’ (Huuki and Renold 2016), the possibility of viewing it more broadly narrows. Children need to learn ways of setting and recognizing their own and others’ boundaries, as well as bodily autonomy. Furthermore, children’s age intersects with kissing, at least according to Birgit and Anneli:

Birgit (nursery nurse): Eero kissed that little girl, and then he gave me a kiss, too.

Anneli (nursery nurse): He gives a kiss! He is such a lovely boy!

Birgit: And then he holds her hand. What a gentleman! (Preschool 1)

Eero is a two-year-old boy who kisses the girl and the educators. This excerpt suggests that kissing is not considered disturbing when a very young child does it. Instead, kissing and holding one’s hand are what gentlemen do and have become normalized acts for young boys as opposed to older boys:

Hedda (teacher): Six-year-olds often go through a phase when they kiss each other. They play and scream and run away. It depends on each person how they react in such situations, but I try to stop games in which [girls scream] ‘Help, help! Boys are chasing after us, and they are trying to kiss us!’ I explain to them that it is OK to kiss if they like, but only on the cheeks. At home, they can kiss their mums and dads. But screaming and girls giggling and screaming, ‘Help, help! Boys are running after me and kissing me’ – that’s a game I try to stop. When you think about it from the viewpoint of touch, the idea that ‘I will catch her, and I will use force’, now that I think of it, and what is a topical issue: there is always someone who may not want this. (Preschool 3)

In many everyday situations, educators struggle with cultural norms and constructions and with their own principles. For adults, it is difficult to understand kissing as children’s play because it is ‘overcoded’ with interpretations (Holford, Renold, and Huuki 2013). Furthermore, kissing between six-year-olds can be seen as the development of heterosexuality (Holford, Renold, and Huuki 2013), while the kiss of a young child, like Eero, is nothing but cute. We suggest that in children’s relationships and games, kissing can be seen in the same way as a caring touch: it is a way of being with each other.

Concluding discussion

In this study, we aimed to explore different kinds of matters that intersect across gendered touch practices in preschool. We argue that in the everyday life of preschools, touch is a way of producing gender and, hence, gendered touch practices. Our findings suggest that these practices intersect across children’s age, materiality, time, place, and heteronormative assumptions. Furthermore, cultural conventions affect the ways in which children are touched and the kinds of touch that are considered appropriate in relation to gender. Therefore, we suggest that touch as a gendered practice needs to be reflected upon from a broader point of view.

While previous research has shown that in preschools girls are touched in more affectionate ways than boys, who are subject to more controlling touching by educators (Bergnehr and Cekaite 2018), our research shows that place and time matter in gendered touch practices. Educators can touch (big) boys more affectionately – for example, during naptime in nap rooms – while little and quiet girls are left out precisely because they are little and quiet girls. Thus, gendered touch practices reproduce the idea of ideals of masculinity, in which boys are positioned opposite girls, who receive affection more openly and publicly (Davies 1989). Moreover, materiality both enables and prevents certain kinds of touch in relation to gender as we have addressed (see also Paju 2012). Furthermore, we have illustrated how the age of a child’s age also matters: younger boys can show affection more openly precisely because they are younger boys.

Our findings also show that acts such as kissing, especially between girls and boys, can be easily interpreted as heterosexual touch. Thus, discourses on gendered touch practices extend from touch between educators and children to touch between children. Children’s sexuality is silenced and absent in ECE (see also Holford, Renold, and Huuki 2013). Touch between girls and boys can be problematic and tensions might arise for educators, because it is viewed through the lens of sexuality and heteronormativity and, hence, must be limited.

Finally, while ECE is said to be characterized by gender sensitivity (Ylitapio-Mäntylä 2020), we illustrate that touch plays a meaningful role in producing categories of big boys and little girls. Overall, instead of limiting certain kinds of touch, educators need to be flexible and conscious of the diversity of children’s gender subjectivities (Lyttleton-Smith 2019). We suggest that the gendered touch practices require self-reflection and shared discussion with educators, starting with teacher education, as well as in broader society.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Council of Finland under grant number 332232.