136: Breaking Stereotypes: Nurturing Boys to Champion Gender Equality with Dr. Shelly Vaziri Flais

Motherhood Meets Medicine

Life is filled with roles that are neither made for men nor women. The household for instance, is a place that needs human labor. But how do we break the stereotypes that we’ve grown up with and knock down the walls of gender equity in the home and at work?

Joining me to talk about this important topic as well as her new book is Dr. Shelly Vaziri Flais. Shelly is a board-certified practicing pediatrician, the mother of 3 sons and 1 daughter, and Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. She is the author of Raising Twins, Editor in Chief of Caring for Your School-Age Child, and co-editor of The Big Book of Symptoms. She is an American Academy of Pediatrics spokesperson and frequent media contributor

Listen as she shares her thoughts on everything from modeling equitable behavior at home, why she was happy to be the “hangout house” for her kids and their friends, and why the change we want to see in the world starts in our homes. If you are raising children, whether they are boys or girls, you’ll want to listen in.

Also, don’t forget to grab a copy of her new book, Nurturing Boys to Be Better Men.

In this episode, we discuss:

What inspired Shelly to write her latest book

Her thoughts on ways that bigger families lean into more well-rounded kids and adults

Ways to include your kids in the tasks of the household

What it means to model equitable behavior at home

Why it’s important to also model equitable roles in the workplace

Resources:

About Shelly - https://www.feinberg.northwestern.edu/faculty-profiles/az/profile.html?xid=27113

Nurturing Boys to Be Better Men by Shelly Vziri Flais, MD, FAAP - https://www.aap.org/Nurturing-Boys-to-Be-Better-Men-Paperback

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Questions:

What inspired you to write your latest book?

How can we model equitable behavior at home?

Why is it important to include children in household chores from an early age?

What can we do to inspire equitable play for our children?

What are some ways to open up conversations with our kids about their world and life as they get older?

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