Gender typing is the process by which a child becomes aware of their gender and thus behaves accordingly by adopting values and attributes of members of the sex that they identify as their own.Shaffer, D. R. (2009). Social and personality development (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth This process is important for a child's social and personality development because it largely impacts the child's understanding of expected social behavior and influences social judgments.
Gender identity Once aware of one's gender identity, a child will start to behave in gender roles normally adopted by their same-sex models. Therefore, these individual responses become internalized and function according to the appropriate gender-role standards.Pentony, C.G. (1980). Gender, sex typing, and gender identity. 941–942. The responses that individuals receive from their social group will mold their identity – becoming more feminine or masculine – and thus affect the way they view the world. Other facets of the process can also result in atypical development. Whether a child develops shared traits, cross-gender identities, or androgyny, their decision begins with the identification of a gender and the models they choose to emulate. The behaviors they adopt will ultimately shape their knowledge and identity for who they are and how they should behave.
Theories
Freud’s psychoanalytic theory Sigmund Freud believed that children go through stages of psychosexual development. In the third year of the child's life, genitals are thought to become active. As children develop a greater understanding of their own sex they also develop either a castration complex (in boys) or penis envy (in girls). For boys, during the “phallic” stage, they are at the height of childhood sexuality. During this the Oedipus complex occurs, where the boy feels erotic love for his mother (Electra complex in girls where love is directed towards the father). As time progresses and the boy matures, he is slowly able to let go of the rival feelings he has towards his father and free himself from his love for his parents. At this time, the boy learns to emulate masculine attributes from his father and subsequently to identify with him.Mullahy. P. (1948). Oedipus myth and complex: A Review of Psychoanalytic Theory. New York, NY: Grove Press, Inc. The girl's development, Freud argued, is more complicated. Generally, as with males, the first object of interest is also the mother figure and for the first four years and beyond a girl remains attached to her mother. However, when the female child learns about “castration” it sparks disappointment and she blames her mother for her lack of a penis. Because of this, the girl gives up masturbation and in turn shifts focus from her mother to her father. By abandoning masturbation the girl can no longer be active, thus displaying a passive nature. The father then assists her by smoothly transitioning her towards a more feminine path. Furthermore, the girl's affection towards her father will also influence her to emulate her mother's feminine qualities and eventually adopt more gender-typed behaviors.
Kohlberg’s cognitive-developmental theory The cognitive-developmental theory is also closely linked to Jean Piaget’s analysis for the age-related cognitive changes a child goes through. Lawrence Kohlberg suggested that cognition comes before action and behavior (“I am a boy so I do boy-like things”). This emphasizes the importance of a child's understanding about gender roles and their permanent placement in it. After a child can fully grasp this concept, gender-specific information will become more relevant. This idea of gender consistency, similar to Piaget's concrete-operational stage, is represented by three stages: gender identity: the child recognizes that they are either a boy or a girl and possesses the ability to label others. gender stability: the identity in which they recognizes themselves as does not change gender consistency: the acceptance that gender does not change regardless of changes in gender-typed appearance, activities, and traits.
When the child is able to fully grasp gender stable understanding about themselves, usually between the ages of five and seven, the motivation to master their orientation and to socialize themselves allows them to seek out same-sexed models to learn more about gender-stereotypic behaviors.Martin, C. L., Ruble, D. N., & Szkrykablo, J. (2002). Cognitive theories of early gender development. American psychological association. 4(23), 544–557.Bussey, K. (2011). Gender identity development. Handbook of Identity Theory and Research. 603-628.
Gender schema theory A schema is a cognitively organized network of associations that is readily available to help guide an individual's perception. Gender schema theory acts as a guide or standard for consistent behavior in a given scenario. Labels such as “girls are weak and boys are strong,” classifies what stereotypically acceptable actions for the gender groups are. Therefore, the theory proposes the idea that once the child has developed basic knowledge on gender behaviors they will begin to construct gender schemas. This is acquired first through the basic understanding of gender-specific roles. In other words, the child learns the contents of the society, things that are related to their own and the opposite sex, and incorporates it into their gender schemas. The child then learns to apply the appropriate attributes respectively to the right gender by selectively using this knowledge to conceptualize their own actions. Hence, categorizing how they should perform in various situations by molding their capabilities to match the schematic labels.Bem, S. L. (1981) Gender schema theory: a cognitive account of sex typing. Psychological Review.88(4), 354–364.
Social-learning theory (Albert Bandura) Social learning theorists, like Albert Bandura, suggest that adults not only provide models for children to imitate, but that they also are actively involved in influencing a child's gender-role identification. The Social learning theory proposes that gender-identities and gender-role preferences are acquired through two concepts.
Direct tuition (differential reinforcement): The first concept is represented through direct tuition, also known as differential reinforcement. Early in a child's development, parents are already encouraging gender-appropriate activities and discouraging cross-gender activities. Adults reward children when they display gender-appropriate behavior and punish children when they display cross-gender behavior. The idea of direct tuition expresses that gender-typed behavior begins with the child adopting views they learn from their parents. Therefore, parents reinforce the developmental of gender stereotypes by providing gender-appropriate toys and activities. Adults influence a child's gender identification when they encourage gender-typed behaviors like teaching “boys how to be boys and girls how to be girls”.Shaffer, D. R. (2009). Social and Personality Development (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Observational learning: The second concept is represented through observational learning in where children imitate and follow the behaviors of individuals who are of the same sex. Children become increasingly aware of gender stereotypes in preschool and acknowledge these “same-sex models” when they begin to exercise their preferences for “gender-typed” toys or activities. These same-sex models may include any individual from teachers and older siblings to media personalities.
Social models There are many opportunities for a child to learn and develop their own understanding of what “gender” is. Thus as children progresses from childhood into adolescence they will already have been exposed to many factors that will influence their ideas and attitudes for normative social behaviors regarding gender roles. Social models, such as parents, siblings, and the media become extremely important during different stages of the child's development.
Parents: Parents play a vital part in a child's early life, for they are the first group of people that a child meets and learns from. The information that surrounds a child at home becomes reinforcements for desired behaviors of a male or female. Studies have shown that as immediate as 24 hours after a child is born most parents have already engaged in gender stereotypic expectations of sons or daughters. Through examples such as painting a room pink or blue, encouragement to participate in shared sex-typed activities, offering gender differentiated toys, or treating the opposite sex child differently, these parent-child interactions have long lasting influence on how a child connects to certain gender-specific behaviors.Witt, S. D. (1997). Parental influence on children’s socialization to gender roles. Adolescence. 32(126). 253-259. Furthermore, various evidence suggest that certain household differences affecting how a child is raised can influence how similar (or different) a child is to the opposite sex, therefore how “feminine” or “masculine” the child can potentially become. For instance, as certain research demonstrates, in the absence of a father figure boys are generally more “feminine” than those living with a father. This demonstrates the significance of father-son modeling. The same research reveals that boyhood femininity is more strongly correlated with parental reinforcement such as a father or mother's desire for a girl and/or their approval for feminine behaviours.Roberts, C. W., Green, R. & Williams, K., Goodman, M. (1987). Boyhood gender identity development: a statistical contrast of two family groups. Developmental Psychlology. 23(4), 544-557.
Siblings: Apart from parents, children also seek reinforcement from their older siblings. Therefore, inconsistencies for gender behaviors can also be as a result of children emulating their siblings of opposite sex. Sibling's influence is often most effective when the sibling is of an age that is more advanced than the child himself, therefore increasing the motivation for the child to model after their brother or sister. The impact of older siblings are power predictors for the younger sibling's gender role attitudes, sex-typed personality qualities, and masculine leisure activities. Findings suggest that girls develop less traditional attitudes than boys, thus, relative to stereotypically traditional development, older male siblings are more conscientious towards masculine activities, which are evidently modeled after by younger siblings more than feminine activities.McHale, S. M., Updegraff, K. A., Helms-Erikson, H. (2001). Sibling influences on gender development in middle childhood and early adolescence: a longitudinal study. Developmental Psychology. 37(1). 115-125. Moreover, older brothers tend to have stronger influence over a younger sibling's sexual development. There is evidence that the relationship between older brother and younger sister can, in fact, influence the sister to become more feminine, abiding to more stereotypical gender-typed development than girls with older sisters.Kornreich, J. L., Hearn, K. D., Rodrigues, G. & O’Sullivan, L. F. (2003). Sibling influence, gender roles, and the sexual socialization of urban early adolescent girls. The Journal of Sex Research. 40(1). 101-110. Biological studies show that dizygotic twins with the opposite- sex co-twin gender show more sex-typed behaviors than same-sex twins.Mehta, C. M., Strough, J. (2010). Gender segregation and gender-typing in adolescence. Sex Role. Conversely, this can also develop in an opposite direction in which children may try to diverge themselves from their siblings as much as possible, making their differences more salient; however, this may be more evident in first-borns possibly due to the birth order.
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