Biological Factors in Gender Difference

 Biological factors that are though to shape gender differences include hormones and lateralization of brain
function. Hormones may organize a biological predisposition to be masculine or feminine during the
prenatal period, and the increase in hormones during puberty may activate that predisposition. In addition,
social experiences may alter the levels of hormones, such as testosterone. Gender differences in the brain’s
organization may be reflected in the greater lateralization of brain functioning in males, which may help
explain male success at spatial and math tasks. It may also explain female tendencies to be more flexible
than males and to withstand injury to the brain more effectively.
 Androgenized female fetuses may become girls whose behavior and interests are more traditionally male.
Exceptionally high prenatal or prenatal androgen levels in females may be correlated with greater visuo-
spatial skills later on, but the evidence is mixed. Environmental factors also influence both sexes’
development of traditional and nontraditional gender-based abilities and interests.

Cognitive Factors in Gender Differences

 Cognitive factors in children’s understanding of gender and gender stereotypes may contribute to their
acquisition of gender roles. Two cognitive approaches to gender typing have looked at when children
acquire different types of gender information and how such information modifies their gender-role
activities and behaviors. Kohlbeg’s three-stage cognitive developmental theory of gender typing
suggests that children begin by categorizing themselves as male or female, then feel rewarded by behaving
in gender-consistent ways. To do this, they must develop gender identity, gender stability, and gender
constancy.
 Gender-schema theory suggests that children develop naïve mental schemas that help them organize their
experiences in such a way that they will know what to attend to and how to interpret new information.
According to this theory, we should expect individual differences in how gender-schematic children will
be.
 According to cognitive developmental theory, we should not see gender-typed behavior until a child has
achieved gender constancy (around age 6).However, children express gender-typed toy and activity
preferences much earlier, whereas they do not choose same sex playmates until later. These findings
suggest that the link between the acquisition of gender concepts and behavior varies depending on gender
understanding and kind of behavior.

Influence of the Family on Gender Typing

 Families play an active role in gender-role socialization in the way they organize children’s environment.
They dress boys and girls differently, give them different toys to play with, and furnish their bedrooms
differently. In addition, parents-especially fathers-treat girls and boys differently. Parents tend to see boys
as stronger, even at birth, and to treat them more roughly and play with them more actively than with girls.
As children grow older, parents protect girls more and allow them less autonomy than boys. Parents also
expect boys to achieve more in the areas of mathematics and careers than girls.
 As predicted by cognitive social learning theory, parents influence children’s gender typing through role
modeling. Parental power has a great impact on gender typing in boys, but not in girls. Femininity in girls,
however, is related to the father’s masculinity, his approval of the mother as a model, and his reinforcement
of his daughter’s participation in feminine activities.
 Because the father plays such a critical role in the development of children’s gender roles, his absence has
been related to disruption in gender typing in preado

SUMMARY

 In addition to the influence on gender behaviors of biological factors, there are four principal psychological
explanations of gender-linked behavior patterns: Freudian theory’s process of identification, cognitive
social learning theory, gender-schema theory, and Kohlberg’s cognitive developmental theory.
 The process by which children acquire the values, motives, and behaviors viewed as appropriate for males
and females within a culture is called gender typing. Children develop gender- based beliefs. Largely on
the basis of gender stereo-types; the latter are reflected in gender roles, children adopt a gender identity
early in life and develop gender-role preferences as well. Adolescent boys and to problems in relationships
with peers of the opposite sex for adolescent females. Studies show that the effects of a father’s absence on
his daughter’s interaction with men are long lasting, extending to marital choice.
  There is no evidence of differences in the gender roles of boys and girls raised in gay or lesbian families.
Most children of such families grow up to have heterosexual sexual orientations.

Extra familial Influences on Gender Roles

 Many extra familial influences affect gender-role typing. Male and female roles are portrayed in gender-
stereotypic ways in many children’s’ books and on television. Males are more likely than females to be
portrayed as aggressive, competent, rational, and powerful in the workforce. Females are often portrayed
as involved primarily in housework or caring for children.
 Females are less likely to be leading characters on TV, and male characters are overrepresented in
children’s books-although some change toward greater equality has occurred in recent years. Children how
are heavy TV views hold more gender-stereotyped views; however, this may be due to their interpretations
of what they see based on previously held stereotyped. A few attempts to use television to change gender
stereotypes have been successful, but the effects typically had been modest and short-lived.
 Peers also serve as an important source of gender-role standards. Children how have masculine or
androgynous characteristics are likely to have higher self-esteem than those how have traditional feminine
characteristics.
 Children are likely to react when other children violate gender-typical behaviors, and boy’s cross-gender
behaviors are more likely to meet with negative reactions form peers. Reaction form peers typical result in
changes in behavior, particularly in the feedback is form the child of the same sex. This pattern of
responsiveness may lead to gender segregation, which, in turn, provides opportunities to learn gender-
typical roles. In self-socialization, children often spontaneously adopt gender-appropriate behavior.
 Teacher also treats girls and boys differently. School emphasize quite and conformity to rules. Girls tend to
like school better and perform better than boy’s in the early grades. Even in pre-school, teachers, who
often react to children in gender-stereotypic ways, tend to criticize boy’s more than t5he girls. If young
boys perceive as gender inappropriate they may be less motivated to participate in school activities. This
may in part explain the higher rate of learning problems found in boys in the early grades.
 The kinds of conforming and dependent behaviors encouraged in girls may be detrimental to their later
academic success. The lack of public awareness of research fin dings, such as that in most areas of math
girls do as well as boys, may prevent parents and others form encouraging girls to excel in these areas.

Understanding Emotions

“I hate you!” Maya, age 5, shouts to her mother. “You’re a mean mommy!” Angry because her mother sent her to
her room for pinching her baby brother, Maya cannot I imagine ever loving her mother again. “Aren’t you
ashamed of your self fore making the baby cry?” her father asks Maya nods, but only because she know what
response he wants. In truth, she feels a jumble of emotions-not the lest of which is feeling for herself.
Understanding their own emotion helps children to guide their behavior in social situations and to talk
about feelings (Laible & Thompson, 1998). It enables them to control the way they show their feelings and to be
sensitive to how others feel (Garner & Power 1996). Much of this development occurs during the pre-school years.
Because early emotional experience occurs within the context of the family, it should not be surprising that
family relationships affect t5he development emotion understanding. A study of 41 preschoolers found a
relationship between security of attachment to the mother and child understands of negative emotion in others,
such as fear, anger, and sadness-both as observed among their peers and as inferred from stories enacted by
puppets (Laible & Thompson, 1998).
Preschoolers can talk about their feelings and often can discern the feeling of others and they understand
that emotion is connected with experiences and desires (Saarni, Mumme, & Campos, 1998). However, they still
lack a full understanding of such self-directed as shame and pride, and they have trouble reconciling conflicting
emotions, such as being happy getting a new bicycle but disappointed because it’s the wrong color (Kestenbaum &
Gelman, 1995).

Emotions Directed Toward the Self

As we have mentioned, emotions directed towards the self, such as guilt, shame, and pride, develop by the end of
the third year, after children gain self-awareness and accept the standards of behavior their parents have set.
Violating accepted standards can bring shame or guilt, or both; living up to, or surpassing, standards can bring
pride. But even children a few years older often lack the cognitive sophistication to recognize these emotions and
what brings them on-necessary step toward emotion control.
In one study (Harter, 1993), 4 to 8 years old were told to stories. In the first story, a child takes a few coins
from a jar after being told not to do so; in the second story, a child performs a difficult gymnastic feat-a flip on the
bars. Each story was presented in two versions: one in which a parent sees the child doing the act, and another in
which no one sees the children were asked how they and the parents would feel in each circumstance.
The answer revealed a gradual progression in understanding of feelings about the self (Harter, 1996). At
ages 4 to 5, children did not say that either they or their parents would feel pride or shame. At 5 to 6, children said
their parents would be ashamed or proud of them but did not acknowledge feeling these emotions themselves. At 6
to 7, children said they would feel pride or ashamed, but only if they were observed. Not until ages 7 to 8 did
children say that even if no one saw them, they would feel ashamed or proud of themselves. By this age, the
standards that produce pride and shame appear to be fully internalized and to affect children’s opinion of
themselves (Harter, 1993, 1996). It is also in middle childhood that children seem to develop a clearer idea of the
difference between guilt and shame (Harris, Olthof, Meerum Terwogt, & Hardman, 1987; Olthof, Schouten,
Kuiper, Stegge, & Jennekens-Schinkel, 2000).

Simultaneous Emotions

Part of the confusion in young children’s understanding of their feelings is inability to recognize that they can
experience different emotional reactions at the same time, as Isabel Allende did toward her grandfather, both
resenting and admiring him. Children gradually acquire an understanding of simultaneous emotions between ages
4 and 12 (Harter, 1996):
• Level 0: At first children do not understand that any two feelings can coexist. A child may say, “You can’t
have two feeling at they same time because you only have one mind!” The child cannot even acknowledge
feeling two similar emotions at once (such as happy and glad).
• Level 1: Children are developing separate categories for positive and negative emotions-and can
differentiate emotions within each category, such as “happy” and “glad”, or “mad” and “sad”. They can be
aware of two emotions at the same time, but only if both are either positive or negative and are directed
toward the same target (“If my brother hit me, I would be mad and sad”).
• Level 2: Children can recognize having two similar feeling towards different targets (“I was excited about
going to Mexico and glad to see my grandparents”). However, they cannot acknowledge holding
contradictory feeling (“I couldn’t feel happy and scared at the same time; I would have to be two people at
once!”).
• Level 3: Children can understand having contrary feelings at the same time, but only if they are directed
toward different targets. Ashley can express a negative feeling toward her baby brother (“I was happy my
father didn’t spank me”) but she cannot recognize that she has positive and negative feelings (anger and
love) toward both.
• Level 4: Older children can describe conflicting feelings towards the same target (“I’m excited about going
to my new school, but I’m a little scared too”).

In this study, not until children were 10 or 11 did they seem to understand conflicting emotions
(Level 4). In later research, kindergartners, especially girls, showed this understanding (J. R. Brown &
Dunn, 1996). In the earlier, the children were asked to tell their own stories involving mixed feelings;
thus, narrative skills were involved. In the later study only 1 and 3 could identify conflicting emotions,
and most could explain the emotions when told what they were.
Individual differences in understanding conflicting emotions are evident by age 3. Three-year-olds
who could identify whether a face looked happy or sad and could tell how a puppet felt when enacting a
situation were better able at the end of kindergarten to explain a story character’s conflicting emotions.
These children tended to come form families that often discussed why people behave as they do (J. D.
Brown & Dunn, 1996).

Self-Esteem
Self-Esteem is the self-evaluative part of the self-concept, the judgment children make about their overall
worth. From a neo-Piagetian perspective, self-esteem I based on children’s growing ability to describe and
define themselves.
Children do not generally articulate a concept of self-worth until about age 8, but younger children
show by their behavior that they have one. Recent attempts to measure
 young children’s self-esteem often incorporate teacher and parent reports (Davis-Kean & Sandier, 2001) or
puppets and doll play (Mealselle, Ablow,Cowan, & Cowan, 1998) in addition to self-reports. In a study in
Belgium (Verschueren, Buyck, & Marcoen, 2001), researchers used two measures: (1) the Harter (1985b)
Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPPC), which covers overall (global) self-worth, as well as specific
perceptions about physical appearance, scholastic and athletic competence, social acceptance, and
behavioral conduct; and (2) the Puppet Interview (Cassidy, 1988; Verschueren, Marcoen, & schoefs, 1996),
in which puppets are used to reveal a child’s perception of what anther person thinks of him or her.
Children’s self-perception at age 5 tended to predict their self-perceptions and teacher-reported
socioemotional functioning at age 8.
Still, young children’s self-esteem is not necessarily based on a realistic appraisal. Although they
can make judgments about their competence at various activities, they are not yet able to rank them in
importance; and they tend to accept the judgments of adults, who often give positive, uncritical feedback,
and thus may overrate their abilities (Harter, 1990,1996, 1998).
Self-esteem in early childhood tends to be all-or-none- “I am good” or “I am bad”. Not until middle
childhood do personal evaluations of competence (based on internalization of parental and societal
standards) normally critical in shaping and maintaining a sense of self-worth (Harter, 1990, 1996, 1998).
When self-esteem is high, a child is motivated to achieve. However, if self-esteem is contingent on
success, children may view failure or criticism as an indictment of their wroth of my feel helpless to do
better. About one-third to one-half of preschoolers, kindergartners, and first-graders show elements of this
“helpless” pattern: self-denigration or self-blame, negative emotion, lack of persistence, and lowered
expectations for themselves (Burhans & Dweck, 1995; Ruble & Dweck, 1995). Instead of trying a different
way to complete a puzzle, as a child with unconditional self-esteem might do, “helpless” children fell
ashamed and give up, or go back to an easier puzzle they have already done. They do not expect to
succeed, and so they do not try. Whereas older children who fail many conclude that they are dumb,
preschoolers interpret poor performance as assign of being “bad”. This sense of being a bad person may
persist into adulthood.
Individual differences in self-esteem may hinge on whatever children think their attributes are fixed
or can be change (Harter, 1998). Children who believe their attributes are permanent tend to become
demoralized when they fail, believing there is nothing can do to improve. Children with high self-esteem
tend to attribute failure or disappointment to factors themselves or to the need to try harder (Erdley, Cain,
Loomis, Dumas-hines, & Dweck, 1997; Pomerants & Saxon, 2001).

Table 11-1 four Perspectives on Gender development

Theories Major Theorists Key Processes Basic Beliefs

Biological Approach Generic, Many or most behavioral differences
neurological, and between the sexes can be traced
hormonal activity to biological differences.

Psychoanalytic Approach Resolution of Gender identify occurs when child

Psychosexual Sigmund Freud unconscious identifies with same-sex parent.
Theory emotional conflict

Cognitive Approach
Cognitive-developmental
Theory
Lawrence Kohlberg Self-categorization Once a child learns she is a girl or
he is a boy, child sorts information
about behavior by gender and acts
accordingly.

Gender-schema Sandra Bem, Self-categorization Child organizes information about

Theory Carol Lynn Martin, based on processing what is considered appropriate for
& Charles F. of cultural information a boy or girl on the basis of
Halverson what a particular culture dictates.
and behaves accordingly. Child sorts
by gender because the culture
dictate that gender is an important
schema.

Socialization Approach
Social connitive
Theory rei
Albert Bandura Modeling, Gender-typing is a result of
reinforcement, and interpretation, and
Teaching internalization of socially transmitted
standards.

Table 11-2 Parten’s Categories of Social and Nonsocial Play

Categories Description
Unoccupied behavior
Onlooker behavior
The child does not seem to be playing, but watching anything of momentary interest.
The child spend most of the time watching other children play. The onlooker talks to them,
asking question or making suggestions, but dose not inter into the play. The onlooker is
definitely observing particularly groups of children rather than anything that happens to be
exciting.

Solitary independent play
Parallel Play
Associative play
Cooperative or organized
The child plays alone with toys that are different form those used by nearby children and makes no
effort to get close to them.
The child play independently, but among the other children, playing with toys like those used by the
other children, but not necessarily playing with them in the same way. Playing beside rather than
with the others, the parallel player does not try to influence the other children’s play.
The child plays with other children. They talk about their play, borrow and lend toys, follow one
another, and try to control who may play in the group. All the children play similar if not
identically; there is no division of labor and no organization around any goal. Each child act s as she
or he wishes and interested more in a being with the other children than in the activity itself.
The child play in group organized for same goal- to make something, play a formal game, or
dramatize a situation. One or two children control who belongs to the group and direct activities. By a
division of labor, children take on different roles and supplement each other’s efforts.

How Gender Influences Play

A tendency toward sex segregation in play seems to be universal across culture. It is common among
preschoolers as young as 3 and becomes even more common in middle childhood (Moccoby, 1988, 1990,
1994; Ramsey, & Lasquade, 1996; Snyder, West, Stockemer, Gibbons, & Almquist-Parks, 1996).
Boys and girls play differently (Serbin, Moller, Gulko, Powlishta, & Colburne, 1994). Most boys
like rough-and tumble play in fairy large groups; girls are inclined to quieter play with one playmate
(Benenson, 19930. The difference is not just based on linking different kinds of activities. Even when boys
and girls play with the same toys, they play more socially with other of the same sex (Neppl & Murray,
1997). Boys play more boisterously; girls play more cooperatively, taking turns to avoid clashes (Maccoby,
1980). Children developing gender concept seem to influences dramatic play. Whereas boy’s stories often
involve danger and discord (such as mock battles), girls plots generally focus on maintaining or restoring
orderly social relationships (playing house) (Fagot & Leve, 1998, Nourot, 1998).
From an evolutionary viewpoint, gender differences in children’s play provide practice for adult
behaviors important for reproduction and survival . Boy’s rough-and-tumble play mirrors adult mates. Girls
play parenting prepared them to care for the young (Geary, 1999).

How Culture Influences Play

The frequency of specific forms f play differs across cultures and is influenced by the play environments
adults set up for children, which I turn reflect cultural values (Bodrova & Leong. 1998).
One observation study compared 48 middle-class Korean American and 48 middle-cxalss Anglo
American children in separate preschools (Farver, Kim, & Lee, 1995). The Anglo American preschools in
keeping with typical American values, encouraged independent thinking, problem solving, and active
involvement in learning by letting children select from a wide range of activities. The Korean America
preschool, in keeping with traditional Korean values, emphasized developing academic skills and
completing tasks. The Anglo American preschools encouraged social interchange among children and
collaborative activities with teacher. In the Korean American preschool, children well allowed to talk and
play only during outdoor recess.
Not surprisingly, the Anglo American children engaged in more social play, whereas the Korean
American engaged in more cooperatively, often offering toys to other children-very likely a reflection of
their cultures emphasis on group harmony. Anglo American children were more aggressive and often
responded negatively to other children suggestion, reflections the competitiveness of American culture.
An ethnographic study compared pretend play among 2 ½ to 4 year-old I n five Irish Amwericab
families in the United State and nine Chinese families in Taiwan. Play was marily social in both culture,
but Irish American children were more likely to pretend with other children and Chinese children with
caregivers, who often used the play as a vehicles to teach proper conduct-a major emphasis in Chinese
culture. Children in both cultures used objects (such as toy soldiers) in play , though this was more typical
of Irish American children, whose play tended to center on fantasy or movie themes (Haight, Wang, Fung,
Williams, & mints, 1999).