ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the predictions that theories of gender-role development make for offspring of single mothers. It reviews the empirical evidence on the relation between single parenting and sex-typed behavior of offspring. Psychoanalytic models of sex typing suggest that sex-appropriate behavior results from identification with the same-sex parent. Social learning models focus on the differential administration of rewards and punishments. Social learning models focus directly on the acquisition of sex-typed behaviors rather than on the process of "identification." In 1966, Lawrence Kohlberg proposed a cognitive-developmental theory of gender-role development. Information-processing or schema models de-emphasize identification and focus on how children come to be more or less sex typed through the development of gender-based schemas. Different types of measures are used with different age groups of children. Gerald Jones has suggested that, "despite wide-spread popular beliefs, there is little research to verify the notion that girls and boys need same-sex role models for optimum development".
