ABSTRACT
During much of the 20th century, psychologists studied sex typing because their theories contained the assumption that acquisition of an "appropriate" sex role was crucial for normal, healthy development. Theories and research were directed to learning how young boys could become masculine and young girls could become feminine. The Women's Movement and the resulting rejection of traditional sex roles by many people led to a conceptual about-face in the early 1970s. Many of the scholars who became interested in the subject were committed to the values of feminism. Their research was designed to learn about the negative consequences of traditional sex typing and about means for socializing children toward "androgyny" or away from socially prescribed sex roles. Partly because of the radical shift in social values, the topics and questions addressed in the research of the past 10 or 15 years have been quite different from those in preceding periods.
