ABSTRACT
Psychological theories of gender-role development include the psychoanalytic, social learning, and cognitive-developmental perspectives. Freud’s psychoanalytic views emphasize intrapsychic forces and conflicts that result in children’s identification with their same-sex parents. Social learning theory, on the other hand, focuses on external, environmental influences. The cognitive-developmental perspective discusses the role of the child in his or her own socialization.
While classic theoreticians assumed that girls were only capable of inferior moral development relative to boys, recent researchers such as Gilligan have suggested otherwise. Gilligan claims that girls’ morality is merely different, not inferior, and studies suggest that this is based more on differential experiences than on innate personality differences.
Children’s internalized images of gender play an important role in such areas as popularity in elementary school, conceptions of personal power, self-esteem, and motivation and personal goals for adolescents. Images of gender vary across cultures and are reinforced by the child’s surrounding environment.
Gender schema theory suggests that children create knowledge structures that organize gender-related information in memory and are used to evaluate new information according to its gender. Children’s gender schemas may be more or less flexible, and this flexibility or rigidity will affect their attitudes toward members of both sexes. Attitudes toward gender tend to be differentiated among children across cultures, with biases that usually favor men but sometimes favor women.
Parenting plays a significant role in childhood gender socialization. In general, parents tend to foster boys’ autonomy and girls’ dependence. Single-parent homes have their own set of ramifications for children’s gender-role attitudes, however. Fathers tend to reinforce gender-typed behavior more than mothers do, so the absence of the father can result in more androgynous behavior. Children living with their fathers tend to have a more balanced experience in terms of male and female adult figures. Even in intact marriages, mothers and fathers parent differently.
Socializing forces that influence gender-role development after birth include language, play, media, school, and peers. Socialization into gender roles of girls and boys is also mediated by race and social class. However, far too few studies exist in this area. This topic would be an exciting one for future research.
