gender development 2

Question 1

development of gender-stereotyped preferences

Answer 1

• Gender-based preferences emerge by 3 years of age (Huston, 1983)
  
  • By 4-5 years old, children avoid other-sex toys
  • Boys’ masculine preferences increase with age (Archer, 1992: ‘avoidance of femininity’)
  • Girls’ feminine preferences increase until 5/6 years, then they show less interest in feminine activities, and increasing interest in masculine activities

Question 2

preferences

Answer 2

• Boys avoid feminine activities to a greater extent than girls avoid masculine activities
  
  • Levy et al (1995): both boys and girls viewed boys with feminine preferences more negatively than girls with masculine preferences
    ‘Gender boundary maintenance’ (Sroufe, Bennett, & Best, 1993): process by which gender group boundaries are maintained. Boys are more likely to initiate and maintain group boundaries than girls

Question 3

development of gender-stereotype knowledge

Answer 3

• Children learn stereotypes very early - by 3 years old they know stereotypes about objects and activities (Huston, 1983)
  
  • Stereotypes about activities and occupations increases between 3-5 years. Ceiling levels are typically reached by 7 years old
  • Stereotypes about personality traits emerges later (e.g., 5-year-olds think boys are more independent, aggressive, and assertive than girls, and girls are more dependent, emotional, and submissive than boys)

Question 4

family influences

Answer 4

1. Parents as key socialization agents in their children’scgender development
   · why are research findings so mixed?
   · does growing up without a resident father make anycdifference to children’s gender development?
   
   2. The role of siblings
      · is there more consistent evidence for sibling influence than parental influence?

Question 5

parental influences

Answer 5

· Why is there such mixed evidence for a relationship between parent variables and their children’s gender-typing?
- Parents aren’t the only influence!
- Conceptual vagueness in definition and focus of research, e.g., Trautner (1996) points out that researchers often don’t distinguish between factors that:
- (i) are responsible for developmental changes shared by boys and girls
- (ii) produce differences between boys and girls
- (iii) produce differences within boys and girls (i.e., there is considerable within-sex, as well as between-sex variation)
- (iv) gender is multi-dimensional – parental influence may have differential effects depend on aspect under consideration

Question 6

parental influences 2

Answer 6

· Do parents treat sons and daughters differently?
- Wills et al (1976): parents smiled more at 6-month-old ‘Beth’ and were more likely to give ‘her’ a doll to play with than ‘Adam’
- Will people treat this baby differently?
· Rubin, Provenano, & Luria (1974): new parents (particularly dads) described their babies stereotypically, despite no real differences in birth weight etc. Girls described as more delicate and finer featured. Boys described as heavier, stronger, larger featured
· Fagot (1978): girls encouraged to dance, playing with dolls etc, but discouraged from climbing, running etc. Boys encouraged to play with trucks, building blocks etc., but discouraged from playing with dolls, or engaging in ‘feminine’ activities

Question 7

evidence for parental influences is very mixed

Answer 7

· Maccoby & Jacklin (1974): meta-analysis found no evidence of sex differences for parental influence. Very little difference between how parents socialised their sons and daughters (based largely on mothers)
· Lytton & Romney (1991): no reliable differences according to sex of child apart from the activities parents encouraged sons and daughters to do (this meta-analysis included fathers). Age of child was a crucial variable in the extent of parental influence

Question 8

how do parents influence their childrens activities?

Answer 8

· Parents’ beliefs and stereotypes can affect their children’s gender-role socialisation by influencing:
- (i) the goals & expectations that they have for their children
- (ii) how they perceive their children’s interests
- (iii) how they interact with their children
· Focus on Eccles’ longitudinal research on gender-role socialisation in the family

Question 9

Eccles’s expectancy value theory

Answer 9

· Eccles (2005): theoretical model to account for how gender is linked to parents’ beliefs, and how these are linked to children’s involvement in, and competence beliefs about, different activities
- (i) Parents’ gender-role beliefs affect judgements make about children’s competence in stereotyped activity domains
- (ii) These judgements affect parents’ expectations about children’s future performance
- (iii) These expectations affect types of opportunities parents then give their children

Question 10

parental influence - gender achievement

Answer 10

· Michigan Study of Childhood and Beyond
· Longitudinal study of 600 children. There were differences in parents’ ratings of sons’ and daughters’ competence and interest in activity domains
- daughters considered more competent and interested in English than sports
- daughters considered more talented in instrumental music (even though few children actually played instruments!)
- sons more competent and interested in sports than English

Question 11

why do parents hold gender-differentiated beliefs about girls’ and boys’ competence?

Answer 11

· What affects parents’ perceptions of their children’s competence?
· (i) True differences in aptitude?
- No, because boys and girls have had different opportunities to develop skills AND parents’ beliefs about maths competence are influenced by their child’s gender independent of the child’s actual performance
· (ii) Gendered attributional patterns
- are important mediators of gender-stereotyped perceptions of children’s competence
- Yee & Eccles (1988): parents of boys rated natural talent as more important reason for maths success than effort. Parents of girls rated effort as more important reason for maths success than natural talent

Question 12

lone-mother families

Answer 12

· Fathers are often thought to have a unique influence on children’s gender-role development (e.g., Block, 1976), but father absence actually seems to make little difference.
· Stevenson & Black (1988):
- meta-analysis comparing father-present and father-absent families
- preschoolers in father-absent families were less stereotyped BUT older boys in father-absent families were more stereotyped
- effect size varied with SES, age, reason for father absence
But, father-absent families are a very heterogeneous group

Question 13

Stevens, Golombok, Beveridge, & ALSPAC study team (2002)

Answer 13

· Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALPAC): general population study of 14000 mothers and children since early pregnancy
· Stevens et al (2002):
- 3½ year-olds
- 6420 intact, two-parent families
- 283 lone-mother families (no resident male partner since 12 months of age), subdivided into those in which child had contact with father, and in which child had had NO contact with dad since 12 months old
· No differences in gender-role behaviour between lone-mother families with/without contact, and two-parent families

Question 14

the role of siblings

Answer 14

· Both social learning and cognitive theories are consistent with children being influenced by having same- or other-sex siblings (e.g., siblings can provide examples of gender-related behaviour from which to develop gender-schemas, and can act as reinforcers of gender-related behaviour)

Question 15

Golmbok, Hines, & Johnston (2000)

Answer 15

• 3 year olds with older sibling
• sex of older sibling eas associated with gender-role behaviour of the younger sibling
• boys with older brother, and girls with older sisters were more gender-typed than children with other-sex siblings
• having an older brother was associated more masculine behaviour and less feminine behaviour with both boys and girls
• boys with an older sister were more feminine but not less masculine
• girls with an older sister were less masculine but not more feminine

Question 16

McHale, Updegraff, Helms-Erikson, & Crouter (2001)

Answer 16

· Longitudinal study of sibling (N=198, 2 siblings, mean ages 10 years 9 months, and 8 years 3 months) and parental influence
· Assessed parents’ and children’s gender-role attitudes, personality characteristics, and gender-stereotyped interests/activities
· For second-born siblings, greater evidence for sibling influences than for parent influences. First-born siblings’ qualities in Year 1 of study predicted gender-role attitudes, personality characteristics and interests of second-born sibling in Year 3 of study, even when controlling for parent influences.
· For first-born siblings, there was more evidence of parental influence (and less evidence of sibling influence) compared to the second-born sibling), i.e., first-born siblings become increasingly less like their siblings (de-identification process of sibling influence)

Question 17

summary

Answer 17

· Children’s preferences remain gender-typed in middle childhood - when preferences become more flexible this is typically for girls only - overall, girls show wider range of preferences than boys
· Gender influences how parents perceive their children’s abilities, and these beliefs impact on their children’s self-concepts and the experiences that parents provide for their children
· Fathers are not a requirement for normative gender development
· Siblings appear to play an important role in the gender-role socialisation process