Gender roles are culturally influenced stereotypes which create expectations for appropriate behavior for males and females. An understanding of these roles is evident in children as young as age four.Gender Identity and Gender Confusion in Children. (11 May 2013). HealthyChildren.org. Retrieved 11 November 2013 from http://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/gradeschool/pages/Gender-Identity-and-Gender-Confusion-In-Children.aspx Children between 3 and 6 months can form distinctions between male and female faces. By ten months, infants can associate certain objects with females and males, like a hammer with males or scarf with females. Gender roles are influenced by the media, family, the environment, and society. In addition to biological maturation, children develop within a set of gender-specific social and behavioral norms embedded in family structure, natural play patterns, close friendships, and the teeming social jungle of school life. The gender roles encountered in childhood play a large part in shaping an individual's self-concept and influence the way an individual forms relationships later on in life.
Parental influences and environmental influences When children are first born, they are treated differently according to sex by those around them. How a child is treated will accumulate and begin to influence how a child behaves, reacts, and understands themselves. Parents decorate children's rooms differently to express their idea of what the child's gender will be/ are, boys' rooms have cars, sports equipment, and girls have dolls, multi-colored clothing and lots of pink. The stereotyping of a child begins before they are born and goes on their whole life. Expectations for children's future adult lives, like financial success or future care giving, may lead parents to encourage certain behaviors in children. Girls generally do more housework than boys, and the type of housework assigned to children largely depends on gender. Thus, household dynamics further advance gender role expectations on children.
Also, when both children have encountered difficulty, girls are encouraged to solve problems based on focusing on internal emotion expression and adjustment while boys are encouraged to deal with external entity problems. Children's toy preferences are significantly related to parental sex-typing, such as girls playing with dolls and boys participating in sports. While both fathers and mothers encourage traditional gender roles in their children, fathers tend to encourage these roles more frequently than mothers. By choosing their children's activities, parents are directly influencing their gender role views and preferences onto their children and shaping expectations. For boys whose father discloses emotions more than the others, boys show a similar level of disclosing emotions with girls, and for the parent who is both emotional expressive, their son will view emotions disclosure as a normal practice rather than attributed it as a female way of acting.
In 2001, Claire Hughes found parents of young girls were more likely to have more positive overall affect and stronger discipline. Hughes also found parental warmth to be associated with the development of theory of mind for girls, but not for boys. Hughes suggested this may have to do with a greater tendency for girls to use understanding of mind to seek emotional support, empathize, and cooperate. Children can learn about emotions in a few different ways, by witnessing others' feelings and emotions, having their emotional displays responded to, and lastly through being taught about their feelings and emotions. Not only do girls understand emotions better, but, they are also better than boys at applying cultural standards of emotion expression in everyday life. One example of this is, girls may show a greater tendency than boys to use their increasing understanding of mind to elicit emotional support, or to develop their skills of empathy and cooperation.
According to attachment theory, the early experience and interaction an infant has with his/her caregiver(s) determined whether the infant is securely attached with the caregiver(s), different attachment styles have different influences on one psychological and interpersonal-relationship development. Searle & Meara 1999 found that among college men, people who are securely attached are less likely to suppress their emotions but feel more comfortable expressing it. Besides secure attachment, three other attachment styles are more likely to value success, power, control, and competition that are considered as traditionally masculine traits, in order to make up the lacking sense of security.
Parental disapproval for failing to comply with gender norms and parental approval for successful compliance with these norms can serve to solidify children's understanding of gender roles.
Patterns of play
In early childhood, gender roles become apparent in patterns of play.
Hardy et al. (2009) addresses the differences among preschool boys and girls in their development of fundamental movements. This time period is especially crucial because if a child's fundamental movement skills do not develop properly, then their future development will be drastically impacted. This study took 425 preschool children and asked them to perform specific fundamental movement skills such as locomotor and object control skills. After examining the children performing these movements, the researchers found that female preschoolers are generally better at locomotor movements, while male preschoolers are better at object control. These findings emphasize the need for a superior program in which boys and girls can work together and integrate their skills for a chance at greater development of future skills.
One of the earliest signs of gender differences in play patterns is the appearance of gender-segregated play groups and toy preferences. It's important to highlight the role that age plays in toy preference. In a study the children were given gender-type toys and their findings concluded that for boys at 17 months, 25% of these children used gender labels and by 21 months 68% used these gender labels, while girls tend to use more gender labels by 18 months. Boys tend to be more "rough and tumble" in their play, while girls shy away from this aggressive behavior, leading to the formation of separate play groups.Calvert, S. L. (2013, November 6). Gender Roles [PowerPoint presentation]. In addition, boys tend to gravitate more towards toys such as trucks while girls tend to gravitate towards dolls, but these preferences are not absolutes. A study by Alexander, Wilcox, and Woods showed that female infants showed more visual interest in a doll over a toy truck while male infants showed more visual interest in a toy truck over a doll, but these differences were more pronounced in the females. This study suggests that preferences for feminine or masculine toys precede any sex differences in the perceptual features of such toys, leading to the assumption that gender-based toy preference is innate.
One of the most compelling theories regarding biologically determined gender differences is the idea that male-preference and female-preference for toys are mediated by inequities in visual processing. The central claim is that males and females are preprogrammed to specialize in certain forms of perception: specifically, perception of motion and perception of form and color, respectively. Alexander (2003) makes a particularly strong case. The author suggests that inherent sex differences based on perceptual categories encourage children to seek out playmates of a similar play style, and ultimately predisposes them for later social and gender roles. Human vision operates based on two anatomically grounded systems: the magnocellular pathway (M-cell) and the parvocellular pathway (P-cell). Both pathways are present in males and females, and M-cells are designed to recognize motion, while P-cells specialize in form and color perception. Some research has suggested that sex-linked differences in M-cell versus P-cell dominance could be the underlying factor leading to differential toy preference in children, potentially validating the stereotype that boys prefer toy cars and balls (objects associated with motion) while girls prefer dolls and stuffed animals (objects characterized by distinct facial characteristics, form, and color).
Beyond hormonal explanations, Alexander (2003) also employs an evolutionary biology perspective to link contemporary toy preference to early selective pressures and the development of visual specialization. Specifically, male M-cell pathway dominance is connected back to motion mediated activities like hunting and the throwing of projectiles. Female P-cell dominance is tied to foraging for plants, a task requiring discrimination between colors and memory of form. Color is particularly important in foraging, as discrimination between colors aids in identifying a ripe piece of fruit from the greenery around it. As it were, the "green-red opponent system" is thought to be X-chromosome linked and phylogenetically more recent, in contrast with the more rudimentary "yellow-blue" system present to the same degree in both sexes. According to the theory, this adaptation has persisted throughout human evolution, and may contribute to contemporary sexual-dimorphism in skill and preference. From this position, Alexander (2003) suggests the designation of pink as a girl color and blue as a boy color might not be completely arbitrary after all.
In a separate study by Gredlin and Bjorklund (2005), it was found that there are sex differences in object manipulation. An experiment was performed by putting a desirable toy in an out-of-reach place, but also giving the child 5 different tools he/she could use to help retrieve this object. The children were put in these conditions and any decision they made was spontaneous and on their own; they were only given a hint after they had failed the task 5 times. The study's results showed that 77% of the boys used one of the tools to reach the toy, while only 31% of the girls used one of the tools. This shows that boys are more likely to participate in object manipulation, and this may be because they spend more time in object-oriented play. The study also found that girls spend more time in social play. Evolution may play a role in this phenomenon; the differences in play styles between boys and girls manifest into adult behavior.
Another study by Alexander and Saenz found that two-year-old girls preferred toys that were typically associated with females over those associated with males, but again, two-year-old boys showed only a small preference for masculine toys over feminine toys. These two studies support the notion that toy preferences, while gender-based, are not a perfect indication of gender identity. Further, a study by Jadva, Hines, and Golombok showed that while male and female infants show more visual attention towards toys specific to their gender, there is no significant sex difference in color or shape preference at a young age, which suggests that, for example, a preference for the color pink in girls stems more from societal norms than from an innate capacity.
Play differences are not concrete, as mentioned, as some play with "other-gendered" toys is quite common. Ruble and Martin showed that there is often cross-gendered play in boys and girls, and this is typical of development. However, it is hypothesized that atypical gendered play patterns, such as a boy who plays almost exclusively with dolls and not typical masculine toys and who prefers to play with girls over boys, are an indication of later homosexuality.