Children's awareness of male and female develops in stages, well before they begin to attribute roles to the sexes, writes Penny Tassoni
'What are little boys made of?' goes the refrain of a traditional nursery rhyme. These questions about gender are still with us in the 21st century, as the gap between the achievement of boys and girls widens. Gender is currently a hot topic, with conflicting viewpoints often falling into one of the two camps, nature or nurture. Are boys and girls biologically predisposed to behaving in certain ways, or does this happen as a result of the way in which they are being treated and the role models they are being presented with?
Whatever the answer, one thing is clear: gender is a focal point for much of our everyday lives. It is a major part of our self-concept, our thinking about ourselves. It is also one of the first things that we notice about other people when we meet. Gender also dominates other aspects of our lives. Data is collected about gender on all the forms that ask whether you are male or female, or what your title is.
Babies are born completely unaware of their gender, but young children soon show an awareness of it. How is this learned?
As an observer it is important not to confuse gender concept with sex-role concept. Gender concept is the process by which children learn about which gender they are. Alongside this concept, children also learn about what it means to be a boy or a girl - their sex roles.
In terms of gender concept, there appears to be three steps to this process. First, children learn about gender identity. They learn that there are two genders and begin to show that they know their own gender. This begins quite early on in a child's life. Babies at around nine or ten months old react differently when shown faces of men and women. By around two years, most children can point to a picture of another child of the same gender. Indicators such as hair length and clothing appear to be particularly important for children in working out gender identity in others.
The second step is for children to learn about gender stability. Children learn that you stay a boy or a girl, and that men were once boys and women were once girls. This further develops into children developing gender constancy. This is the understanding that if a boy dresses in girl's clothing, he still remains a boy.
The development of gender constancy is interesting. Even though most children understand about the stability of their own gender at around four years old, it takes many until they are five or six years old to completely understand that a change to physical appearance, such as having hair cut short, does not change a person's gender. It has been suggested that gender constancy is linked to children's cognitive development, as it appears at around the same time that children are beginning to 'conserve' number.
Sex-role concept
As well as learning about gender, children also find out about what it means to be a boy or a girl. Our sex-role concept dictates our actions and attitudes. It is during this process that children often surprise us with quite stereotypical behaviours.
It may come as a shock, but some research indicates that even children under two years old are showing preferences towards sex-stereotyped toys such as trucks and dolls. This is bizarre since in theory, at this point, children may not have established their own gender identity. Other examples of children developing sex-role concept show in the way that at around three or four years old, children can assign certain tasks as being exclusively 'female' or 'male' - some children begin to make comments such as, 'You can't do that because you're a boy'.
Many practitioners also find that children from the age of three years also begin to show same-sex prefences in their friendships.
Finding the right path
Not surprisingly, it is around sex-role concept and associated behaviour that there are major differences in theoretical perspectives. Part of the problem is that a lot of published research is contradictory. This does not make it easy for practitioners as we try to find a path through this controversial jungle. It begs the inevitable question about how far we should be intervening in sex-stereotyped play.
In some ways, perhaps the secret is to focus on the child rather than the gender. This means asking ourselves whether a particular child is picking up a 'can do' mentality, and whether the child is learning that differences make us all unique and respect for everyone is required.
