Gender roles in childhood

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 he or she forms relationships later on in life. In general, the roles of males and females are not equally valued; the active, practical, and hardy role of men is considered more important than the passive, caretaking responsibility associated with women.

Parental influences

Expectations for children's future adult lives, like financial success or future care giving, may lead parents to encourage certain behaviors in children. However, most parental behaviors remain uninfluenced by the gender of the child, including speaking to, playing, teaching, and caretaking.

Family dynamics can especially influence gender specialization. Parents of sons are more likely to express conservative gender role views than parents of daughters, with fathers emphasizing the paternal breadwinning role for males. The effects of parental expectations of gender roles can especially be seen in the role children play in household duties. 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.

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. Parents choose activities that they believe their children will enjoy and value. By choosing their children’s activities, parents are directly influencing their gender role views and preferences onto their children and shaping expectations.

Hines & Kaufman (1994) examined the toy preferences and behavior in girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), a condition characterized by exposure to high levels of androgens in utero. The results suggested that CAH girls exhibited more masculine-typed behavior observable through toy choice as well as drawings and rough-and-tumble play. While a compelling result, parental expectations, in addition to biology, could play a large role in shaping behavioral outcomes. An early diagnosis might lead parents to expect, and therefore, condone, more masculine-typed behaviors, implicitly socializing the CAH girls to express themselves in certain ways. In normally developing girls, masculine behaviors may be discouraged, and parents may steer their daughters toward more traditionally feminine toys, colors, and preferences. This alternative social explanation complicates the interpretation of neat causality between hormones and behavior.

Patterns of play

In early childhood, gender roles become apparent in patterns of play. Until 1983, these play differences were ignored in studies of the differences between boys and girls, but recent research has shed light on these sex differences.

One of the earliest signs of gender differences in play patterns is the appearance of gender-segregated play groups and toy preferences. 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 2013 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 in regards to 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 (Alexander, 2003). 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 (Alexander, 2003). 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 (Alexander, 2003). 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.

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, interestingly, 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.

Lobel & Menashri (1993) explores how the rigidity of gender schemas guides behavior. The population of interest consisted of preschool children selected from three different preschools in Tel-Aviv, Israel, and the study focused on the relationship between the children’s gender-typed toy choice, their frameworks regarding cross-gender behavior, and their concepts of gender constancy. During the procedure, two feminine and two masculine toys were presented to individual children: a visibly new doll, a tattered, old doll, a shiny new truck, and an old, faded truck. Based on a pretest, the dolls and trucks were clearly recognized as feminine and masculine, as well as attractive and unattractive based on their quality. All children preferred the new toy when presented with a pair of singularly gendered toys. Children were first given a toy preference test, then a gender constancy interview, and then a gender-role norms interview. The results indicate that children with a more flexible view on gender-role norms made fewer gender-typed choices than children with rigid norms. Similarly, for children with more flexible gender norms, attractiveness of the toy proved to be more strongly related to preference than the toy’s adherence to a traditional gender-role. This result begs the question: from where does this flexibility in gender behavior come? The authors favor the explanation that parental norms play a large role, but insist that further research must be done. Echoing Serbin et al. (2001), they also assert that a certain level of cognitive ability must be reached in order to demonstrate flexibility in gender roles, otherwise conceptions of fundamental gender constancy could become confused with external objects associated with a traditional gender role.

Besides play patterns being an indication of sexual orientation, the presence of homosexual or heterosexual relationships in the family may in turn influence play patterns in children. It has been suggested that children of same-sex couples are raised differently, resulting in gender roles different from those of heterosexual parents. This viewpoint is validated in a recent study by Goldberg, Kashy, and Smith, which showed that sons of lesbian mothers were less masculine in the way in which they played than those of gay fathers or heterosexual parents. While this study supports one viewpoint on the effects of same-sex parenting, further research to validate the long-term consequences of such parenting is necessary.

Friendships

Gender roles can also be seen in friendships and peer interactions at a young age. Studies have found that boys and girls interact with same-sex peers more frequently than with opposite-sex peers. One study found that during early childhood (3-5 year olds) boys affiliate more than girls with a familiar same-sex peer and that boys visited the peer more often than girls did and more boys than girls spent a significant amount of time with the peer. A different study found boys and girls were found to engage in highly similar frequencies of dyadic interaction. However, girls engaged in more extended dyadic interaction and boys in greater number of episodes. This study found this to be true at both 4 and 6 years, indicating that sex differences in patterns of dyadic interaction emerge before 5 years. In terms of group activity, boys were found to engage in more coordinated group activity after 5 years of age than before. This study provides evidence that groups interaction emerges at a specific time period in male peer culture.

Studies with preschool children yield large effects indicating that boys have more integrated social networks than girls in that their friends or playmates are more likely to be friends or playmates with one another. Likewise, a particular study looking at friendship patterns of youth in middle childhood and early adolescence at summer camp found a large effect for social network density favoring boys toward the end of summer camp, suggesting that over time, friends of boys but not girls are increasingly likely to become friends with one another.

In terms of behavioral patterns seen in friendships, no differences have been found in helping behavior in youngest middle childhood youth. Looking at the content of peer interaction, middle childhood youth girls have been found to spend more time in social conversation and self-disclosure than boys. Girls have also been found to respond in a more prosocial manner to hypothetical conflict situations in middle childhood and early adolescence. Studies of middle childhood typically reveal significant effects indicating that girls are more likely than boys to receive several types of provisions in their friendships, including higher levels of closeness, affection, nurturance, trust, validation, and acceptance. However, no differences have been found for friendship satisfaction.

Interestingly, a study looked at dyadic friendships, which is believed to be the preferred form of relationship for girls, and found that bonds between males are more durable than those between females. This study reports that beginning as early as 6 years old, external observers report fewer males' than females' same-sex friendships had ended.

School

By the time children are entering preschool or kindergarten, they have a general understanding of the two genders and have internalized some basic schemas regarding the roles and appearances of each. These schemas have been mostly furnished by parental interaction, media exposure, and underlying biological factors (e.g. inherent aggressiveness, sexual orientation), though some children may also learn from limited social interaction with individuals outside the family. However, these early conceptions of gender roles undergo radical change when the child enters school. Here, the child will encounter a wide variety of approaches to gender, assimilating new information into their existing structures and accommodating their own outlook to fit new individuals, institutional demands, and novel social situations. This process of socialization is differentiated between gender, and general trends in the social constructs of elementary age children reflect the organization of gender within the family and society at large. One way of evaluating gender roles in school children is to dissect the popularity hierarchies that they construct and inhabit. Many studies have done just this, and significant differences are evident between genders. Athletic prowess is by far the most significant factor in popularity among boys, and one study even reported that the most popular male at each school they observed was the best athlete. Those who are not athletically inclined can still attain moderate levels of popularity by merely adopting an interest in sports, while boys who are neither athletically inclined nor interested in sports are commonly harassed and victimized by their more popular peers. This might be seen as an extension of the rough and aggressive play that boys seek at a young age. Boys can also become popular by wearing "cool" clothes and possessing trendy gadgets, although this is a much more important factor among girls. Socioeconomic status, which contributes greatly to a child’s ability to obtain cool products, is considered one of the most important factors in a girl's popularity at school. Daughters of affluent parents are able to afford the expensive makeup and accessories that allow them to mimic societal standards of superficial beauty, making them more attractive to boys and more popular.

The role of academic achievement in determining popularity also differs considerably between gender; in the first few years of school, scholastic success correlates positively with the popularity of boys. However, as boys near adolescence, doing well in school is often viewed as a source of shame and an indication of femininity. Additionally, disregard for authority and an attitude of disobedience is common among popular boys. Among girls, academic achievement has little correlation with popularity at all. Girls are more likely to value effort over inherent ability, while the opposite is true for boys. Both genders place a value on social intelligence, with children more skilled at mature interaction with peers and adults generally being more popular.

The independent hierarchical popularity structures for boys and girls act as mechanisms that mediate the interaction of the two genders. At first, cross-gender interaction is discouraged as the boys and girls divide themselves and create mostly separate social spheres. Especially among boys, behavior and habits associated with the opposite gender are deemed undesirable and punishable traits. Although most young boys exhibit curiosity regarding the opposite sex while in a private setting, such curiosity displayed in public is socially unacceptable. Members of each gender strive to attain their actively constructed, somewhat shared, ideal of masculinity or femininity, at the same time harboring a secret interest in the mysteries of the opposite gender. As children mature and refine their ideas about what it means to be a man or a woman, it gradually becomes acceptable to approach individuals of the other sex. Cross gender relationships generally improve social status only to the extent that they are romantically oriented, as mere friendships that do not involve kissing or dating are often viewed with suspicion. Early on, interaction with the opposite gender is reserved for only the most popular boys and girls, and couples tend to match themselves roughly according to popularity through junior high and beyond.