Psychology - Gender identity issues.
Psychology coursework (a)
Article:
Katie wears Y-fronts
'She said she felt like a boy inside and if she ever grew breasts she'd pop them with pins.' Reva Klein on what to do if your child develops a gender identity crisis
Reva Klein
Guardian
Wednesday June 7, 2000
We all want our daughters to be strong and brave and our sons sensitive and caring. But when - if at all - does "girlish" behaviour in a boy or "boyishness" in a girl become a problem? And whose problem is it anyway?
Tom is eight, and has been playing with dolls since he was old enough to hold one. A quiet child, he shuns the football brigade at playtime in favour of playing and talking to girls, and the one or two other boys who don't like rough and tumble. At home, he still loves playing imaginative games with dolls and animal toys. Sometimes he and his younger sister dress up in sparkly swirly costumes, festoon themselves with their mother's necklaces and paint their faces with make-up.
Tom will never win a popularity contest among his peers. Because he's friends with all the girls, the boys will have nothing to do with him. At home, his parents love and accept him for the rather eccentric child he is, providing him with a range of experiences, like camping, swimming and music lessons, like all good parents do.
Do they worry about his gender identity? "Not at all," says his father Philip. "Tom knows he's a boy and that he's a bit different from other boys, but he's secure and happy being who he is."
Tom is a very lucky child. Many parents would find his behaviour difficult to deal with, says Dr Domenico Di Ceglie, consultant child psychiatrist and director of the Gender Identity Development Clinic at the Portman Clinic in London. Gender is, he says, a psycho-social construct. "You can't dissociate what the child is feeling from what parents feel and from what society's views of conventional behaviour are."
While Tom's behaviour is different to that of most boys of his age, it would only become a problem if it were part of a larger picture. "When a child's behaviour occurs purely in the context of role play and the child retains its identity in the role, it's perfectly normal. It's when children say they want to be the other sex and cross-dress and avoid play stereotypically associated with their own sex, prefer friends of the opposite sex and dislike their bodies that they and their families need to be listened to professionally."
When Jacky Miller heard what her daughter was feeling, she knew she had to take action. Almost from birth, her daughter Katie preferred a "boyish" lifestyle. Jacky has a photograph of her Katie, now nine, taken just before her second birthday. In it, she's sitting in the middle of her smiling family, scowling. Why? Because of the dress she's wearing. She hated wearing dresses.
Shortly after the photo was taken, Katie insisted on having all her curls cut into a short crop. She only played with boys and when they'd come over, she'd always manage to ...
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When Jacky Miller heard what her daughter was feeling, she knew she had to take action. Almost from birth, her daughter Katie preferred a "boyish" lifestyle. Jacky has a photograph of her Katie, now nine, taken just before her second birthday. In it, she's sitting in the middle of her smiling family, scowling. Why? Because of the dress she's wearing. She hated wearing dresses.
Shortly after the photo was taken, Katie insisted on having all her curls cut into a short crop. She only played with boys and when they'd come over, she'd always manage to get them to part with their Y-fronts. She even wrote to Father Christmas begging for some.
By the time she started school at four, Katie was wearing boys' school trousers, had adopted a streetwise strut and would only play Barbies with her older sisters if she could be Ken. But she far preferred guns, trains and cars.
Looking back, Jacky says that she didn't yet think that Katie's behaviour was anything to worry about because she was such a popular, happy child. "Even when her friends would sometimes call her 'him', it didn't really worry me."
The crunch only came when, aged seven, Katie told her mum that she wanted to change her name to Dennis, that she felt like a boy inside and that if she ever grew breasts she'd cut them off with a knife or "pop them with pins". It was then that Jacky knew they needed help. "I realised this was more than just being a tomboy," she says. "I felt I couldn't risk not intervening."
A child psychiatrist confirmed that Katie needed specialist help and referred her to the Gender Identity Development Unit. There, Katie and family saw a clinical social worker, a member of the multi-disciplinary team who agreed that she appeared to have a gender identity problem. During five visits, Katie, her sisters and parents talked about how they felt.
Often Katie would sit on the floor playing with blocks or drawing as the rest of the family vented their views. "My oldest daughter would say, 'Oh mum, you're making a big deal out of it. She's quirky and odd but she's fine.' And my middle daughter said things like, 'She'll be whatever she'll be. All you need is love.' After a couple of times, they didn't come any more."
Katie herself was open about how she felt and said that she didn't think she had a problem.
During that time, the Portman Clinic suggested that Jacky contact Mermaids, a family support group for children and adolescents with gender identity problems. She and Katie went a few times but Jacky found that her daughter's boyish behaviour became exaggerated during and after the visits. "I didn't think that was what Katie needed. It clarified to me that she wasn't like the other children there who had genuine gender identity problems. For her, it wasn't all-consuming."
That was a year ago. Today, Katie appears to have forgotten all about Dennis, has let her hair grow out and has a new friend who happens to be a girly sort of girl. She has even worn dresses.
So what was it all about? Jacky doesn't know and neither does she understand why Katie was the way she was. "I've often asked myself if I encouraged this on some level. I don't think so. At first I was delighted to have a girl who wanted to play with cars instead of dolls. I was a feminist mum. But it clearly was something else and when people would say to me, 'Oh yeah, I was a tomboy when I was young', I'd think, 'This is different.' The fact is that for the first nine years of her life, she wanted to be a boy."
First Point:
We all want our daughters to be strong and brave and our sons sensitive and caring. But when - if at all - does "girlish" behaviour in a boy or "boyishness" in a girl become a problem?
) There will always be stereotypes for both genders, and often people who do not follow the more archetypical of what is expected for their gender will be ridiculed e.g. boys are noisier and more rowdy where as girls are expected to be more delicate and reserved. In this new 'big bad world' however overly 'girly' girls are often walked over and overly 'blokey' boys are presumed miscreants, therefore the traits of our opposite gender should be undertaken to a certain degree in order flourish in the twenty first century. But in some cases children do not feel that they fit in with their sex and they rebel, this can vary from a shy, quiet boy to a boy who dresses up in sparkly dresses and puts on make up.
2) There are undeniable biological differences between males and females but psychological studies have been going on since the nineteenth century as why males take the dominant role in society and why they always have, according to Edley and Wetherell (1995) the debates in the nineteenth century were about whether or not men are more intelligent (due to there apparent larger and powerful brain). Williams and Best state that gender stereotyping is one of three ways in which men and woman are viewed, the other two are self perception (obviously more dominant in the case of the children in the article) and gender role ideology
3) I think that the development of gender stereotypes is very important especially as far as the evolution of the human race is concerned; there will always be fluctuations in our genetic makeup as we continue to reproduce. As we have evolved females have become more respected and equally treated probably due to them inheriting the more driving and dominant genes which stereotypically make up the males genes and visa versa, males have inherited some it isn't uncommon to have males who stay home to look after their children while the mother goes out to work.
Second point:
'She said she felt like a boy inside and if she ever grew breasts she'd pop them with pins.'
) What "Katie" is experiencing is similar to the identity crisis that a lot of girls experience in adolescence, although it is generally caused by low self esteem. Her parents intervene at this point in her life as they feel "it was more than just being a tomboy", a great deal of childrearing is down to how parents react to the child's biological sex i.e. sex typing.
2) Sears et al. (1957) discovered that the greatest difference between boys and girls was aggression , this is due to boys being allowed to express aggression when playing with other children where as girls are discouraged. This is very interesting as "Katie" expresses very extreme anger adding to the idea that her boyish behaviour is genetic. Unfortunately Sears research is not conclusive, argued by Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) and Lytton and Romney (1995) who discovered remarkable socialisation between the two sexes and no real difference in aggressiveness.
3) I think that the parents were right to intervene and their course of action was the right one, it obviously worked and very rapidly so I'm not sure I can develop upon their solution.
Third point:
That was a year ago. Today, Katie appears to have forgotten all about Dennis, has let her hair grow out and has a new friend who happens to be a girly sort of girl. She has even worn dresses.
) As with a lot of fads children grow out of them, there is a lot to be said for the affect of pears on a child in a positive way as opposed to the infamous negative affect. A peer group can be a source of affection, sympathy and understanding and peer pressure can be a good thing. Simmons and Rosenberg (1975) found that low self esteem is not very popular in the later stage of childhood in fact over half of the prepubescent girls were completely happy with their physical appearance, compared with a quarter of the adolescents
2) Lingren says that as children move into early adolescence and grow they develop involvement with their peers and the attraction of peer identification increases. As pre-adolescents begin rapid physical, emotional and social changes they feel more of a need to know who they are. Therefore as "Katie" developed more self esteem
3) I have a lot of faith in natural healing methods and I believe that "Katie's" friend helped an awful lot with her adjustments I believe that parents should go to every length to encourage inter-gender playing, but not force. Children will learn as they develop more social skills and I think in the social case that nurture plays a bigger part than nature although it is very hard to prove this as many psychologists have tried such as Deregowski, who has done extensive research into the fact that interpretation of pictures is not an instinct thus showing signs that nurture plays a very big part in western development.