Gender Consistency: between four-and-a-half and seven years of age, the child works out that gender is constant – that is, that people stay the same gender despite superficial changes in their appearance.
Kohlberg argued that once a child understands that their gender is constant, they become highly motivated to behave in a way that is expected of them as a boy or a girl. Therefore, this theory predicts that children should pay attention to same-sex role models and show systematic gender role behaviours only after they have a full understanding of their gender and a strong sense that it is for life. The implication of this theory is that gender role behaviours should appear at around the age of five.
Evidence has shown that Kohlberg’s stages occur in the order and at the ages he suggested. McConaghy (1979) found that children aged three-and-a-half to four tended to use hair length and clothes to decide upon the sex of a doll, rather than its genitals.
Slaby and Frey (1975) studied children aged between two and five who were divided into high and low gender constancy groups. They were shown a silent film in which two adult models – one male and one female carried out simple stereotyped gender role activity such as baking a cake or changing a wheel. The film was constructed using a split-screen model so the child could watch both films and their eye movement and direction of gaze were recorded to assess which film they looked at most. Slaby and Frey found that the child who had reached high levels of gender constancy spent more time watching the same-sex model than those who had low levels of gender constancy, supporting Kohlberg’s claim that children pay attention to same-sex models after the stage of constancy has been reached.
In a more realistic study, Ruble (1981) considered the relationship between gender constancy and the child’s responsiveness to television adverts for ‘girl’ and ‘boy’ toys. Children who had reached their gender constancy were sensitive to the implicit message of the advert that certain toys were ‘right or wrong’ for boys or girls. Their behaviour was also influenced in that their willingness to play with the toy advertised depended on how ‘gender’ suitable they felt the toy was.
Whilst Kohlberg’s theory provided a basis for thinking about children’s understanding of gender, theorists such as Bem (1981) and Martin and Halverson (1981) have argued that children begin to pay attention to gender-related behaviours much earlier than Kohlberg has suggested. These theories have claimed that children start to construct schemas about gender by the age of around two and that it is these schemas which drive gender role behaviour.
Gender schema theory (Martin & Halverson 1981) was based on an ideas originally developed by Bem (1981). Martin and Halverson agreed with Kohlberg that the child’s thinking is at the basis of their development of gender role behaviours. However, they argued that the process starts much earlier than Kohlberg had suggested. According to gender schema theory children gain their gender identity between age two and three when they work out that they are a boy or a girl. At this stage, their gender schema is extremely simple, consisting of two groups – boys and girls. Their own group is viewed as the ‘in group’ and the opposite sex is viewed as the ‘out group’. Schema theory argues that they then actively seek out information about the appropriate behaviours and actions of their own group. Boys pay close attention to boy-related toys, games and activities and focus on finding out about these; they pay minimal attention to anything which they perceive as ‘girly’ such as dolls and visa versa with girls. Therefore children look to the environment to develop and build their gender schemas, which become progressively more complex. So toys, from being neutral, become categorised as boys’ or girls’ toys; games, sports, school lessons, even musical instruments are categorised as ‘right’ for girls or boys.
Poulin-Dubois et al. (2002) studied a group of 63 Canadian toddlers aged two to three years. They were asked to choose a doll to carry out a series of tasks which were classed as male (shaving), female (vacuuming) and neutral (sleeping). Girls aged 24 months chose the gender-appropriate doll for the tasks while girls did not, implying that girls as young as two had identified their gender stereotypes. Boys were around 31 months old before they demonstrated similar stereotypes. This study shows that young children between two and three years old select and pay attention to models on the basis of their sex.
Both of these cognitive theories I have discussed see the child as active, seeking out information about gender and trying to make sense of the gendered world they live in. In both of these theories, the direction of development goes from cognitive concept (i.e. the schema of boy/girl) to information processing (looking at the world through the lens of gender) and then to gender preferences (I am a boy – boys play with cars – I like playing with cars). The difference between Kohlberg’s theory and schema theory is the age at which this process takes place.
Research studies by Campbell et al. (2000) and Poulin-Doubois et al. (2002) have shown that children pay attention to same-sex role models much earlier than Kohlberg thought. In fact, young children appear to be tuned in to gender even before they start to speak.
One strength of the gender schema theory is that it helps us to understand why children’s beliefs and attitudes about sex roles are so resilient. Parents are often baffled by their young children’s rigid interpretation of gender. This is explained by the fact that children only pay attention to those things which are consistent with and confirm their schemas. Therefore, if they see someone engaging in behaviour which contradicts a schema (such as a male hairdresser who is extremely talented at what he does) they will fail to notice it. Studies have shown that when young children watch films which depict people contradicting gender role behaviours, they simply tune them out.
Gender schema theory emphasises how schemas develop but not where they originate. This emphasis on the cognitive aspects of the child tends to overlook the impact of parents and surrounding culture such as friends, school and media. Tenenbaum’s meta-analysis has shown the importance of parents’ beliefs on the gender schemas developed by children.