There are many sources that contribute to the development of gender roles. Already mentioned is the influence of the parents' expectations for their sons and daughters. According to Jeanne Block (1983), "parents give their girls roots, and their boys wings." Eleanor Maccoby (1988) argues that parents are not the only socializers of gender roles, and many of the differences in gender behavior among children result from peer relationships and group identification. She has found that young children are segregationists in the way that they seek out same-sex playmates in spite of adult encouragement for group play. Because of gender-role socialization in group play, girls and boys develop in different psychological environments, which shape their perception of the world and contribute to their gender identity.
Social learning theorists propose that individuals learn what gender is for themselves through modeling and re-enforcement. With his famous "Bashing Bobo" experiment, Bandura demonstrated that children acquire gender identity and sex-role behavior by direct tuition and observational learning. It can therefore be assumed that television and mass media play a significant role in a child's growing beliefs and attitudes about what it means to be male or female in the world. Researchers find that gender identity is evident in children from as young as 10 months old. However, as evidenced in an experiment done by XX, it does not seem they understand that gender is fixed until the age of 4. XX cross-dressed children whose gender identities have not been fixed and observed that their judgement on gender-related activities change according to the gender type of the clothing they wore. Kohlberg (1966) believes that once a child has learned their gender is fixed, he or she will pursue information on how to behave accordingly. Because children inherently value what is similar to them, they will seek out and imitate sex-appropriate activities. This type of evidence is disturbing as children who see gender stereotypes on television are assimilating the information they observe and picking up cues about how they should behave and act, unaware that what they are observing is a biased and distorted view of the world.
Gender is different from sex, which is biologically determined and unchanged by social influence. Although we see that gender roles are predominantly socially constructed, it is undeniable that biologically based characteristics also lead to the development of some traditional social roles. Since women are the carriers of babies and have the ability to breastfeed, it is not strange that women should be assigned the role of the caretaker of the home, while men, who are physically stronger, are the protectors and providers (Rossi, 1984). Maccoby (1980) argues that biological factors create behavioral dispositions with different sex hormones. Observations of young male and female rats and monkeys injected with sex hormones reveal that hormones do indeed affect social play. It is a universal characteristic that boys are more physically active and aggressive than girls, while girls engage in activities that require precise motor skills. In conclusion, biological factors do, to some extent, contribute to the development of gender roles and behavior.
Psychologist Sandra Bem believes that a healthy society must strive to achieve androgyny. This is important because, in a male-centered society, it is easy to turn biological differences into female disadvantage. Although there seems to be some biological roots for gender development, gender-role stereotypes are still socially constructed and influence development since birth.
