Gender Development
- Created by: meghampton
- Created on: 30-04-16 18:29
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- Gender Development
- Sex
- Biological term. The sex of a person can be determined at birth by factors like chromosomes and hormones
- Gender
- Psychological term. Ideas about expected attitudes + behaviour of males/females. Can be identified by the way they act, speak and dress
- Psychodynamic Theory
- we have thoughts and feelings that we are not aware of - unconscious
- development happens in five stages
- phallic stage between age 3 + 5
- child unconsciously sexually desires opposite-sex parent + jealous of same sex parent
- to deal with feelings - child behaves like same sex parent - known as Identification
- Oedipus Complex
- boy unconsciously attracted to mother + jealous of father
- becomes anxious father will castrate him after finding out his feelings
- torn between feelings - gives up feeling for mother + identifies with father to resolves situation
- adopts a masculine gender
- Electra Complex
- girl unconsciously attracted to father + jealous of mother
- worried mother will find out
- believes she's already been castrated so not as fearful as boy
- torn between feelings and losing mother's love
- to resolve - gives up feelings for father and identifies with mother
- Little Hans
- father wrote to Freud about child's phobia of horses
- claimed he was experiencing Oedipus Complex
- displaced fear of father onto horses
- supports Freud's ideas about phallic stage
- Evaluation
- hard to test - bases on unconscious feelings
- rise in lone parent households but no rise in homosexuals
- wide range of people influence gender not just parents
- little evidence to support - findings cannot generalized
- if child brought up without a father -will become homoual
- Social Learning Theory
- believe gender is learnt from watching and copying behaviour of others
- processes are modelling, imitate and vicarious reinforcement
- modelling - someone acts as a role model + provides an example for the child to follow
- someone similar, powerful + loving and caring
- imitation - child copies behaviour shown by the model
- Vicarious reinforcement - child learns what happens to the model when they carry out a certain behaviour
- Williams - 1975
- children living in Canada
- one town provided with TV for first time, other towns already provided
- measured attitudes of children at beginning of study and 2 years later
- children were more sex stereotyped in attitudes and behaviour than 2 years before
- gender is learnt by imitating attitudes + behaviour seen on TV
- Evaluation
- well supported by research - many studies come to the same conclusion
- does not explain why children brought up one-parent families don't have any difficulty developing gender
- or why they can behave differently
- ignores biological differences in males and females
- Gender Schema Theory
- made up of knowledge we have about each gender
- contain information about behaviour, clothes, personality traits etc.
- believed to develop with age - at 2 children know their gender + ale to identify others by gender
- children learn about gender from what they see + experience in their environment
- ideas are rigid + stereotyped but as they get older schemas become more flexible
- some children more highly gender schematised than others
- Evaluation
- well supported by evidence
- most detailed + thorough explanation on gender development
- does not explain why some children are more highly gender schematised than others
- does not explain why gender develops at 2 - why do children choose gender appropriate toys before 2?
- Diamond & Sigmundson
- researched a case on a twin boy who was raised as a girl after the accidental destruction of his penis
- advised by psychologist who promoted that a child's gender identity can be determined by how they are raised
- at 21 months Bruce underwent surgery + was raised as Brenda - unaware of medical history
- child resisted the treatment - rejected girls' toys etc. + mimicked father's behaviour
- said she felt like a boy
- behaviour became so destructive (suicide attempts) parents had to tell the truth
- Brenda underwent surgery and began to live as David
- the effects of David's chromosomes outweighed the efforts to raise him as a girl
- nature over nurture
- Sex
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