When does gender identity emerge?
Since starting this class I have become really interested in gender.
Specifically, I began wondering about the science behind the emergence of
gender after watching the youtube video DJ posted on The Whittington Family Story https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAHCqnux2fk.
There are obviously plenty of opinions as far as what this family did, but
what does the science say about gender emergence. When does it really begin?
What I found was that children become knowledgeable of gender at a very
young age. Infants can differentiate between male and female faces around 3-4
months, and around 10 months their gender knowledge allows them to develop rudimentary
gender stereotypes (Martin & Ruble, 2010). A little later in development, around 18-24 months,
children, “develop the ability to label gender groups and to use gender labels
in their speech,” (Martin & Ruble, 2010). Yet, knowing
this doesn’t necessarily mean that children begin to develop their own gender
identity as an infant or a toddler (or does it?). The reality is, children may
be aware of their gender, but scientifically studying that in babies and
toddlers is not easy to do. With that being said, there have been studies that
show that “24- and 30-month old children
knew the gender groups to which they and others belonged,” (Martin & Ruble, 2010). By
the time children reach preschool, at around 3-5, children may even react to
gender norm violations with ridicule (Martin & Ruble, 2010).
So, as it turns out gender does seem to develop quite quickly, yet the
reasons behind this are still being studied. For instance, does gender only
develop so quickly because of the stark contrast in how gender is portrayed in
our society (girls in pink, boys in blue; girls with long hair, boys with short
hair)? Would gender progression and children’s behaviors change if we lived in
a gender neutral society? And how would children act if the opposing forces of
masculine and feminine genders didn't exist? Not only that, does the displaying of gender at young ages really relate to our gender identity as an adult? Just some things I have been wondering.
- Here is a quick video where kids are being interviewed about general gender stereotypes (they seem to know them pretty well).
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ReplyDeleteDarn, I was going to do the same blog post. Luckily I checked before I started writing it. I had many of the same questions, especially WHEN gender develops. A lot of the criticism revolves around children pretending things. If a child says, "I'm a horse," should we believe they are really a horse? No, of course not. But when a girl says she is a boy, that's a much different story. Or is it? As much as I support transgenderism, that's a difficult question for me to answer. I think that's what I'm going to look at.
ReplyDeleteSorry I took your post, I guess we have similar interests. I always, unintentionally, end up looking at the child side of things. I agree that pretending or playing could be an issue and not just being transgendered. It seemed pretty clear in that video that you shared, but in other cases that don't seem so evident there would be much more difficulty in knowing what to do.
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