Week 3 - Journal
This week we will be looking at the influences of gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic factors in human development.
Explaining gender development
Developmentalists have proposed several explanation for gender development.
Psychoanalytic explanations
According to Freud, in the years 3 – 6, in order to relief the anxiety they feel about the sexual attraction children feel for the parent of the opposite sex, they tend to identify with the same-sex parent.
The problems with Freud’s theory is that children have shown sex-typed awareness much earlier (as early as 18 months) than the suggested age for identify formation (around 4-5 yrs).
Social Learning explanations
Social learning theorists have emphasized the role of parents in shaping children’s gender development (Bandura, 1977a; Mischel 1966, 1970).
Although more supported by research than Freud’s explanations, this theory is not enough.
For example, even amongst parents that treat their children in similar ways, it seems as early as from 18 months old, children develop a strong sense of gender.
The Cognitive-Developmental explanations
Following on Piaget’s research that children development in “stages”, Kolhberg theory suggests that children’s understanding of gender development occurs in stages.
- Gender identity. First children identify their gender by labelling their sex and identify other people as men or women, boys or girls.
- Gender stability. In this phase, children understand that people stay the same gender throughout life
- Gender constancy. In this phase children understand that sex will remain the same even if people look different, e.g. someone gender won’t change if they wear different clothes or change their hair’s length.
The Information-Processing approach
According to this approach, children start forming gender identity as soon as they notice differences between male and female, know their own gender and can label the two groups with some consistency.
The different with Kolhberg theory is that Information-Processing theorists don’t assume that children will need to go through the ‘Gender constancy’ phase in order to begin the formation of their understanding of their gender identity
Biological approaches
Evidence has shown that hormones play a role in gender development. E.g. females exposed to testosterone during gestation displayed behaviours more akin to males and when the testosterone was taken away during male gestation, males exhibited behaviours more aking to females.
Sexual orientation in adolescence
Adolescence is usually the time when teenagers discover they’re attracted to either the opposite sex (heterosexuality – about 94%), same-sex (homosexuality – under 1%) or to both sexes (bisexuality – 3.5%). Others become convinced that their psychological sexuality does not match their biological sex (transgenderism). There’s a small percentage of teens who are still unsure about their gender, something called questioning (1.4%).
By adulthood, 94% of adults define themselves as heterosexual, and just over 5% define themselves as gay, lesbians or bisexual, leaving a small proportion for those who are still questioning.
Family studies suggest that homosexuality runs in families, e.g. families of most gay men have a high proportion of gay men.
Additionally, longitudinal studies suggest that homosexuality has biological basis, as adults who identify as gay or lesbian show behavioural that are inconsistent with culstural norms for their gender in early childhood.
Studies seem to confirm that hormons during gestation play a role in homosexuality, therefore homosexuality seems to be driven, for the majority, biologically and not as an exclusive consequence of environmental factors.
The process by which an individual comes to realise they’re are homosexual appears to be gradual.
Studies suggest that gay or lesbians started realising their attraction for same-sex during teen years, but few fully accepted their homosexuality during adolescence.
The final steps of full acceptance of one’s homosexuality seem to appear in adulthood.
Homosexual and questioning teens seem also to suffer from a higher degree of bullying from their peers, compared to heterosexual teens.
These findings might help understand why rates of depression, suicidal thoughts, substance abuse seem higher amongst homosexual and questioning teens than in heterosexual ones.
Transgender teens, for fear of being stigmatised, tend to keep their thoughts to themselves. Additionally, the anger and denial expressed by parents when they “come out” amplifies the teen distress. That’s why, like homosexual and bisexual teens, transgender teens seem more prone to depression, suicidal thoughts and substance abuse.
