Gender and relationships

My critics have gone directly to a central issue. They do not question that peer groups are powerful socialization contexts for the development of gendered aspects of interpersonal behavior. They do argue, however, that the characteristics of samesex peer groups are derivative: derived from the sex-typed characteristics of adult culture. Same-sex peer groups, they believe, develop the characteristics they do because individual boys and girls have been shaped in sex-typed ways by their parents and teachers and by their exposure to sex-biased television, among other aspects of adult culture. My claim is that although childhood culture is partly derivative, it is not entirely so. In attempting to understand gender development in childhood, I would urge that we need to give serious thought to some elements that children themselves contribute to their social encounters. It has long been clear that children's play is in many ways not patterned on the behavior of adults, nor taught by adults. In his studies of the game of marbles, Piaget (1948) noted how the rules and structure of the game were passed on from one generation of boys to another, without adult mediation. Similarly, jump-rope rhymes persist over generations of children to the point at which the words no longer have a meaningful referent for the current group of children chanting them, and certainly are unrelated to the verbal phrases being taught by adults. The play of children has certain elements that are markedly different from those found in most adult enterprises, such as repetition, imaginative role playing, and (mainly for boys) play-wrestling and chasing. Such aspects of children's play appear in many different cultures and are in this sense culture-free, even though children utilize the culture-specific materials available to them as they give form to the structures they enjoy. In other words, there is such a thing as a culture of childhood, which exists within the framework of the surrounding adult culture but is also distinct from it. It does not operate in a social vacuum, but it is a sexist culture in its own right. Considering rough-and-tumble play specifically: It has a clear developmental curve and falls off rapidly before adolescence--a pattern that is also found in the play of nonhuman primates (again, mainly among males; see Meany, Stewart, & Beatty, 1985). I have argued that this cluster of play behaviors (rough-and-tumble, along with an assertive-dominant interaction style) in boys is a central element in the spontaneous segregation of children into same-sex play groups. Where does the cluster of behaviors come from? Considering that the sex-differentiation in this form of play and the attendant gender segregation are seen as early as ages three and four, we would have to look for causal elements present at or before this time. My critics, and many others among my psychological colleagues, believe that adult treatment of young boys and girls is different enough to account for the differential play patterns that we see. Birns's hypothesis is especially interesting: Boys get more objective, contingent for their activities than do girls (Birns & Leo, 1989). This difference is seen, Birns believes, both in parents' immediate reactions to their young children's behavior and in the nature of the toys that parents provide to boys. Contingent feedback, in its turn, produces in boys a sense ofentitlement that reflects itself in the assertiveness and dominance-striving of their play. I do not believe it is by any means established that young boys receive more contingent feedback than do young girls. It is not possible in this space to provide a full review of the relevant literature, but perhaps an example will illustrate the range of findings and the complexities of their interpretation. It is now well understood that influence between parents and children is a two-way street. Parents' different treatment of boys and girls in some respect may reflect different eliciting qualities in the behavior of the two sexes (e.g., the higher rate of male initiations of mischief accounts for the more frequent vocal prohibitions from their fathers; Snow, Jacklin, & Maccoby, 1983). The genderlabeling studies are particularly useful in that they rule out such differential elicitation. Some gender-labeling studies utilize a videotape of a child who is labeled as either a boy or a girl, and viewers are asked to rate the child on a number of dimensions. In other labeling studies, an adult interacts with an unfamiliar live infant who is introduced as either a boy or a girl. In a recent review of 23 gender-labeling studies, Stern and Karraker (1989) reported that a significant gender effect was found in only 7% of the comparisons made in videotape studies, and when differences were found, they were not on the same dimensions. When adults were interacting with a live infant, so that their reactions to the infant could be observed, differences were found in 18% of the comparisons, but again they were not consistent across studies. For example, four studies recorded whether labeled girls were talked to more. In one study they were, in three they were not. The most consistent differences were that female infants were offered dolls more often, and putative boys were offered toy footballs or hammers. But when it came to the amount of interaction, warmth, and responsiveness, there was no effect of gender label. A careful reading of the observational studies of parents interacting with infants and toddlers would, I believe, lead to the same conclusion: Parents are equally responsive to their male and female children. A similar conclusion is reached concerning the behavior of school teachers in Tyack and Hansot's (1990) recent review (see especially p. 270 and following). I have no doubt that there are cultures in which male children are favored and where girls as young as two are taught to show deference to men and boys. But in our own culture-at least in the segments of it that have been studied--such differences are not consistently found, and the behavioral differentiation in same-sex children's play groups emerges nevertheless. Other hypotheses are possible, of course, concerning the relationship between alleged differential socialization and the play styles of the two sexes. Each would have to be examined in detail for supporting evidence, to see whether effects were commensurate with outcomes. We need to remember how powerful the gender segregation phenomenon is, and how strong and consistent across families early socialization pressures would have to be, to account for its emergence. Concerning television: Yes, it clearly does convey sextyped messages about the social roles of the two sexes. No one doubts that these and other societal messages have powerful effects in forming and consolidating stereotypes. But acquiring knowledge about social stereotypes and adopting them in one's own behavior are two different things. Boys and girls acquire the same knowledge about stereotypes, but they adopt different elements from what they have seen. Adoption follows upon the formation of a strong gender identity. Although we cannot doubt the effect of sexist cultures, we must take seriously the role of children's same-sex social groups in forging the gender identities that make children susceptible to these social messages. Why is the independent contribution of the peer group so important?--because, for one thing, attitudes toward members of the opposite sex are strongly forged there, particularly in male peer groups, in which members sustain one another's exploitative attitudes toward women as sex

Developmental psychology · Interpersonal communication · Linguistics · Peer group · Referent · Situational ethics · Socialization · Gender Roles and Identity Studies · Media, Gender, and Advertising · Psychology · Social Psychology

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