Children’s Growing Understanding of Personal Identity: Gender Stereotypes and Play

Gender is one of the more complicated identity traits to model, investigate, and comprehend. Despite this complexity, researchers have long found that the establishment of gender identity is fundamental to even a very young child’s developing sense of self. As children strive to learn about complex social norms, including those regarding gender, play is one of their best tools for comprehending and exploring social rules and expectations. Through play, children are able to express and process their emotions, and in interaction with their peers, they are also given the opportunity to recreate and explore social dynamics (Kyratzis & Ervin-Tripp, 1999; Russ & Fiorelli, 2010). In fantasy play, the themes children explore are strongly related to their own realworld behaviors and home lives (Von Klitzing, Kelsay, Emde, Robinson, & Schmitz, 2000). In the present study, the relations between children’s formation of and adherence to gender stereotypes, their preferences for specific styles of play, their playmates, and the narratives they create during play were explored in a laboratory preschool setting. Results showed both that these preschoolers were well aware of prevailing gender stereotypes, and that these stereotypes were frequently exhibited in their own gendered behavior, as displayed during naturalistic play observations and an experimenter-designed play situation. Data from this 2016 investigation are compared to results reported in previous studies carried out two or more decades ago and similarities and differences across experimental findings are discussed. GENDER STEREOTYPES AND PLAY 4 Children’s Growing Understanding of Personal Identity: Gender Stereotypes and Play Gender Schemas Children are not born with an innate understanding of the world around them. They must develop that understanding over time through a variety of complex processes. Children’s increasing levels of cognitive sophistication as they grow and develop allow for comprehension of progressively complicated constructs and relations in the world. Gender is one of the more complex identity traits to model, investigate, and comprehend. Physiology, clothing, behavior, interests, and personality each contribute to a child’s developing gender identity, as do cultural values and societal norms. Despite this complexity, researchers have long found that the establishment of gender identity is fundamental to even a very young child’s developing sense of self. When children are asked to describe themselves using only one trait, they tend to choose gender over other salient descriptors such as race, ethnicity, and age (Fischer, Hand, Watson, Van Parys & Tucker, 1984). By the age of 2, most typically developing children understand gender differences and identify themselves and others by gender (Ruble et al., 2007). By age 3, most children show evidence of gender stereotyping, and they demonstrate rigid gender stereotypes in their thinking by age 5 (Fischer et al., 1984). Children employ developmentally appropriate cognitive strategies for information processing, and at a young age this means that much of their understanding of the world around them is formulated in terms of simple, concrete structures. Preschool-aged children’s conceptions about gender tend to be extremely concrete and are driven, at least in part, by the creation and elaboration of schemas. Schemas are information processing strategies that allow for the interpretation and processing of new information (Bem, 1983; Martin & Halverson, 1981). Schemas provide meaning to new input in that they allow for information to be grouped GENDER STEREOTYPES AND PLAY 5 categorically (Bem, 1983). This organizational structure that schemas provide enables information to be processed and accessed more efficiently, and also allows for missing information in a new situation to be replaced with schematic knowledge over time (Martin & Halverson, 1981). Young children’s schemas are rigid and inflexible at their creation, and become more nuanced with age and time. For example, a child might initially create a schema for dogs based on her family’s pet chihuahua. This schema might involve the information that a dog has four legs and is small with a shrill bark. When the child’s mother points out a golden retriever while on a walk, saying, “Look, a dog! ” the child’s schema will expand to involve this new information about dogs. She will learn that all dogs have four legs and are furry, but they can be large or small, and have a bark that is shrill or deep. As explained by Bem (1983), a definitional category such as “dog” will eventually become a schema if the social context attributes broad social significance to the category, and the child continues to have new experiences that lead to the association of the category with additional attributes. Children’s understanding of gender evolves through a similar process of schema formation and modification. Gender is made salient to children as a grouping category in terms of its binary categorization, obvious physical markers, and universality (Barberá, 2003). Children’s early gender schemas tend to focus on physical markers, such as clothing and appearance, and later include stereotypically masculine or feminine items and activities—they learn that pink is for girls and blue for boys, but also that certain toys are more appropriate for boys or girls. As children are presented every day with new and different information about gender, they learn to categorize physical and social traits as masculine or feminine. This information is encoded and organized into their evolving gender schema (Bem, 1983). However, young children’s tendency to think concretely challenges their ability to understand the nuances GENDER STEREOTYPES AND PLAY 6 of gender. For adults, gender differences take on social significance for their role in reproduction and social norms, but children learn to define gender in terms of outwardly observable and obvious features (Bigler & Liben, 2007). In fact, it is not until approximately age 10 or 11 that most children even begin to understand the subtler gender markers and stereotypes (Martin & Halverson, 1981). The development of a sense of self is crucial for both adults and children. Martin and Halverson (1981) suggest that children’s tendency to employ categorical processing strategies such as schemas not only allows them to process information more efficiently, but also encourages the development and understanding of a personal identity. Children must come to make sense of the world around them, and in addition, their place in it. Gender is frequently emphasized for young children in the context of their everyday social experiences, such as when a teacher addresses her class as “boys and girls,” or an adult praises the gender-stereotyped behaviors that a child exhibits (Bigler & Liben, 2007). The cultural significance of gender is made evident to children right from the start and becomes especially important as they construct their growing worldviews. Importantly, unlike other individual differences surrounding personal style, preferences or opinions, gender is a category that is perceptually salient—markers of gender are frequently physical and/or tied to other aspects of outward appearance (Bigler & Liben, 2007). These physical, outward cues, coupled with the social salience of gender, encourage children’s developing identification as a boy or a girl (Bem, 1983). In fact, children tend to identify with their gender group earlier than they do with other salient traits such as race, ethnicity, or age (Fischer et al., 1984). By age two, most typically developing children understand gender differences and can easily identify themselves and others within their gender schemas (Bem, 1983; Ruble et al., 2007). GENDER STEREOTYPES AND PLAY 7 Over time, children’s gender schemas become increasingly complex and begin to strongly influence their actions. Escalera (2009) argues that when children feel that gender is relevant or salient, it is especially likely to affect their behavior and speech. Children are frequently subjected to gender role norms in school and at home. TV shows targeted at children, presents from family members, comments or directives from parents, admonitions and instructions from peers who are also learning about gender—all of these influences and more flood children with information regarding social expectations based on gender. Any toy store aisle will demonstrate this phenomenon, as toys are clearly separated by color and theme: there is the pink and purple section, filled with flowers and princess, and then there is the section filled with trucks, vehicles, and superhero masks, dominated by red, blue, and dark colors. Stereotypical messages about what boys and girls should enjoy doing or wearing, even messages about what it means to be a boy or a girl, are everywhere. Over time, children learn to monitor their own behavior, predict others’ behavior, and understand the social expectations they face based on gender (Martin & Halverson, 1981). Child development research reveals that gender schemas increase in rigidity until the age of five, at which time they become quite rigid, at least temporarily. In fact, by age five, children’s behavior may be more strongly affected by their gender schemas than at any other point in their lives (Ruble et al., 2007). For example, five-yearolds tend to sort toys according to gender stereotypes significantly more often than do three-yearolds (Freeman, 2007). And in a review of research focused on children’s gender stereotypes, Signorella, Bigler, and Liben (1993) found in the majority of cases that older children (ages 6 to 13) tended to give more gender stereotyped answers to questions about occupations, traits, and toys than did younger children (ages 2 to 3). The fact that emphasis on gender stereotypes increases with age might seem counterintuitive. At issue here, however, is the fact that child