Permissive parents are nurturing, but they exercise too little control and don't make strong demands for mature and responsible behavior on the part of their children. Authoritative parents travel the middle road. They know when and how to discipline their children. By the age of 4 or 5, children have developed a secure gender identity, a fundamental sense of maleness or femaleness that exists regardless of what one wears or does. Gender socialization sometimes called sex typing, is a psychological process by which boys and girls lean what it means to be masculine or feminine, including the abilities, interests, personality traits, actions, and self-concepts that their culture says are appropriate for males or females.
Biological theories hold that some differences are wired in at birth.
Social learning theories emphasize the rewards and punishments that children get for behaving appropriately or inappropriate for their gender, the adult models they observe, and the lessons they learn from seeing what happened to men and women who break the rules of sex typing. A dysfunctional family is characterized by an unhealthy environment for the development of the family members.