Abstract
Gender stereotypes in children is a common phenomenon that is instigated by the environmental conditions, especially social institutions such as schools, family, and religious institutions. The family is the basic socialization agent. However, all these social institutions categorize children into gender-based categories. Nevertheless, despite the widespread use of such initiatives to categorize individuals on gender basis, there has been little research to establish the causes of gender stereotypes in children.
This research study hypothesized that, based on the cognitive development and environmental learning theory, environmental and cognitive factors interact to determine the gender stereotype and gender roles in children. This research study uses 80 children from 2 all girls and 2 co-ed classes with gender stereotypes and neutral variables. This research study took a duration of about five weeks, where children came to school in the morning at 8 A.M and left in the afternoon every day. The study also assessed reclassification and classification skills, and gender attitudes among these children.
Introduction
According to Rebecca S. Bigler, she believes that sex-typed beliefs develop early and rapidly increase in the early childhood developments of a child. Bigler gives examples of Bussey & Bandura, 1992 to indicate that these sex beliefs have an effect on children’s play. According to other studies on the same phenomenon, results have indicated that when playing at home with toddlers, mothers are more complaint while the fathers are more assertive (Bigler, 1995), which could help engrain the gender stereotypes in children at early developmental stages. In the present society, which is endemic with gender biases and stereotypes, children regularly adopt the gender roles that are usually unfair to both sexes. As children develop and grow through childhood into the adolescence stages of life, they face exposure to environmental conditions that usually influence their behaviors and attitudes toward gender roles. However, the family is the basic and first unit, which children grow from them. Therefore, it is believed that the family and homes are the first places where children learn their behavior and gender roles.
However, as children grow in the society, they get exposed to external environments such as peers, schools, and religious institutions, which reinforce these gender roles and stereotypes on the children through their transition into adolescence. According to Bigler, much research has been aimed at finding out and documenting the consequences of having these sex-typed beliefs in children and adolescents, but little is known about the origins of such beliefs. The environmental learning theory and the cognitive development theories are some of the psychological perspectives that strive to explain the origin of such behavioral characteristics in children and adolescents.
These psychological perspectives have different assertion on understanding human behavior. According to the cognitive development theory developed by Jean Piaget, children progress through a series of four cognitive development stages that are marked by shifting perceptions of the world. This theorist believed that children are like little scientists and that they continuously attempt to explore the world around them. These cognitive development stages include the sensorimotor stage, which ranges between the times the child is born to the time the child reaches 2 years old (Mendez, 2001). During this development stage, Piaget suggested that infants acquire knowledge through sensory experiences and manipulating objects (Ojose, 2008). The next stage is the Preoperational Stage, which ends at seven years, and is the period in which kids learn through pretend play but still struggle with logic and taking the point of view of other people (Cil, & Cepni, 2012). The Concrete Operational Stage is the third developmental stage in children and it ends at 11 years. At this stage, children begin to create logical thinking. The final stage, formal operation stage, begins at 11 years and extends through adolescence into adulthood, and represents the stage at which the ability to use deductive reasoning develops in the child. This theory supports different research findings that propose that the home and family are the basic social interaction agents that instill gender roles and stereotypes in children followed by the other social interaction agents such as school and religious institutions such as churches and mosques. Consistent with this theoretical perspective, cognitive factors as gender constancy, gender labeling, gender schematicity, conservation of physical properties, and multiple skills have been linked to gender stereotyping (Ultanir, 2012).
Similarly, the Environmentalist Learning Theory asserts that the environment shapes the learning and behavior. This theory asserts that behavior and learning result from the reaction toward the external environment of a child. According to Albert Bandura, the interaction of an individual with his external environment helps in shaping his or her behavior. Therefore, social agents such as families, schools, and religious institutions play a key role in determining the behavior of the child. This theory gives little explanation of the different ages of the child. However, it is evident that younger children are most likely to adopt all the gender roles they learn since they have little conception of rebellion as opposed to older children. However, since these children first interact with the family environment, the behaviors that they learn in the family are usually dominant over the other behaviors learned in the other socialization agents (Mendez, 2002).
While each of these theoretical perspectives emphasizes either cognitive or environmental variables in the process of assuming gender roles, they view the behavior of human beings as resulting from their interactions with their environments. Despite these theoretical assertions on understanding the behavior of individuals, little research has been developed to examine the how cognitive and environmental factors may interact in affecting the gender attitudes in adolescents. This research study seeks to examine the possibility that environmental factors affect gender stereotyping and that the changing cognitive skills in children moderate these effects.
This research study uses the gender schema theoretical perspective to develop the aforementioned hypothesis. According to this theoretical approach of understanding children’s behavior, it asserts that children develop naïve gender schemas concerning the characteristics of males and females (Schmitt, Leclerc, & Dubé-Rioux, 1988). It asserts that the activation of these gender schemas produce gender stereotyping thereby influencing the processing of gender related information (Mendez, 2001). Despite the individual and developmental differences in the use of these gender schemas, this research study primarily seeks to examine the role of environmental factors in facilitating the use of these gender schemas in children.
According to different theorists, cognitive and environmental factors can affect the gender schematic processing. For instance, Bern (D'Amato, & Krasny, 2011) suggests that one of the major environmental factors hypothesized to affect gender stereotyping is the use of gender as functional category in the society. If a broad array of social norms, institutions, taboos, and norms distinguished between individuals, attributes, and behaviors based on a particular category, this category of social context is can be used in a particular manner. The best example that exhibits the use of gender as a functional category in the society includes the use of gender as an organizational schema in the natural or irrelevant domains on gender basis. For instance, there are many social institutions that divide children into girls and boys teams. Another example is the emphasizing on gender attributes when addressing individual, for instance greeting people using the expression good morning boys and girls (Meyers, 2006). According to the gender schema theory, these gender categories instill gender stereotype characteristics in children from their early developmental stages, through their cognitive characteristically acquired factors (Montclair State Univ., 1996). Children learn these network of gender linked associations, thereby increasing their stereotype in them, even without obviously stereotype messages. Grouping children on gender basis develops gender stereotypes. For instance, in the homes, children grow up with notions of gender roles, where girls and boys understand their roles in the family. Parents also tend to nurture their children to emulate their gender roles, where girls understand their roles and boys alike. Parents ensure that they bring up their girls and boys fearing the mutual interactions since parents do not trust their children. Due to the inexistence of empirical research relating the widespread functional use of gender in the society to stereotyping, this research study also seeks to evaluate the importance of the functional use of gender for children’s attitude by experimentally manipulating the use of gender categorization in the environment.
The educational system both in the United States and other countries in the world categorize children based on gender factors. Sitting arrangements in classrooms are made as either boy-girl, girl-girl, or boy-boy. Some schools have same sex composition while other has both sexes. In schools with same sexes, there is a higher probability of gender stereotyping since the children are only exposed to others of the same sex. Nevertheless, despite mixing of boys and girls in co-ed schools, the sitting arrangements in classrooms might influence the gender stereotypes among children.
Method
In this research study, following the assertion of theorists such as Bern and Katz (Meyers, 2006), who indicate that educational settings have been frequently used as the basis of classifying children, this research study chose to use the classroom as the environment for manipulation of children. In order to examine the hypothesized interaction between the cognitive and environmental factors in shaping the gender attitudes in children, they were categorized into co-ed and girls only classes. The purpose of the co-ed classes was to expose the children to frequent use of gender classifications such as physical and verbal categorizations. On the other hand, the girls’ only classes were to serve the purpose of minimizing exposure to the aforementioned gender groupings. Ethically, the co-ed classrooms served the purpose of examining the interaction between the cognitive and environmental factors in children.
Subjects
This research study used 80 children from two different schools, with every school having 40 children. One class consisted of 2 all girls, while the other consisted of 2 co-ed classes. In the latter categories, there were twenty-five bys and 15 girls. Original sample was 97 children, however, following parental consent, only 80 parents provided pre and post test measures were obtained. All the children used in this research study were white children from middle class families, and their ages ranged between 6 years 9 months to 11 years 4 months. The ages of the children were selected according to the cognitive development theory’s developmental stages (Ultanir, 2012). Due to educational and logistical constrains, children were assigned one of the classrooms prior to the start of the study, and to classrooms with analogous-aged peers. Since there were more girls than boys were in the sample, there were significantly more girls than boys in both classrooms. However, the girls were evenly distributed in all the classrooms. The classes were further classified according to the age ranges of the children used in the study. The means and standard deviations for age across control conditions, color and gender were 9-3 (1-5), 9-3 (1-5), and 9-5 (1-0) respectively.
Overview
This research study measured classification skills such as reclassification and classification skills. The activity subscale of the Children’s Occupation, Activity, and Trait – Attitude measure (COAT-AM), also accessed gender attitudes (Ojose, 2008). On the environmental conditions, children reported in school at 8 A.M. and left in the afternoon during the time the experiments was conducted in the summer. Classroom teachers in the gender classrooms had instructions to use physical dichotomies and verbal categorization of the children in these classrooms. The teachers were also advised not favor on any gender group of the children over the other, promote competition, or refer to gender stereotypes since the research had earlier identified that these conditions would produce negative reaction between the group members. At the end of the experiment, which took about six weeks, a female experimenter individually observed the children and assigned them posttest measures differently according to different classes. The measures varied between perception of variability between gender groups (girls against boys and girls, and girls against boys), gender stereotyping, and perception of variability of perception within various gender groups (within girls or boys themselves).
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