Social learning theory (e.g.

, Bandura 1977) postulates that children learn gender roles through observing and modeling the behavior and gender-related attitudes of parents of the same sex, and also by imitating same-sex siblings, friends, and media figures. However, cognitive developmental theory predicates that the learning of gender is not a passive process, as social learning theory suggests. Rather, children are thought to play an active role in acquiring organized knowledge and beliefs about gender from the wider social environment; integrating information about gender from their families, peers, and culture; and actively constructing for themselves what it means to be a girl or a boy (Bem 1981; Maccoby 1998; Martin 2000; Martin, Ruble, and Szykrybalo 2004).