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A2 Essay Help
As they age the child develops their ability to classify objects and concepts to help identify what
typical male or female behaviour is for others and themselves. Specifically they pay more attention
and focus increasingly on same sex behaviour. They eventually recognise the type of behaviour they
should be following, making them more likely to internalise it allowing a realisation of how a child of
their sex should interact with other people. All of such gender development and eventually
internalisation involves self-socialisation where the child is in control of their development. Such
theorised control allows a high level of free will where their gender development is not
predetermined, allowing them to have a lot of influence in affecting their masculinity / femininity
and personality, where change is possible.
The developmental stages have been recognised as having a level of universality where they apply to
individuals of other cultures, with cognitive development being mainly due to the influence of
nature rather than nurture. It is because of this that there is a lot of reliability in applying Kohlbergs
constancy theory to individuals of different populations with the effect of nature in brain
development and as a consequence the development of mental processes developing in mostly the
same sequence of stages worldwide.
Weinraub et al. (1984) corroborate Kohlberg through their observational study of 2-3 year olds.
The study demonstrated that children who developed gender identity made more sex-stereotyped
preferences for toys than those without gender identity. This shows that once children recognised
themselves as boys or girls they would behave in ways they thought appropriate for their gender.
This supports gender constancy theory regarding the idea that children should have a preference for
gender-typed behaviour and activities after acquiring gender identity. There may be a lack of
external validity here though, as the use of toys may not be generalised to a preference for all
behaviour or activities that are consistent with the individuals gender.
Research validation is offered by Slaby and Frey (1975) where children were tested to determine if
they had achieved gender identity by being asked if they are a boy or a girl, where they were shown
a picture or a boy/girl and told to choose which they were. Gender stability involved questioning
them on if they have and will always be boy/girl and finally gender consistency involved observing
children as they watched a video of men and women. Those with greatest gender consistency
watched more same-gender models, evidence that at this stage of development children focus more
on same-gender models to provide them with information about what behaviour is suitable. This
study supports Kohlberg by showing that children have different understandings of gender at
different ages in the same order that Kohlberg had proposed. The methods used in such study were
appropriate for the ages, where asking children to point at photographs or watch a video was within
their cognitive capabilities. Furthermore this is important as the children may not have been able to
verbalise their answers to pointing to images was suitable. A weakness of such study would be
demand characteristics where children may have been choosing images based on what they
assumed the experimenter wanted, leading to less internal validity, though this should not be too
much of an issue as children of such a young age are unlikely to be heavily affected by demand
characteristics.
A study opposing Kohlberg was provided by Martin and Little (1990) who stated that gender role
behaviour can be obtained prior to acquisition of gender consistency by showing that children with
only basic gender understanding still had strong stereotypes. The order of stages may have been
incorrect where Kohlberg may also be criticised for being too reductionist in determining the stages,
as he attempts to divide a complex interaction of mental processes into simplified time-allocated
phases. There may also have been some methodological issues for Kohlberg as shown by Bem
where real-life images of children yield different results for gender consistency than only using
drawn pictures.