Children in this society learn at a very young age that there are differences between boys and girls. This idea permeates daily life and is encouraged by parents, peers, school, and the media. Little girls learn that they are supposed to like dolls and pink, while little boys learn that they are supposed to like trucks and the color blue. Gender role socialization is the process of learning socially acceptable expectations and attitudes that are identified with one’s sex. Adults may inadvertently reward or punish children on the basis of these stereotypes. Males behave differently from females due to the different social roles they learned throughout their development. The child 's first influence in regards to gender roles is the family.
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This is mainly accomplished through peer influence. In school, boys and girls tend to segregate themselves from each other based on behaviors and attitudes. For example, a teacher may expect boys to be noisier than girls and will therefore be quicker to punish a noisy girl than she will a noisy boy. This behavior is usually encouraged by peers as well as teachers. Many teachers reward gender stereotypes within the classroom. Through this interaction, the children are learning that girls are to be compliant and quiet, while boys are expected to be aggressive and forceful. Certain activities in school are also categorized according to gender. This encourages a divide to occur between the two genders. When girls and boys begin to lose that social interaction with each other, cliques and popularity come into play. The ways that kids believe they should go about making friends or being known in a place like school is definitely contributed by gender role socialization. In studying about the factors that determined what would make specifically a boy supposedly popular in a school environment as opposed to what would do that for a girl, “Eder and Hallinan (1978) compared the structure of boys’ and girls’ friendship patterns and found that girls have more exclusive and dyadic relationships than do boys, which leads to their greater social skills, emotional intimacy, and ease of self-disclosure” (Adler, pg. 170). Boys are more susceptible to believing that it’s okay for them to behave and act like they’re tough and cool to gain such a status that only remains within the many classrooms of their school. This is perhaps due to the phrase saying that “boys will be boys”. The girls are more likely to use vanity (beauty, physical appearance) to obtain a popular status and that’s probably because “Girls need to be told they are
This is mainly accomplished through peer influence. In school, boys and girls tend to segregate themselves from each other based on behaviors and attitudes. For example, a teacher may expect boys to be noisier than girls and will therefore be quicker to punish a noisy girl than she will a noisy boy. This behavior is usually encouraged by peers as well as teachers. Many teachers reward gender stereotypes within the classroom. Through this interaction, the children are learning that girls are to be compliant and quiet, while boys are expected to be aggressive and forceful. Certain activities in school are also categorized according to gender. This encourages a divide to occur between the two genders. When girls and boys begin to lose that social interaction with each other, cliques and popularity come into play. The ways that kids believe they should go about making friends or being known in a place like school is definitely contributed by gender role socialization. In studying about the factors that determined what would make specifically a boy supposedly popular in a school environment as opposed to what would do that for a girl, “Eder and Hallinan (1978) compared the structure of boys’ and girls’ friendship patterns and found that girls have more exclusive and dyadic relationships than do boys, which leads to their greater social skills, emotional intimacy, and ease of self-disclosure” (Adler, pg. 170). Boys are more susceptible to believing that it’s okay for them to behave and act like they’re tough and cool to gain such a status that only remains within the many classrooms of their school. This is perhaps due to the phrase saying that “boys will be boys”. The girls are more likely to use vanity (beauty, physical appearance) to obtain a popular status and that’s probably because “Girls need to be told they are