Gender Stereotypes Affecting Children's Identity

Four-year-olds’ beliefs about how others regard males and females
Throughout early childhood, children strive to make sense of their world as they begin to develop and become aware of their environment. Young children start to form their gender identity based on the cues they observe from such as parents, peers, and TV shows or cartoons. The most important factor that can affect children’s identity is how other people perceive their own gender, which can have impact how they view themselves. The current study examined 4-year old children on public regard for gender groups and their environment for potential influence on highlighting gender. The study predicted that if children watch television often and are exposed to unequal housework among …show more content…
Researchers showed the child a picture of a group of men and women and asked what other people thought about them. In addition, they were then asked what most people thought about boys and girls. Children were asked about their personal feelings about gender (Do you think (own gender: boys/girls) are great or not so great). Researchers then asked children what they thought about other group. On the contrary, mothers were asked how many hours per day did their child watch television (kids program only) during the weekdays and weekends. The questionnaire had a scale ranging from 0 to 9+ hours, zero indicating no television and nine indicating the highest amount of hours a child would watch television. Mothers were asked division of housework between their partner, ‘how much of the cooking do you …show more content…
The results from the study concluded that children viewed their gender better than the opposite gender. This can potentially be due to ingroup favoritism (liking your own gender) that occurs during early childhood. The more children are aware of their gender hierarchies, they are more likely to believe their gender is better than the other based on what they perceive in their social world. The results are important because it may limit future opportunities children will want to achieve as they develop (e.g., sports, occupation) but might avoid such interest due to gender norms implemented by their environment. The methods in the study was used appropriately because the questions children were asked pertained to the research question. For future work, this study can be improved by testing the children a year after and see if their views have