Influence Of Gender Development

Similarly Hoyenga and Hoyenga (1993) state that both genes and the environment work together to determine gender. An example of this is Udry’s (2000) study of girl’s exposure to prenatal androgens (male sex hormones) in the womb and how this affected the girl’s socialisation into femininity after birth. Udry (2000) found that girls who were exposed to the male sex hormones in the womb were less accepting to feminine attitudes even though their parents enforced femininity on them later in life. Furthermore, the girls who were not exposed to the prenatal androgens were more accepting to feminine attitudes which their parents enforced on them later on in life. He emphasises the argument that sex hormones are the primary conditioning of our gender identities, however parental influences come into play later on in life in gender development. Nevertheless Urdry’s (2000) …show more content…
They don’t have to rely on negative or positive sanctions from a parent to construct their gender identities. As a child develops they experience life in many different ways and are able to relate memories and past experiences to similar situations (Bem 1983). Allowing the child to use their own knowledge of what it means to be masculine or feminine to construct a gender identity. Therefore, they don’t necessarily need to rely on parental influences to determine gender. Although this could be the case, Mischel (1970) claims that parental influences are more dominant in shaping gender by positive and negative reinforcements. Mischel (1970) emphasises psychoanalytic theory to explain the social construction of gender. This is the argument that a child has a natural dependence on the mother, making the child sensitive towards the mother’s reactions a certain action. In this case the mother becomes the dominant shaper of the child’s behaviour (Stockard and Johnson