Gender And Gender Development

To understand gender development and or gender stereotypes you first need to know what gender is. Gender describes the characteristics of people as masculine or feminine. As human’s gender plays a role in everything we do and why we do it. From early on infants are dressed in their “perspective” colors. Blue for boys and pink for girls, I remember when my son was born the hospital staff placed a blue cap on his head and wrapped him in a blue blanket after they were done all their test and he was bathed. Prior to this class I just assumed that it was a quick and easy way to identify the sex of the baby and policy. Often time’s gender and sex are confused and misused, people tend to use both words interchangeably. In fact, sex is a biological …show more content…
There are many influences and stages of development throughout a person’s lifespan starting at childhood, to adolescent and continuing on to adulthood. During the childhood phase of development, boys are socialized sooner than girls are and the amount, timing, and frequency of socialization differ between the two. A five-year-old tends to play with gender specific toys, for example, boys play with Legos, cars, action figures and girls play with my little pony, dolls, tea parties. At around this age children also tend to segregate themselves boys play together in large groups and girls play together in smaller groups or in pairs. The disapproval and rejection of not following the course from the expected male role are higher for boys than girls and the social cost is greater for boys as well. Feminine behavior in boys have more negatives views then girls with masculine behavior (Martin, 1990). It’s frowned upon for a boy to dress up as a girl with makeup and clothing and play house wife but on the flip side its view to be okay to for a girl to play cowboy, in fact, people view it as cute. Also at this age children become more stereotypical of gender-related activities and …show more content…
During this gender developmental stage, young adolescences deal with lots of changes in puberty and increase their cognitive abilities which make them aware of their appearance to others. Early adolescence males and females have to come to terms with their new definition of gender roles as they experience physical, biological and social changes (Belansky & Clements, 1992; Priess & Lindberg, 2011a,b). The influences of hormones in adolescents will contribute to their behavior. By the time a male or female reaches their adult years they will realize that there are differences between male and female in this gender development, such as communication. Women are more of Rapport talkers which are a way of establishing and managing relationships. Men are more of Report talkers which are designed to pass on information. Simply put the way men communicate is through information, straight forward information, and women on the other hand like to communicate by establishing a connection or relationship with people. The stereotype that women are more relationship orientated than men, gender experts have found still holds true. Some developmentalists say that as males age into late adulthood their masculinity will decrease and gain more feminine qualities such as nurturing, and more sensitive. Although a decline in masculinity in men happens in late adulthood the same isn’t necessarily