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The construction of gender during the child's first two years
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THE CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER DURING THE CHILD'S FIRST TWO YEARS Beverly I. Fagot Ten years ago a paper entitled THE CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER DURING THE CFf:fLD'S FIRST TWO YEARS would have been considered a meaningless topic. At that time we were only beginning to understand how well developed the gender categories of 3-year-old children were. For the past five years s I have been studying children below the age of threes trying to discover just how 3-year olds come to have so much information about gender. This work has forced me to a re-evaluation of the process of sex role development. The major portion of the work in the area of sex role development in the past 20 years has come from a framework of two theoretical approaches: social learning theory and cognitive development theory. We have learned a great deal from both approaches and hopefully have gained an understanding that these are not opposing theories but insights into "different parts of the process of sex role development. The child's attempts to understand gender and the environment's role in shaping the content of the categories during the first two years allow us to examine the interface between the two theories. In this period when children are actively engaged in constructing gender categories s they are particularly open to environmental input about what it means to be a boy or girls and they attempt to use all such information in developing their own style of gender. This s then s is a fruitful time to study sex role developments prior to the overlearning of sex role scripts that masks much of the relationship between cognitive understanding and behavioral performance.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER DURING THE CHILD'S FIRST TWO YEARS Beverly I. Fagot Ten years ago a paper entitled THE CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER DURING THE CFf:fLD'S FIRST TWO YEARS would have been considered a meaningless topic. At that time we were only beginning to understand how well developed the gender categories of 3-year-old children were. For the past five years s I have been studying children below the age of threes trying to discover just how 3-year olds come to have so much information about gender. This work has forced me to a re-evaluation of the process of sex role development. The major portion of the work in the area of sex role development in the past 20 years has come from a framework of two theoretical approaches: social learning theory and cognitive development theory. We have learned a great deal from both approaches and hopefully have gained an understanding that these are not opposing theories but insights into "different parts of the process of sex role development. The child's attempts to understand gender and the environment's role in shaping the content of the categories during the first two years allow us to examine the interface between the two theories. In this period when children are actively engaged in constructing gender categories s they are particularly open to environmental input about what it means to be a boy or girls and they attempt to use all such information in developing their own style of gender. This s then s is a fruitful time to study sex role developments prior to the overlearning of sex role scripts that masks much of the relationship between cognitive understanding and behavioral performance.