Cognitive explanations of gender development

• Cognitive-developmental theories of gender development suggest that a child's understanding of gender actively develops and becomes more sophisticated with age
• In contrast to social learning theory, which points that gender is passively observed and imitated
• Kohlberg's theory of gender development proposes that gender development progresses through three stages:

  • Stage 1: Gender Identity (age of 2-3 years): child identifies themselves as male or female and can categorize others, but doesn't recognize the stability of gender
  • Stage 2: Gender stability (age of 3-5 years): child realizes their gender is stable but may get confused about non-normative roles and appearances in others
  • Stage 3: Gender constancy (age of 6-8 years): child understands that theirs and others' gender is permanent and constant over time and in different situations despite changes in physical appearance
• After reaching gender constancy, children seek out and imitate gender-appropriate role models
• Slaby and Frey (1975) used interviews to assess the stage of gender development of 55 children ages 2-6

  • Children watched a male and female model performing the same activity on either side of the screen
  • Researchers recorded how long each child focused on each model
  • Findings: children's stage of gender development was associated with their age
  • Younger children spent roughly the same amount of time watching both models
  • Children in the gender constancy stage spent longer looking at the model who was the same sex as them
• Slaby and Frey (1975) suggests that children have observable stages to gender development and supports Kohlberg’s assumption that children who have acquired constancy will actively seek gender-appropriate models
• Bussey and Bandura (1992) found that 4-year-olds reported feeling 'awful' about playing with gender-inappropriate toys, indicating that children behave in gender-typical ways regardless of age and level of gender constancy
• Kohlberg’s theory was based on interviews with children as young as 2 years old, but it may be that younger children had more sophisticated concepts of gender than they could express due to still learning to talk at that age, raising questions about the validity of Kohlberg’s theory