Hockenbury Discovering Psychology 5th txtbk

384 CHAPTER 9 Lifespan DevelopmentgenderThe cultural, social, and psychologicalmeanings that are associated with masculinityor femininity.gender rolesThe behaviors, attitudes, and personalitytraits that are designated as either masculineor feminine in a given culture.gender identityA person’s psychological sense of beingmale or female.At around 2 1 ⁄2 years of age, children move beyond the two-word stage. They rapidlyincrease the length and grammatical complexity of their sentences. There is adramatic increase in the number of words they can comprehend and produce. Bythe age of 3, the typical child has a production vocabulary of more than 3,000words. Acquiring about a dozen new words per day, a child may have a productionvocabulary of more than 10,000 words by school age (Bjorklund, 1995).Gender-Role DevelopmentKey Theme• Gender roles are the behaviors, attitudes, and traits that a given cultureassociates with masculinity and femininity.Key Questions• What gender differences develop during childhood?• How do social learning theory and gender schema theory explain genderroledevelopment?Because the English language is less than precise, we need to clarify a few termsbefore we begin our discussion of gender-role development. First, we’ll use theterm gender to refer to the cultural and social meanings that are associated withmaleness and femaleness. Thus, gender role describes the behaviors, attitudes,and personality traits that a given culture designates as either “masculine” or“feminine” (Bailey & Zucker, 1995). Finally, gender identity refers to a person’spsychological sense of being male or female (Egan & Perry, 2001). Whenthe biological categories of “male” and “female” are being discussed,we’ll use the term sex.Color-Coded Video Games Little girls andlittle boys have a lot in common. Both ofthese children are clearly absorbed in theirNintendo video games. Nevertheless, thelittle boy’s game is silver, and the littlegirl’s game is pink. Why?Gender Differences in Childhood BehaviorBatman Versus BarbieRoughly between the ages of 2 and 3, children can identify themselves andother children as boys or girls, although the details are still a bit fuzzy tothem (Zosuls & others, 2006). Preschoolers don’t yet understand that sexis determined by physical characteristics. This is not surprising, consideringthat the biologically defining sex characteristics—the genitals—are hiddenfrom view most of the time. Instead, young children identify the sexes in terms ofexternal attributes, such as hairstyle, clothing, and activities.A humorous story told by gender researcher Sandra Bem illustrates this point.Bem (1989) describes going along with her preschool son Jeremy’s desire to wearbarrettes to nursery school. Another little boy at the school repeatedly insistedBABY BLUESBaby Blues Partnership. Reprinted with specialpermission of King Features Syndicate.