When It Comes to Ideas About Gender, Children May Be More Progressive Than Adults
March 31, 2016 by admin
Filed under Choosing Lingerie
Research supports this early flexibility in children’s gender concepts. For example, in a well-known study, psychologist Sandra Bem showed preschool-aged children three photographs of a male and female toddler. In the first photo, the toddler was naked; in the second the toddler was dressed in gender-typical clothing (e.g., a dress and pigtails for the girl, a collared shirt and holding a football for the boy); in the third photo, the toddler was dressed in stereotypical clothing of the opposite gender. Bem asked the children a variety of questions. First she asked them about the photo of the naked toddler and the photo of the toddler dressed in gender-typical clothing, asking children whether the toddler was a boy or a girl. She then presented the children with the same toddler dressed in opposite-gendered clothing. She told them that the toddler was playing a silly dress-up game and made sure that the first nude photo of the toddler was still visible for reference. She then asked the children whether the toddler in the third photograph was still a boy or a girl. Most 3-to-5-year-olds thought that a boy who decided to dress up like a girl was now indeed a girl. It wasn’t until children internalized the simplistic logic that boys have penises and girls have vaginas that they also began to express the idea that changing your clothes doesn’t change your gender.
