Please look at the instruction file below. 

Gender free children?

For this discussion assignment, I am going to have you summarize the text in relation to
gender of children
, including gender-stereotyped play, biological differences, physical differences and what the author has to say about it all.  

(Please look at the lecture slide file before you find more information online to make sure that you are on the right track)

Next, I’m going to have you view the video below, which is actually about 9 years old now, but was kind of the beginning of the whole gender debate.  Please watch the video and tell us your thoughts and feelings on it all from the text and the video. 

Early Childhood

Chapter 5

EXPERIENCING THE LIFESPAN

Janet Belsky | Fifth Edition

Setting the Context (part 1)
Stages
Early childhood: age 3 through kindergarten
Middle childhood: elementary school years
Uniquely human social cognitive skills
Complex ability to reflect on own actions
Ability to read mind of others

Setting the Context (part 2)
Age of exploration: Erikson
Early childhood
3 to 6 years
Initiative versus guilt
Involves skill testing
Middle childhood
7 to 12 years
Industry versus inferiority
Following adult reality and working toward desired wants

Setting the Context (part 3)
Principles of physical growth
Cephalocaudal principle
Mass-to-specific principle

Physical Development (part 1)
Two types of physical skills
Fine motor skills
Gross motor skills

Physical Development (part 2)
At age 2 At age 4
Picks up small objects with thumb and forefinger, feeds self with spoon Cuts paper, approximates circle
Walks unassisted, usually by 12 months Walks down stairs, alternating feet
Rolls a ball or flings it awkwardly Catches and controls a large bounced ball across the body
At age 5 At age 6
Prints name Copies two short words
Walks without holding onto railing Hops on each foot for 1 meter but still holds railing
Tosses ball overhand with bent elbows Catches and controls a 10-inch ball in both hands with arms in front of body

Physical Development (part 3)
Threats to preschool physical skills
Lack of outdoor play
Internet access
High-tech educational toys
Lack of food; undernutrition
Stunting
Impairment of fine and gross motor skills
Fatigue that limits engagement

Cognitive Development: Piaget
Preoperational thinking
3 to 7 years
Locked into immediate appearances and inability to step back and think conceptually

Concrete operational thinking
8 to 11 years
Marked by ability to logically reason

8

Cognitive Development (part 1)
Strange ideas about substances
Conservation tasks
Changing shape of substances to determine if children believe substance shape changes cause amount changes
Conservation types
Number
Mass
Volume or liquid
Matter

9

Four Piagetian Conservation Tasks

Cognitive Development (part 2)
Why can’t young children conserve?
Inability to understand reversibility
Using centering to interpret things
Impairs class inclusion

11

Cognitive Development (part 3)
How are their perceptions about people different?
Lack of identity constancy
Animistic thinking
Use of artificialism in conceptualization nature
Egocentrism

12

Cognitive Development (part 4)
Evaluating Piaget
Minimization of what young children know
Overstatement of their egocentrism
Presence of early mindreading abilities and longer animism
Lack of attention to culture variations in conservation task performance

13

Cognitive Development (part 5)
Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development
Child learning occurs best when adult creates instruction that matches child’s capacities
Scaffolding
Adult uses scaffolding to promote independent performance
Education
Education viewed as collaborative, bidirectional learning experience

Interventions: Cognitive Development
Vygotsky
Language scaffolds all learning
Everything learned using inner speech
Becoming an effective scaffolder
Fostering a secure attachment
Breaking a larger cognitive challenge into manageable steps
Continuing support until concept mastered before moving on

See Table 5.5 for a comparison of the Vygotskian and Piagetian perspectives.
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Cognitive Development (part 6)
Language
Developing speech
Phonemes
Morphemes
Syntax (grammar)
Semantics
Overregulation
Over-/underextension

Emotional Development (part 1)
Constructing a personal past
Autobiographical memories involve reflection on life history.
Past-talk conversations are used to scaffold personal child autobiography.
Toddler: parents do remembering
Preschooler: parent–child partnership in mutual stories
Adolescent: memories linked together and construction of life timeline

Emotional Development (part 2)
Making sense of other people’s minds
Theory of mind
Understanding that other people have different perspectives from their own
Typically achieved around age 4 or 5 years (universally)
Measured by false-belief task

In this classic test for theory of mind, children under age 4 are likely to say that Ms. X will look for the toy under the bed, even though Ms. X could not possibly know the toy was moved
to this new location.
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Brain-Imaging Theory-of-Mind and Autobiographical Memory
Thinking about ourselves and decoding other people’s emotions involves distinctive (but closely aligned) brain areas.
This thinking is also influence by worldview.
Separate brain areas light up when reflecting on self, liked or disliked others.
Attitudes about self in relationship to others are mirrors in the brain’s physical architecture.
Theory of mind may be strengthened through specific strategies.

Social Development (part 1)
Play: the work of early childhood
Exercise play
Running and chasing behavior
Exercises physical skills
Rough-and-tumble play
Excited shoving and wrestling
Biologically built into being male

20

Social Development (part 2)
Pretending (fantasy play)
Beginning pretending
Emerges in later infancy
Facilitated by mothers
Collaborative pretend play
Starts around age 4
Involves fantasizing together with other child
Can continue until early adolescence

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Social Development (part 3)
Purposes of pretending
Allows adult role practice
Allows sense of control
Furthers social norm understanding

Social Development (part 4)
Girls’ and boys’ play worlds
Gender-segregated play development
Toddlers: limited
Preschoolers: beginning sex-segregated groups
Age 5 or 6: entrenched gender-segregated play and friendships
Gender-segregated play differences
Boys compete in groups and live in more exclusionary, separate, and more rigid world.
Girls play collaboratively in smaller, more intimate groups.

Social Development (part 5)
Causes of gender-stereotyped play
Biology
In utero testosterone levels epigenetically affect DNA to program brain
Socialization
Gender-role displays, social sanctions, and attitudes in wider world
Peer play
Cognitions
Gender schema theory

Social Development: Hot in Developmental Science
Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs)
Impairment in theory of mind
Persistent, severe, widespread social and conversational deficits
Lack of interest in people and their feelings
Repetitive, restricted behavior patterns
Ritualized behavior
Hypersensitivity to sensory input
Fixation on inanimate objects

True or False … What Do You Think?

Vaccinations cause autism spectrum disorders.

Henry’s Post

According to the text, even from a very young age, boys and girls are drawn to play with the same sex and play in different ways from each other. By age 5, boys are excitedly running around as a large group while girls are calmly talking with a collaborative small group. Boys tend to be more aggressive in their play compared to girls, expressing their gross motor skills while girls are expressing their fine motor skills. While girls don’t mind playing with the boys, boys can be very exclusive. They don’t let girls join their play and they wouldn’t associate themselves with dolls or anything pink. These observations beg the question, why do children play and act in such gender-stereotyped ways? Is it biological or environmental? Interestingly, the author poses that three forces are at play here: biology, socialization, and cognition. 

Nature, biological sex, appears to have a strong influence on our gendered behavior across cultures and even in rhesus monkeys. Even boy monkeys engage in exclusive, rough-and-tumble play. Even though it is evident across the globe, the hormone testosterone provides more biological evidence. The higher naturally occurring amount of testosterone in babies predicts more male play behaviors in toddlerhood. Girls with higher testosterone levels may be prone to more rough-and-tumble play like the boys. 

Nurture, or socialization, has a strong effect on our gendered behavior as well. We naturally give boys boy toys and girls girl toys, and naturally parent our boys a little differently from our girls (I have seen this in real life as my parents raised my sister and I very differently from my two brothers). Beyond parental effects, once little girls are in their established same sex play groups, they socialize each other by agreeing to like dolls or other feminine things and vice versa for boys. 

Finally, our thoughts are at play in our gendered behavior too, even as young children. Once a little boy understands the category he’s been placed in (boy, masculinity), he will likely select activities that fit into his newly understood gender schema. This happens as early as 2.5 years! It’s shocking how soon we are aware of our sex differences. The author sums this up nicely with the example of her niece, saying that her niece’s “beauty shop activities had a biological basis, although nurture prices greatly accelerated this process almost from birth”.

As for the video, I thought that it tried to answer a lot of questions that have very nuanced answers beyond “yes raise your child as feminine as possible because she’s biologically female” vs “no don’t gender your child at all”. I think that there should be no issue with a little boy who wants to dress up as a princess, especially if it’s not forced on him by parents trying to make a statement of some sort. It’s just a child exploring the world, there’s no need to attach sexuality assumptions to it until he’s old enough to even understand that. I do take some issue with a parent raising a child with absolutely no gender. In that case, we don’t really know what the child wants or feels. The clinical psychologist brought up a good point, that by leaving a small child out of his biological sex group, he may be worse off and feel very left out if he/she has to make that decision for himself at such a young age. In my opinion, the best thing you can do is raise a child as a child, acknowledging his or her biological sex, but not making such a big deal about it. Yes, give your children non-gendered toys and show them atypical gender role models, but maybe taking away the child’s gender from birth is making too much of something that the child may never struggle with! Children have their whole lives to figure out gender identity and sexuality, and it seems unfair to do that at such a young age. 

Alice’s Post:

This post comes with the big, huge caveat that my comments are based on my current thoughts and feelings about gender. Many of my viewpoints have evolved over time and it is likely this one may continue to as well.

My grandma told my younger sister and me that if we could kiss our elbow, we would turn into boys. How great that sounded! Boys got to have all the fun! They got to do all the rowdy, adventurous, and cool things. My older brother and his friends built forts, did crazy bike stunts, had rodeos, and generally just had a rip-roarin’ good time! I didn’t realize at the time that I basically did all the same things, just on a different level because I was younger and because of my temperament, not because I wasn’t a boy. Nevertheless, my sister and I tried desperately to get our elbows to reach our lips to no avail. We were so disappointed. We laugh at it now, grateful that we grew up to be strong, capable women.  

In the textbook, Belsky (2019) cites numerous references that support the generalized depiction of differences in how boys and girls play and relate. According to the author, boys tend to be more rambunctious, loud, and competitive. They tend to play in bigger groups. Girls, on the other hand, tend to be more calm, nurturing and collaborative while tending to play in smaller groups. Belsky asserts that gender-stereotyped play is biologically programmed, amplified by socialization, and reinforced by cognition (once they know their gender label, they model their own sex). Ultimately, she recommends encouraging less stereotyped play.

For some time, I have thought it ironic that the social media “gender reveal” (which in actuality, is reporting of the primary anatomical sex characteristics, not the gender) has become a big deal at the exact same time that gender neutrality and transgender issues have come to the forefront. Perhaps it is not so coincidental.

The video reports on a Canadian couple who challenged society to examine the obsession with gender by raising their baby gender-free. I tend to agree with Dr. Lisa Boesky, clinical psychologist, that it is an extreme social experiment which makes gender a bigger deal than it necessarily needs to be and could backfire on the child.

I do think we as society need to consider how we may at times weaponize a child’s gender against them. We tell males that “boys don’t cry” and to be tough instead of allowing them to fully experience their emotions. We tell females that something is “not ladylike” and there is undue emphasis on appearance and being pretty. These (antiquated?) gender roles that have been shaped through the millennia of hunter-gatherer and agrarian societies may no longer fit an industrialized society where little children can grow up to be anything they want to be.

Indeed, children are biologically wired to behave certain ways. We also need to allow them the freedom to express themselves in ways that may not conform to OUR expectations.

I have a sibling who is well-known in their field for promoting and developing gender-inclusive design. In some aspects of their life, particularly in media articles, they prefer being referred to by the gender neutral pronoun “they.” I recently asked my sibling if they preferred that I refer to them as my sibling rather than my brother. They responded, “I think feeling understood and seen is what matters more than words. And I feel seen and loved by you so that’s all that matters.”

Perhaps that is the simplest answer. Let people be who they are and just love them.