HN501 Unit 6 Assignment....

fulsiel9i7
HN501Chapter8.docx
Home>Social Science homework help>Sociology homework help>HN501 Unit 6 Assignment....

CHAPTER 8 Gender and Peer Relationships: Middle Childhood Through Early Adolescence It’s recess time for the third graders at Columbus Elementary. Four girls take turns jumping rope, while other small clusters of girls are playing hopscotch or sitting and talking. One pair whispers conspiratorially, occasionally giggling and glancing up at the girls playing jump rope. One girl skips across the grass alone and then sits on a swing, watching three friends play a climbing game on the modern jungle gym. The game has something to do with the plot of a TV show they saw the night before. A crew of boys is playing a variant of tag, in which whoever is “it” must not only catch someone else (who will then become “it”) but must also dodge the assaults of players who risk being caught to race past and punch the boy who is “it” in the back or arms. A boy watching on the sidelines suddenly jumps into the tag game, punching the player who is “it.” The others gather round, shoving and yelling at the intruder. When he says, “I can play if I want to,” one boy shouts more loudly than the rest, “Let him play, but he’s gotta be it.” In the remaining 10 minutes of recess, the intruder catches three different boys, but the captives are forcibly freed by their compatriots, and the intruder never escapes being “it” despite his bitter protests. Moments before the recess ends, he stomps off in a rage, shouting epithets at the others. As the third graders move off the playground, recess begins for the higher grades. Soon a group of sixth graders, seven boys and one girl, are playing basketball on the paved court; another larger group, all boys, is playing soccer on a grassy field. Most of the sixth-grade girls are standing around in circles, talking. We could watch a large assembly of elementary school children on any playground in the United States—the roof of a private Manhattan school; the small, fenced yard of a Chicago public school; or, as in this example, the ample playing fields, paved courts, and wood-chipped, well-equipped play area of a sprawling school in an affluent Seattle suburb. Despite the constraints of the setting, some key elements of the children’s behavior would be strikingly similar. Most of the girls would be playing or talking in clusters of two or three, separately from the boys. The boys would be playing in larger groups, and often their play would consist of some mostly good-natured roughhousing. Some children would probably be alone. They might stand apart, or they might push their way into a group where they are not welcome and then find themselves in conflict with others. Occasionally, a child of one sex might play comfortably with a group of the opposite sex, but generally she or he will be a quiet, peripheral member of the group. More often than not, this child will be a girl. Sometimes, groups of boys will interfere with the play of a cluster of girls, most often to chase them or to upset their game. The girls might chase the boys back, always with their girlfriends along for support. These patterns will be familiar to anyone who has ever participated in, or observed, a children’s recess. In this chapter, we will examine two major features of child development that contribute to these patterns. The first is sex role development in childhood and early adolescence, including the formation of a gender identity and the acquisition of gender-related behaviors. (We will discuss the emergence of sexual orientation in Chapter 9.) The second is the formation and influence of peer relations in the lives of children and young adolescents, including both the degree to which children are able to establish satisfying relationships with their peers and the degree and kind of influence that peer groups wield. Sex role development and peer relations have traditionally been separate disciplines in the developmental sciences, and to some degree we will discuss them separately here. But, as you will see, it is becoming more and more clear not only that peer interactions differ as a function of gender but that peer processes may be very important in shaping gendered behavior. For helpers, understanding the processes of sex role development can be a key element in providing valid supports to children and adults as they struggle with identity issues, self-acceptance, and self-esteem. Many coping difficulties, both externalizing and internalizing problems, are more typical of either one gender or the other in our society, or they have different features and implications depending on the sex of the client. It has also become increasingly obvious that a major function of counselors, teachers and other helpers who work with children and adolescents is to identify and intervene with individuals whose peer relationships are distorted. Many developments—including perspective taking, as we have already seen, and sex role development, as we will see in this chapter—are now recognized to be at least partly a function of peer group interaction. Victims, bullies, and social isolates in the world of childhood are at risk for long-term social problems. Among the more spectacular examples are the child perpetrators of major community catastrophes, such as those at Columbine High School in 1998, whose actions appear to have been at least partly a function of peer relations gone awry (Greenfield & Juvonen, 1999; Harter Low, & Whitesell, 2003). The Biology of Sex You may recall from Chapter 2 that people have 23 pairs of chromosomes in the nuclei of their cells. In females, the 23rd pair, called the sex chromosomes, consists of two large X chromosomes. In males, the 23rd pair is mismatched: There is one X chromosome and one much smaller Y chromosome. (Go back to Figure 2.2 to see the difference.) When a woman produces an ovum (egg) with only half the typical number of chromosomes, one from each pair, the egg contains one of the woman’s X chromosomes. Sperm also contain only one member of each pair of chromosomes, so half of the sperm a man produces will carry an X and half will carry a Y chromosome. The role of heredity in sex determination begins at conception. If an X-carrying sperm fertilizes the egg, the zygote will have an XX pair and will develop into a female. Fertilization by a Y-carrying sperm will give the zygote an XY sex-chromosome pair, and a male will be the outcome. Unlike other chromosome pairs; the X and Y not only differ in size, they differ in function: Most of the genes on the X are not matched on the Y, and vice versa. The chromosomal differences have some impact right from the start. For example, cells carrying the XY chromosome pair have a higher metabolic rate than XX carrying cells, so they divide more quickly and prenatal growth is faster (e.g., Pergament, Todydemir, & Fiddler, 2002). But the major differentiation of males and females begins at about 5 weeks after conception. By this point, the fetus has developed a pair of “indifferent” or unisex gonads that could become either ovaries or testes. We’ll begin by following the process of differentiation into male structures. The key is a gene located only on the Y chromosome, called the SRY gene (sex-determining region of the Y chromosome). SRY codes for a transcription factor that binds to regulatory DNA, turning on genes that start the production of other proteins responsible for the development of gonads into testes. The cells of the testes begin to produce many masculinizing hormones, including anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH) and testosterone, one of several male hormones called androgens), which circulate throughout the body and influence the development of many different kinds of tissue. All fetuses develop two sets of ducts, called the Mullerian and Wolffian ducts, which can differentiate into reproductive structures. Testosterone and other hormones stimulate the Wolffian ducts to develop into male structures, such as the seminal vesicles. AMH causes the deterioration of the Mullerian ducts, which could have developed into internal female parts: the fallopian tubes, uterus, and upper part of the vagina. By the third month, androgens are influencing the growth of male external genitalia from a whole set of “indifferent” structures. For example, the indifferent genital tubercle becomes a penis; in the absence of androgens it would have become a clitoris. Similarly, an area of genital swelling develops into a scrotal sac; without the androgens it would have become the labia majora (see Figure 8.1). You can see that the SRY gene in the male begins a cascade of changes that result in a male reproductive system. Much of the process depends on high levels of circulating androgens, produced by the testes. Without the SRY gene and the male hormones, the default developmental path for all the indifferent structures is in the female direction (ovaries, clitoris, and so on). In females, the Mullerian tubes survive and evolve into female reproductive structures, and the Wolffian tubes deteriorate without androgens to stimulate their further development. Females produce some androgens (both in the ovaries and the adrenal glands), just as males produce the female hormone, estrogen (from androgens as it happens; females produce estrogen more directly in their ovaries). The key to the determination of physical sexual characteristics is the amount and timing of androgen production. “If these hormones are not present in adequate amounts or over the correct temporal intervals, the natural tendency to retain female characteristics prevails” (Ward, 1992, p. 158), which is what happens in individuals with two X chromosomes. Males’ androgen production begins surging at 5 weeks of gestation; the surge ends at about 28 weeks. There is another surge just after birth, peaking at 1 to 2 months, and then declining. Females’ estrogen production surges a bit during this same post-natal period, which is sometimes called “mini-puberty” (see Eliot, 2012). After 5 months, both androgen and estrogen production is equally low for boys and girls until actual puberty. After puberty, males produce high levels of testosterone throughout adulthood, much higher than females, until a gradual decline begins at middle age (andropause). Females generally produce higher levels of estrogen than males until menopause. You might think that males and females are conceived with equal frequency, given that X-carrying and Y-carrying sperm are produced in equal numbers. Yet male conceptions far outnumber female conceptions, with some estimates of the ratio (e.g., Pergament et al., 2002) being as high as 170 to 100! It is not clear why Y-carrying sperm have a better chance of winning the competition to fertilize an egg. But the male conception advantage turns out to be a good thing, because males are less likely to survive the prenatal period than females. More males are spontaneously aborted early in pregnancy, often before a woman knows that she is pregnant, and more are miscarried later in pregnancy. As a result, the actual birth ratio is about 105 males to 100 females. FIGURE 8.1 Prenatal differentiation of male and female external genitalia from the same structures. SOURCE: From Blakemore, J. E.O., Berenbaum, S. A., & Liben, L. S. Gender Development. Copyright 2009. Psychology Press. The prenatal vulnerability of males is at least partly a function of their susceptibility to hereditary diseases, and that vulnerability continues into childhood. The problem for males is the mismatched sex chromosomes. The smaller Y chromosome does not carry most of the genes that the X chromosome does. There are a slew of X-linked recessive disorders, such as hemophilia, baldness, color blindness, night blindness, Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy, fragile X syndrome (a form of mental retardation), and so on, and males are much more likely to suffer from these disorders than are females. To understand why, consider color blindness. Normal color vision is influenced by a gene on the X chromosome that is ordinarily dominant over any defective allele. Thus, even if a girl (who has two X chromosomes) has a defective allele that could cause color blindness on one of her X chromosomes, she will not be color-blind as long as she has a normal color-vision allele on her other X chromosome. If she happens to inherit defective alleles from both parents, then she will be color-blind. In other words, for females only, color blindness, and all of the other X-linked recessive disorders, function like all inherited diseases caused by recessive, defective gene alleles (see Chapter 2). For males, the process is different. If a boy inherits a defective gene allele for color vision on the X chromosome, which comes from his mother, he will be color-blind because his Y chromosome, inherited from his father, bears no matching gene. This is true for all the X-linked recessive diseases. The result is that females tend to be carriers, and males are more likely to be victims. Sex Role Development Descriptions of sex-related phenomena, such as gender-typed behavior or sexual orientation, can elicit strong feelings and can have significant political, religious, or personal implications. One focus of some of these feelings has been the denotation of words such as sex and gender. Some authors argue that the term sex should be reserved for biologically determined processes and that gender should be used for any socially influenced characteristics. Yet, we found this formula difficult to apply because biological and environmental causes play interactive roles in all of human development (see Chapter 2). Other authors argue that sex should be used when the reference is based on objective characteristics of males versus females (e.g., “members of both sexes were included in the study”), whereas gender should be used when making references based on judgments or inferences about males and females (e.g., “the feminine gender role includes being responsible for meal preparation”; Deaux, 1993). Yet, whether references are objectively based or a function of judgment or inference is not easily determined either. For example, in our culture we dichotomize sex, recognizing only the male and female categories, but some cultures recognize other categories as well (e.g., Nanda, 2008), and some people in our own culture believe that we should see gender as existing more on a continuum than as two clearly separate categories (e.g., Diamond & Butterworth, 2008; Fausto-Sterling, 2000; Savin-Williams, 2005). Therefore, inference and judgment influence even what are considered objective criteria for the categorization of individuals as male or female (or other). The criteria that have been proposed for differentiating use of the terms sex and gender are difficult to apply consistently (see suggestions from Lee, Houk, Ahmed & Hughes, 2006). What we have done is to treat the terms as interchangeable, except where one word is used in a uniform, conventional way through much of the literature, as in the phrase gender identity. Let’s now take a look at the development of cognitive, social, and behavioral phenomena related to one’s sex. The first part of our discussion of sex role development deals with the development of gender identity, a person’s awareness of his or her own gender assignment and understanding of its meaning. The second part centers on gender differences in behavior. We will consider some of the processes that might account for these phenomena, and later we will examine how a helping professional could use this information to benefit his clients. Gender Identity Augustina was the youngest girl in a family of nine children. Her parents had emigrated from Italy to the United States before she was born in 1913. When she was an elderly woman, one of Augustina’s memories of herself as a young child was that she had firmly believed she would be a man when she grew up. She remembered that sometime in her preschool years she was aware of being a girl, but she was excited about the prospect of becoming like her oldest brothers, whom she saw as confident, swaggering, well-dressed young men to whom her mother deferred and who could stand toe-to-toe with her imposing father. (In the cultural tradition of her family, men were more privileged and powerful than women.) She could also remember a feeling of bitter disappointment that hung with her for many months after she realized, sometime later, that she was destined to remain female and that she would inevitably become a woman. Augustina’s story illustrates some elements in the progress of gender identity for young children, although fortunately most kids do not associate negative feelings with the process but seem to wholeheartedly accept their status. The first step in the process is learning to categorize oneself as male or female. By late in their 1st year, babies seem to be able to make perceptual distinctions between the sexes. They can distinguish pictures of men from pictures of women (Poulin-Dubois & Serbin, 2006), and they can distinguish the voices of men from those of women (even when the voices are matched for pitch; Miller, 1983). Toddlers (about age 2) begin to show signs that they can discriminate some actions as more typical of one gender or the other. For example, they look longer (as if surprised) at a man putting on makeup than a woman doing so (Hill & Flom, 2007). Children show some skill at labeling males and females and at understanding labels such as lady or man, girl or boy late in their second year (e.g., Zosuls, Ruble, Bornstein, & Greulich, 2009). Some children produce a gender label for themselves before age 2. The majority know a self-label by age 2½, and they can identify others who fit into the same category as they do (see Maccoby, 1998; Martin & Ruble, 2009). As Augustina’s experience illustrates, however, knowing your gender category today may not mean that you understand that it will stay that way forever. A second step in the process of identity formation is understanding gender stability, that over time, one’s gender category usually stays the same: Boys grow into men, girls grow into women. A third step appears to be recognizing that gender category membership is permanent, that it could never change, even if one’s behavior or appearance were changed to resemble the other gender. This is called gender constancy (see Slaby & Frey, 1975). Most children seem to have gender stability by 3 to 4 years old—a girl knows she was a girl yesterday and expects to be one again tomorrow. But even older preschoolers may not understand gender constancy. For this, children must realize that even if major surface changes were made—in hairstyle, dress, and behavior—the sex of the individual would not also change. Controversy swirls around the question of when gender constancy develops. In some studies, preschoolers who are shown pictures of, say, a boy dressed up like a girl, with a long-haired wig and a dress, often express the belief that the boy has changed into a girl (e.g., DeLisi & Gallagher, 1991; Kohlberg, 1966). In other studies, even some 3-year-olds seem to have a pretty clear sense of gender constancy (e.g., Bem, 1989; Johnson & Ames, 1994). But it is safe to say that until about the time of school entry, a child’s understanding of this concept can be fragile, and he can show uncertainty about the permanence of gender categories. By school age, children know their gender, and they understand that it is permanent (e.g., Ruble et al., 2007). But there are many other dimensions to gender identity that continue to evolve, like the child’s comfort with his gender, as you will see in Box 8.1. What influences affect the formation of a gender identity? How do children come to make gender a part of their self-concept? Like every other important behavioral development, many factors appear to contribute: social, cognitive, and biological. The Role of Social Processes in Gender Identity When babies are born, adults assign them to gender categories based on their genital characteristics. From the first, young children hear themselves described as male or female. They are told, “You’re a big girl to help Daddy like that,” “Mommy loves her sweet boy,” or “You don’t want to be a mean girl who makes her friend cry!” Children are literally surrounded by verbal reminders of their assigned gender. It’s not surprising, then, that between 2 and 3, at the same time that they are learning other labels for themselves such as “naughty” or “nice” (see Chapter 5), nearly all children have learned their own gender label. Box 8.1: Beyond Gender Constancy: Gender Identity, Social Adjustment, and Ethnicity Sebastian is a boy and he knows it. He understands that this gender category is essentially immutable. But at age 6, his gender identity is only beginning to develop. As he gets older, his self-knowledge will grow in many ways, as we saw in Chapter 7. This growth in self-awareness will come partly from his own active social comparisons and partly from the input and feedback about himself that he receives from others. In this process, Sebastian’s sense of himself as a member of the “boy” category will differentiate. He will identify and evaluate his gender-typical behavior in many arenas, for example, “Do my interests match those of other boys?” or “Is my demeanor in the company of other boys typical?” Besides developing a more detailed and complex sense of himself as a boy, he will integrate much of this information into more general considerations of his gender typicality, such as, “Overall, am I a good fit with my gender category?” (Egan & Perry, 2001). Do these more complex gender identities have any effects on children’s psychosocial adjustment? Perry and colleagues (e.g., Egan & Perry, 2001) set out to find out. What they discovered was that in the United States, the impact of gender identity on adjustment can depend on whether children are members of the White majority or an ethnic/racial minority. Let’s begin by considering what the researchers learned about White children. In studies of hundreds of third to eighth graders, they measured various dimensions of gender (Carver, Yunger, & Perry, 2003; Egan & Perry, 2001; Yunger, Carver, & Perry, 2004). Three turned out to be especially important: felt gender typicality (compatibility), contentedness with gender assignment, and felt pressure for sex-typing. These dimensions were related to children’s psychosocial adjustment, including peer acceptance, internalizing problems, and self-esteem. To measure children’s self-perceptions on dimensions of gender identity, researchers met with children individually and read them a set of statements, asking the children to rate how true the statements are of them. To assess Sebastian’s felt gender compatibility, for example, one of the statements he would have rated is as follows: “Some boys don’t feel they are a good example of being a boy, BUT Other boys do feel they are a good example of being a boy.” Very true for me Sort of true for me Sort of true for me Very true for me ❑ ❑ ❑ ❑ To measure his contentedness with his gender assignment, Sebastian would rate statements like “Some boys wish it’d be okay for them to do some of the things that usually only girls do BUT other boys never wish it would be okay for them to do some of the things that only girls do.” A statement about felt pressure for sex-typing would be “Some boys think their parents would be upset if they wanted to learn an activity that only girls usually do BUT other boys don’t think their parents would be upset if they wanted to learn an activity that only girls usually do” (Egan & Perry, 2001). Other measures focused on children’s interest in stereotypical male (e.g., “using tools to make things”) and female (e.g., “baking”) activities and traits, their “intergroup bias” (whether and how strongly they valued their own gender over the other), their global self-esteem, and their perception of their own social competence. Peer perceptions of the participants were also sought. Classmates completed a sociometric assessment, indicating which children they liked the most and which they liked the least. In one study, peers indicated whether statements representing internalizing problems (e.g., “He says bad things about himself”) or externalizing problems (e.g., “She hits and pushes others around”) were true of participants. Children varied widely on how they perceived their own gender typicality, how satisfied they were with their gender, and how much pressure they felt to conform to gender stereotypes. As you might expect, how typical children felt, and how content they were with their gender, were both correlated with their actual gender-typical activities and traits. But you might be surprised to learn that the correlations were only modest. Children do not all use the same criteria to judge what is typical for their gender and how closely they themselves match gender norms. They construct their own meanings for gender categories. These meanings are certainly affected by cultural stereotypes and norms, but they are also somewhat unique for each child. The characteristics one child weighs as important may not necessarily be as important to another child. Longitudinally, there was some tendency for kids to increase in felt gender typicality over time; boys also showed a tendency to increase in gender contentedness, although girls did not. Girls at all ages felt less typical and less content with their gender than boys did, but they also reported less pressure to conform than boys. Yet for both boys and girls, the connections between gender identity and social adjustment were largely the same. Youngsters who reported feeling that they were not very typical of their gender had lower self-esteem than kids who felt more compatible with their gender. Perhaps children with low felt gender typicality fear rejection by peers or others, or they might just feel inadequate and out of step. Such feelings seem warranted: Children who felt less typical both considered themselves less socially competent and were less well liked by peers than youngsters who felt more typical. We might expect that children who are dissatisfied with their gender assignment would be especially prone to social adjustment problems, such as depression or low self-esteem. Children at the extreme end of gender discontent—are often quite unhappy (e.g., Cohen-Kettenis, Owen, Kaijser, Bradley, & Zucker, 2003). But in the Perry studies of White children in the United States, whether dissatisfaction with gender assignment was problematic depended on whether children felt pressured by others (adults or children) to conform. In one study, children who scored low on gender contentment also tended to have internalizing problems, like self-deprecating behavior and social anxiety, but only if they felt that they were under pressure by others to conform to gender stereotypes (Yunger et al., 2004). In another study, such children were more likely to feel low self-esteem, but again, only if they felt social pressure to conform (Egan & Perry, 2001). Some theorists have argued that when acceptance depends on fitting gender stereotypes, children are likely to limit the range of activities they explore and the talents that they choose to develop (e.g., Bem, 1981). As a result, children who feel strong pressure to conform have less opportunity to develop in ways that are maximally satisfying—that fit their preferences and inclinations—and they tend to be unhappy, anxious, and discontented with themselves. Although the research by Perry and colleagues supports this position to some extent, it also makes clear that felt pressure for gender conformity interacts with other aspects of gender identity in complex ways. High felt pressure is most problematic for children who sense that they do not fit in, either because they perceive their talents and interests to cross gender boundaries or because they are not as comfortable with their gender assignment as other children. Children who feel atypical are even likely to have problems with self-esteem when they do not feel much pressure from others to conform (see also Menon, 2011). Egan and Perry (2001) argued that “children’s adjustment is optimized when they (a) are secure in their conceptions of themselves as typical members of their sex yet (b) feel free to explore cross-sex options when they so desire” (p. 459). But do the same gender identity processes affect social adjustment for children in minority groups? Corby, Hodges, and Perry (2007) investigated, using the measures from Perry’s earlier studies with White, Black, and Hispanic fifth graders from lower middle class neighborhoods. In general, gender identity seemed to have less impact on social adjustment for the minority group children. For example, although gender contentedness was just as important for Black children’s adjustment as it was for White children, it was not especially important for Hispanic children. Also, even though Black and Hispanic children felt more pressure for gender conformity than White children did, it did not seem to cause adjustment problems. In fact, Hispanic boys who felt a great deal of pressure to conform had fewer internalizing problems than other boys! What can we make of these differences across U.S. subcultures? Corby et al. (2007) remind us that for children growing up with minority status, many features of experience, and many aspects of self-concept development, are different than for children with majority status (see Chapter 9). Even though gender seems important to all groups (e.g., minority children feel a lot of pressure to conform to gender expectations), in different developmental contexts it appears not to have the same meaning or power. For example, formulating a racial or ethnic identity, or coping with minority status, may have more influence on adjustment for some groups than gender identity dimensions (see Chapter 9). Clearly, we have much more to learn about the ways that culture moderates the effects of gender identity on children’s social adjustment. Research with gender atypical children suggests that social assignment to a gender category can influence gender identity. Gender-atypical children have either ambiguous genitalia or genitalia that are inconsistent with their sex chromosomes. In one example, biologically male children, with one X and one Y chromosome, have suffered surgical damage to their genitals during infancy, sometimes as a result of a botched circumcision. Faced with this difficult situation, some parents have raised these children as girls from infancy onward. One boy was reassigned by his family as a “girl” at age 7 months (Bradley, Oliver, Chernick, & Zucker, 1998). Physicians provided treatments with female hormones at puberty so that female secondary sexual characteristics would develop, such as enlarged breasts. At the most recent follow-up, in early adulthood, the young woman still accepted her female identity and was comfortable with her female role. (Note that the results in this case do not necessarily indicate that such a solution will be the right one in all cases. See the discussion below of another boy whose penis was ablated in infancy, and the very different outcome he experienced.) Another gender-atypical problem is a condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), in which biological females with two X chromosomes are exposed to high levels of androgens during prenatal and postnatal development. The overproduction of androgens by their own adrenal glands is caused by a defective gene. The upshot is that although CAH females usually have the internal organs of a girl, their external genitalia may be masculinized. They may, for example, have an enlarged clitoris that looks like a penis, and they have sometimes been misidentified at birth as boys. When these girls are properly diagnosed, a set of medical interventions can minimize the overproduction of androgens postnatally, and the genitalia can be surgically altered to resemble those of a girl. But John Money and his colleagues, who did extensive studies of children with CAH, concluded that if the diagnosis is not made before the age of 2½ to 3, a child’s gender identity can be very difficult to alter (Erhardt & Baker, 1974; Money & Dalery, 1977; Money & Erhardt, 1972) and more recent studies seem to confirm this finding (Wolfle et al., 2002). Critics of Money’s research program have questioned some of his evidence for the social construction of gender and caution against early gender assignment without the possibility of individual choice (Reis, 2007). Today, early misidentification of CAH girls is much less likely, and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that CAH girls identified as such in infancy should be raised as girls. It should be noted that sexual assignment or reassignment in infancy that involves surgery is becoming more and more controversial (see further discussion in the upcoming section “The Role of Biology in Gender Identity”). When CAH females are raised as boys, their gender identity is inconsistent with their biological sex, and yet most accept their gender assignment. Of course, their social assignment to the status of male may not be the only factor that supports their acceptance of a male identity. Their exposure to androgens appears to have a masculinizing effect on their behavior as well as on their genitalia, and this biologically generated difference in behavior may make a male identity a comfortable “fit” for some CAH females. Indeed, as you will see shortly, research with gender-atypical children demonstrates that nature and nurture operate in tandem with regard to the development of gender identity. The Role of Cognition in Gender Identity Forming a concept of oneself as either a boy or a girl is a cognitive task. Some theorists have argued that one’s gender identity changes partly as a function of general developments in cognitive ability, especially logical thinking (e.g., Kohlberg, 1966). As we have seen, when children first categorize themselves as boys or girls, they may have done little more than learn a label. Their understanding of the implications of that label is limited. Gradually, they begin to recognize that there is stability to their category membership and, finally, that their category membership is constant, based on underlying properties that do not change when superficial perceptual characteristics alter. In a sense, gender is something that is conserved (at least under normal circumstances), much like number is conserved when candies in a pile are made to look different by spreading them out in a row. We have seen (Chapter 3) that a full understanding of number conservation typically is achieved between 5 and 7 years and seems to be based on the development of logical thinking. Gender constancy may also be dependent on the logical thinking skills that emerge as children reach middle childhood. Although developments in logical thinking may be important, there are other cognitive factors that can influence the progress of gender identity, such as having accurate information about how gender is decided. As we pointed out earlier, adults assign babies to a gender category based on their genitalia. But unless young children are explicitly taught about the importance of genitals to gender assignment, they are likely to be unaware of the typical genital differences between the sexes. References to gender categorization are pervasive in our society, and they are a large part of children’s daily experiences. Not only do children frequently hear themselves being categorized, but many references to other people contain gender labels, such as “This man will help us find the toy department.” However, most of these references are not based on observation of people’s genitals. They depend on people’s other physical attributes, such as size and shape, and on more superficial characteristics, such as clothing and hairstyle. It’s not really surprising, then, that young children are sometimes oblivious to the genital basis for gender assignment or that they might initially assume that gender categories are determined by superficial properties. Researcher Sandra Bem (1989) tells the story of her son, Jeremy, who was informed about genital differences between boys and girls and about the importance of genitalia in gender assignment. One day, he chose to go off to nursery school wearing barrettes in his hair. When another little boy repeatedly insisted that Jeremy must be a girl because he was wearing barrettes, Jeremy just as vehemently insisted that he was a boy, because “wearing barrettes doesn’t matter; being a boy means having a penis and testicles.” Jeremy was even provoked enough at one point to pull down his pants to demonstrate. The other boy was not impressed. He said, “Everybody has a penis; only girls wear barrettes.” A study by Bem (1989) illustrates that when children do have knowledge of the genital basis of gender assignment, as Jeremy did, they are fortified with information that may help them to avoid some confusion about gender constancy. She presented 3- to 5-year-olds with two large photographs of nude toddlers. One was a boy (Gaw), and one a girl (Khwan; see Figure 8.2). Bem gave the pictured toddlers Thai names so that most North American youngsters would be unfamiliar with the names and would not associate them with gender. Children were asked to say whether a pictured toddler was a boy or a girl, and then were asked to explain how they knew. If no genital information was offered, the researcher probed by asking questions such as, “Can you point to anything about Gaw’s body that makes Gaw a boy?” Nearly half of the children showed no awareness of the relevance of genitalia for specifying sex. The children who did know about genitals also seemed to have a better grasp of gender constancy. When they were shown pictures of Gaw or Khwan with cross-gendered clothes or hairstyles, they asserted that their genders had not changed. FIGURE 8.2 Photographs used to measure gender constancy in Bem’s (1989) study. SOURCE: Bern, S. L., (1989). Genital knowledge and gender constancy in school children. Child Development, 60, pp. 653, 654. Used by permission of John Wiley and Sons. It appears, then, that when adults provide appropriate scaffolding, giving children accurate information about how gender is assigned, children’s understanding of their own gender identity is more advanced. The Role of Biology in Gender Identity If children are assigned to a gender based on their genitalia and if genitals are usually a product of underlying biological processes, then biology plays at least an indirect role in gender identity. But does biology have any other influence, beyond affecting the genitalia? That has proven a difficult question to answer, but there are some indicators that “feeling like a male” or “feeling like a female” may to some degree be related to factors other than social assignment to a gender category, and these factors could be biological. Again, research on gender-atypical individuals provides some clues. Consider the case of another biological male, one of identical twins, who suffered surgical damage to his penis in infancy (Colapinto, 2001; Diamond & Sigmundson, 1997; Money & Tucker, 1975). As with the child we described earlier (Bradley et al., 1998), the parents raised this twin as a girl. Yet by age 10, unlike the child described by Bradley and colleagues, the girl twin was expressing dissatisfaction with her female gender assignment. At age 14, when she was told of her medical history, she took a stand: She refused hormone treatments that feminized her appearance. Male hormone treatments were begun, and surgical reconstruction of the penis was undertaken. By the time he was 25, the former girl was a married man. Tragically, he committed suicide at age 38, having experienced a long history of adjustment-related difficulties (Colapinto, 2000). The case of the identical twin is no more than suggestive that biology can outdo social influences in affecting gender identity. First, this child’s parents did not commit to a gender change until he was 17 months old. By puberty, this child had a somewhat masculinized appearance, despite the female hormones she had been getting. Because of her appearance, she experienced substantial hazing from her peers, a social factor that could have been important in creating her gender uncertainty and distress. Further, we cannot say how effective her own family had been in accepting her status as a girl and thus how unambiguous her socialization experiences had been. However, cases such as these raise the possibility that biology can exert an influence on how “male” or “female” one feels, or at least on how comfortable one is with a particular gender assignment. We should note that the results of this case appear to be quite different from the one reported earlier (Bradley et al., 1998). Children sometimes undergo gender assignment or reassignment at birth because of conditions that cause malformations of genitalia. Large-scale studies of such children have produced conflicting results. In some, social reassignment of XY males to female identities, or of XX females to male identities, seems to work well (see Zucker, 1999, for a review). In more recent studies, although the majority accept reassignment comfortably, a sizeable minority of children have been reported to reject reassignment by the time they reach adolescence (Dessens, Slijper, & Drop, 2005; Meyer-Bahlberg, 2005; Reiner & Gearhart, 2004), suggesting that socialization may not be as powerful as it was once thought to be in the development of gender identity. Because of the complexity of causal factors in gender identity development, as well as the increasing awareness of often subtle physical variations (nondimorphism) in internal and external reproductive organs, sex chromosomes, and hormones, many researchers and theorists have argued for recognition and cultural acceptance of intersex statuses (e.g., Diamond & Butterworth, 2008; Fausto-Sterling, 2000; Savin-Williams & Ream, 2007; see Byne et al., 2012). Blackless and colleagues (2000) report that some type of sexual nondimorphism is present in up to 2 out of every 100 live births. More recently, there has been consensus among some medical groups to replace the term “intersex” with “disorders of sex development” (DSD) in an effort to acknowledge the spectrum of human sexual biology. However, others have criticized this nomenclature for its divisive connotation and suggest replacing the term with “divergence of sex development” (Hughes, Houk, Ahmed, & Lee, 2006; Reis, 2007). As we noted earlier, it may be that for many people, “dichotomous models of gender fail to capture the complexity, diversity, and fluidity” of the gender experience (Diamond & Butterworth, 2008, p. 366). Gender and Behavior Many of us believe that males and females have at least some different behavioral tendencies, and some people believe that there are major differences in the distribution of personality traits between the sexes. Such beliefs about sex differences are called gender stereotypes. Researchers have found evidence for some of the differences that people believe in, but other stereotypes seem to arise from expectations that have no basis in fact. In this section, we will first take a look at some of the sex differences that have been found, especially in children. Then, we’ll consider some of the theoretical explanations that have been proposed for sex differences. That is, when they actually exist, how do they develop? Sex Differences in Behavior, Personality, and Preference In 1974, Maccoby and Jacklin did a careful review of the scientific literature on sex differences. They surprised most observers by concluding that there were only four behaviors, skills, or tendencies that clearly differed for males and females: physical aggression, language skills, math skills, and spatial skills. Even in these domains, some behaviors differed across the life span (e.g., aggression) and others only during certain developmental periods, such as after puberty (e.g., certain math skills). Since 1974, researchers have acquired a valuable analytic tool for assessing the effects of variables such as sex. It’s called meta-analysis, in which the results from a large number of studies on the same question—such as, “Are there sex differences in physical aggression?”—can be combined to produce an average estimate of the difference in a population (Glass, 1976). The results of many meta-analyses are now available, and the list of “real” sex differences has lengthened (see Table 8.1). In addition, our knowledge of sex differences is now more fine-tuned. With regard to math, for example, among top-performing students, boys have an advantage over girls in complex problem solving. This is more likely to be true when problems can be solved using spatially based strategies. Yet, boys are also more numerous than girls among underperformers in math, and girls tend to outperform boys on computation (see Halpern et al., 2007, for a comprehensive review). We also have been collecting data for long enough, and in enough circumstances, that we know that these differences can change historically; that is, there are cohort effects. To add to the complexity, these effects can vary from one context to another. For example, historical change has affected math skills such that males and females in the United States today do not differ on most tests of math achievement before grade 12 (e.g., Hyde, Lindberg, Linn, Ellis, & Williams, 2008), even though they did differ two decades ago (e.g., Hyde, Fennema, & Lamon, 1990). The gender gaps that continue to exist seem to vary from one culture to another. The male advantage in complex problem solving (which continues to show up in the United States today as a gender difference on math SAT test performance) differs by country and culture. The more that cultural acceptance of male privilege characterizes a country, the more boys outnumber girls among top performers (Guiso, Monte, Sapienza, & Zingales, 2008). In countries where cultural attitudes strongly favor gender equality, such as Iceland, there are as many (or more) girls as boys among top math performers. One very large meta-analysis included the test data of nearly 500,000 14- to 16-year-olds in 69 nations. The analysis identified specific societal indicators of equality that are linked to disappearing math performance differences between boys and girls (Else-Quest, Hyde, & Lynn, 2010). These indicators are equal enrollment in school; larger shares of research jobs held by women; and larger numbers of women lawmakers (parliamentary representatives). It is just as interesting to note the differences that have not been found as those that have. Among the common sex stereotypes, for example, are that females are more sociable, more dependent, and more prosocial than males and that males are more competent at analytical tasks. Although occasional studies have reported findings that are consistent with these expectations, in most studies such differences are not found. Similarly, arguments that males and females differ in moral reasoning have received a great deal of popular and scientific attention. As we mentioned in Chapter 7, Gilligan (e.g., 1977, 1982) proposed that males are more likely to focus on issues of justice or fairness in their moral reasoning, but females are more concerned with issues of interpersonal responsibility and compassion. Yet the evidence indicates that boys and girls show no differences in their tendencies to focus on such issues and that both men and women raise both kinds of issues when they solve moral problems or judge moral maturity (e.g., Walker & Pitts, 1998). Occasionally, adolescent and adult females have been found to raise more concerns about people’s needs than adolescent or adult males in addressing real-life dilemmas, but people of both genders raise such concerns quite frequently (see Jaffee & Hyde, 2000, for a meta-analysis; Turiel, 2006). TABLE 8.1 A Sampling of Gender Differences TRAIT OR QUALITY MORE TYPICAL OF TIME OF ONSET Developmental vulnerability (learning disabilities, illness, accidents, etc.) Boys Prebirth Activity level Boys Infant Happy, excited mood Boys Infant/toddler Risk taking Boys Infant/toddler Physical aggression Boys Toddler Faster reaction time Boys Preschool Competitive play Boys Preschool Discourse style Boys Preschool Dominance seeking; clear group hierarchy Boys Preschool Spatial skill: mental rotation Boys Middle childhood Antisocial aggressive disorders Boys Middle childhood Satisfaction with one’s gender assignment Boys Middle childhood Math problem solving Boys Middle childhood Homosexuality, bisexuality Boys Adolescence Preference for gender-typed toys Both Toddler Preference for same-gender playmates Both Toddler Quiet calm mood Girls Infant Language onset (vocabulary) Girls Toddler Collaborative discourse style Girls Preschool Verbal achievement (reading, spelling, language tests) Girls Middle childhood Emotional expressiveness Girls Middle childhood Relational aggression (refusing friendship, exclusion from group) Girls Middle childhood Depression Girls Adolescence Social sensitivity Girls Adulthood Key: Prebirth—Conception to birth; Infant—0 to 1 year; Toddler—1 to 3 years; Preschool—3 to 6 years; Middle childhood—6 years to puberty; Adolescence—Puberty to 18 years; Adulthood—18 years onward. When sex differences are consistently found, they usually turn out to be small in size. Figure 8.3 illustrates the considerable overlap between males and females on those traits that show some sex difference. Some researchers have argued strongly that gender differences are too small to be important in development, especially considering that the average difference between genders is much smaller than the range of differences within each gender (Thorne, 1994). FIGURE 8.3 Typical pattern of differences for characteristics that show a sex difference. However, average individual differences between the sexes may not be the important story in gender role development. More and more, developmentalists are recognizing that although boys and girls do not behave much differently in laboratory measures of personality or on individual abilities, they do spend their time differently. Specifically, girls spend their time interacting primarily with girls, and boys spend their time mostly with boys. In settings where there are both males and females of similar ages available, such as schools and playgrounds, and where there is freedom to choose one’s companions, this sex segregation process begins by about 2½ for girls and by about 3 for boys, and it increases with age (see Martin, Fabes, Hanish, & Hollenstein, 2005). Sex segregation characterizes children around the world, in both industrialized and nonindustrialized societies (e.g., Omark, Omark, & Edelman, 1973; Whiting & Edwards, 1988). When children are about 4, the time they spend with same-sex peers is triple the time they spend with other-sex peers (Fabes, Martin, & Hanish, 2003). By the time children are 6, they spend 11 times more time with same-sex peers! During elementary school, sex segregation intensifies, and it begins to ease off only after puberty, when, drawn together by sexual interest, children begin to participate more readily in mixed-gender activities. During middle childhood, mixed-gender interactions, called borderwork, tend to be quite limited (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1987; Thorne, 1986, 1994). In fact, there seem to be unwritten “rules” that govern when it is acceptable for boys and girls to engage in mixed-gender interactions. Allen Sroufe and his colleagues (Sroufe, Bennett, Englund, Urban, & Shulman, 1993) observed 10- and 11-year-olds at a summer camp, for example, and identified a set of six rules that seemed to determine when children would cross the boundaries of their single-sex groups (see Table 8.2). In this typical example of borderwork on the playground, the grade-school boys watch and comment as the girls play jump rope, then begin their own, more rough-and-tumble activities with the jump rope once the girls have moved on. As children mature, they spend increasingly greater amounts of time in sex-segregated peer groups. When children segregate by gender, other behaviors also tend to diverge. For example, suppose that Carissa and Duane, both 6 years old, are equally active when they play alone on the playground. They climb on the jungle gym with about average vigor for children their age, and they are more inclined to skip and jog from place to place than either to walk or to run full tilt. When Carissa plays with her girlfriends, her activity level stays about the same. But when Duane plays with a group of boys, he is notably more active than when he plays alone: He moves more vigorously on the jungle gym or runs with greater intensity. “Boys are stimulated to high levels of activity by other boys” (Maccoby, 1998). TABLE 8.2 Rules Governing Mixed-Gender Interaction, or Borderwork Rule: The contact is accidental. Example: You’re not looking where you are going and you bump into someone. Rule: The contact is incidental. Example: You go to get some lemonade and wait while two children of the other gender get some. (There should be no conversation.) Rule: The contact is in the guise of some clear and necessary purpose. Example: You may say, “Pass the lemonade,” to persons of the other gender at the next table. No interest in them is expressed. Rule: An adult compels you to have contact. Example: “Go get that map from X and Y and bring it to me.” Rule: You are accompanied by someone of your own gender. Example: Two girls may talk to two boys, though physical closeness with your own partner must be maintained and intimacy with the others is disallowed. Rule: The interaction or contact is accompanied by disavowal. Example: You say someone is ugly or hurl some other insult or (more commonly for boys) push or throw something at them as you pass by. Source: Sroufe, L. A., Bennett, C., Englund, M. and Shulman, S. (1993). The significance of gender. Child Development, 64, p. 456. Used with permission by John Wiley and Sons. Children do somewhat different things in their same-sex groups. Perhaps most notable is that boys’ play in groups is more physical and more aggressive than girls’ play. This is true in all primate species, across cultures, and from the earliest ages that youngsters play together. (Ruble, Martin, & Berenbaum, 2006) When Carissa and her friends ride the wheeled vehicles in the play yard of their after-school child care center, they ride around carefully to avoid hitting each other. But when Duane and his friends are in the drivers’ seats, their favorite thing to do is ram into each other—the harder the better (e.g., Dunn & Morgan, 1987; Fabes et al., 2003). Good-natured physical roughness is called rough-and-tumble play, an almost exclusive property of boys’ play with boys. Maccoby (2002) indicates that most boys are not consistently aggressive across situations. That is, physical aggressiveness is not so much a personality trait that you see when a child is in any situation—with adults, girls, or boys—although it can be for some children. More typically, it emerges when boys are with boys. Thus, it becomes an important defining feature of boys’ social groups, which differ in specific ways from girls’ social groups. Boys often use rough-and-tumble play to help establish dominance hierarchies within their groups, with more dominant boys less likely to back down and less often aggressed against. Generally, boys play in larger groups than do girls, who are more likely to play in twos and threes, and the boys’ groups are more clearly structured hierarchically. Although girls’ groups usually have their more and less dominant members, the rankings are not very stable, and leadership does not depend on toughness as much as on other leadership qualities, such as social skill (Maccoby, 1998; Martin & Fabes, 2001). Girls’ and boys’ groups differ on other dimensions as well (Ruble et al., 2006). Boys compete with each other more than girls do. As preschoolers they compete for resources, such as attractive toys, and in middle childhood they compete in structured games. Girls’ interactions tend to be more cooperative and to involve much more turn taking. These characteristics of gendered groups are integrally related to the kinds of activities that bring boys and girls together. In particular, boys seem to spend time with other boys who have shared interests, especially starting in middle childhood, and they are more likely than girls to be interested in sports and games and in adventure. For example, when boys pretend, their play tends to involve heroic or warlike themes (e.g., Flannery & Watson, 1993). Girls often seem to get together just to be together, and their choice of companions is based more on personality (Erwin, 1985). On the whole, they tend to have broader interests than boys, and they are more interested in boys’ activities than boys are in girls’ activities. But they do have stronger tendencies than boys to like play that enacts family or school experiences, and increasingly from preschool onward, girls’ pretend play themes have to do with adornment and beauty—being models or brides, doing glamorous or romantic things (Maccoby, 1998). As you can see, girls’ groups and boys’ groups have different cultures to which the members, regardless of their individual characteristics, must adapt. A good example of this difference is the degree to which they use collaborative versus domineering discourse techniques (Leaper & Smith, 2004). In collaborative or affiliative speech, more often used in girls’ groups, children’s responses are keyed to what someone else has said, expressing agreement, making further suggestions, often in the form of a question rather than declarative or imperative sentences, which seems to soften the suggestion. For example, Carissa might say to a friend as they plan a game, “You want to be the mommy. Why don’t we both be the mommy sometimes?” In domineering or power-assertive speech, more typical of boys’ groups, commands and restrictions are common, as when Duane says, “Don’t move that block; build the road there!” It is important to note that both boys and girls will use both kinds of discourse. It is the predominance of one type over the other that differs between their groups. On the whole, girls’ discourse strategies are more “conflict mitigating” and boys strategies are more “egoistic”—threatening, demanding, interrupting, or ignoring of another’s remarks (Maccoby, 1998). Where do sex differences in behavior come from? There are theories that emphasize the importance of biology, of cognitive processes, and of socialization pressures. Clearly, all three, as always, are important. As you will see, some theorists emphasize the interaction of the three as children spend time in same-gender peer groups. It seems that gender segregation in childhood, perhaps the most pervasive sex difference, may be both an outcome of some sex differences and a source of others. Children construct internalized standards for appropriate gender-linked behavior partly based upon adult models and sanctions. The Role of Biology in Generating Sex Differences You learned earlier in this chapter that genetic differences between males and females normally influence the differential development of reproductive organs. You have seen that the prenatal release of masculinizing hormones (androgens) plays a major role in this process. Do masculinizing hormones also affect the developing nervous system, thus influencing postnatal behavior? In animals, there is evidence that prenatal hormones do affect neural structures (e.g., Wallen, 2005), and in both animals and humans, there appear to be effects on early behavior. For example, male rats whose exposure to prenatal androgens is delayed not only show a slight demasculinization of their genitalia but they also show more feminized play behaviors as pups (e.g., Ward, 1992; Ward & Stehm, 1991). In humans, girls with CAH who are overexposed to prenatal (and sometimes postnatal) androgens have been found to exhibit more tomboyism—playing with boys and preferring boys’ toys and activities—than non-CAH girls (for reviews see Berenbaum, 2004; Constantinescu & Hines, 2012). Findings such as these are open to several interpretations. For one, parents of girls with CAH may have doubts about their daughters’ sexual identity that could affect their daughters’ behavior, for another, these girls have many unusual experiences, such as genital surgeries and ongoing medical treatments, that could affect their behavioral development, and so on (see Collaer & Hines, 1995). However, the somewhat masculinized behaviors of CAH girls may also indicate a role for prenatal (or postnatal) hormones in some of the typical behavioral differences found between boys and girls. Two studies provide somewhat more convincing demonstrations of a role for prenatal androgens in the masculinizing of girls’ behavior. The first is a large study of normally developing children. At 3 years old, girls were rated as more masculine in their activities if their mothers had had higher than average amounts of testosterone (an androgen) in their blood during pregnancy (Hines et al., 2002). The second is a study of 3- to 10-year-old CAH girls and their unaffected (non-CAH) siblings (Pasterski et al., 2005). The children were observed in toy play alone and also with each of their parents. The CAH girls made more spontaneous male-typical toy choices (e.g., trucks) than their unaffected sisters, even though their parents encouraged sex-typical toy play with their children and actually provided more positive feedback to CAH girls than to unaffected girls for play with female toys (e.g., dolls). At puberty, hormonal changes and hormonal differences between boys and girls may cause some behavioral differences that emerge at about that time. For example, although depressive symptoms increase for both girls and boys after puberty, they increase more for girls; boys show more increases in aggressive, delinquent behaviors than girls (see Table 8.1 and Chapter 9). Could these differences in problem behavior be linked to hormones? It is a sensible question to ask, and some connections have been identified. For example, there is a link between boys’ androgen levels and their aggressiveness (Buchanan, Eccles, & Becker, 1992). But androgens appear to more directly affect attempts to achieve social power (dominance seeking) which leads to aggression only in some people and some situations (Rowe, Maughan, Worthman, Costello, & Angold, 2004). Another complication in interpreting hormone–behavior connections is that whereas androgens may increase aggressiveness, one’s experiences, such as family conflict, may change hormone levels (e.g., Steinberg, 1988). In particular, for males, aggression and dominance seeking can increase testosterone, an androgen (see Cacioppo & Berntson, 1992). So whether hormone levels cause or result from behavior and experience during and after puberty is not clear. Research on brain structures has identified some sex differences (e.g., Sowell et al., 2007), supporting the idea that brain differences may underlie some gender differences, but many of the findings are controversial (see Ruble et al., 2006). Among the differences for which there is some evidence is greater lateralization in males than in females, that is, greater differentiation in the functioning of the two hemispheres of the brain, with language functions more clearly governed by the left hemisphere in males (e.g., Friederici et al., 2008). Even in children as young as 16 months, patterns of brain activation appear to be more lateralized for word comprehension in boys than in girls (as measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI; Molfese, 1990). But here again, findings are unclear. For example, one large fMRI study of older children found no sex difference in lateralization of language processing (Plante, Schmithorst, Holland, & Byars, 2006). If females are less lateralized, using more of both hemispheres for language functions, it could account for the female advantage in language. But this, and other brain differences, if they exist, could as easily be the result of different experiences. That is, when behavioral differences develop, they may cause differences in brain function rather than being the result of such differences. Given what we have learned about brain development (see Chapter 3), it seems likely that the causal links work both ways. One other note of caution about relating brain differences to gender differences in behavior should be presented. Sometimes brain differences clearly are not related to behavioral differences. For example, in one study, intelligence as measured by standardized intelligence tests was correlated with more gray matter (thicker cortex) in the frontal and parietal lobes for men, but in women intelligence was correlated with more gray matter in different parts of the frontal lobes. There were no differences in these same men and women on intelligence. As the authors put it, “men and women apparently achieve similar IQ results with different brain regions, suggesting that . . . different types of brain designs may manifest equivalent intellectual performance” (Haier, Jung, Yeo, Head, & Alkire, 2005, p. 320). The Role of Cognition in Generating Sex Differences When Ben was 5 years old, he loved to sit with his mother early in the morning while she dressed for work. He especially enjoyed watching her comb her hair and tie it back with a ribbon. One day he asked if he could have a ribbon in his own hair. His mother, who tried to encourage nonsexist ideas in her children, tied a ribbon in Ben’s hair, and he spent some happy moments admiring himself in the mirror. But soon he grew still, staring at his image, and he finally asked, “Do boys wear ribbons in their hair?” to which his mother responded, “Not usually.” Ben grasped the ribbon and tore it off his head, pulling strands of hair along with it. Then, bursting into tears, he ran from the room. Despite his mother’s neutrality, Ben was angry and humiliated that he had done a “girl” thing. Several cognitive theories of gender differences have been proposed to explain behaviors such as Ben’s. We will examine them next. Cognitive-Developmental Theories. Cognitive-developmental theorists such as Kohlberg (1966) have argued that when children acquire an understanding of the constancy of gender identity, partly as a function of advances in their logical thinking skills, they are intrinsically motivated to learn all they can about what it means to be male or female, and they are eager to behave in gender-appropriate ways. In other words, children actively seek to make their behavior consistent with their gender identity, whether or not they experience social pressure to do so. This process is often now referred to as self-socialization. The anecdote about Ben seems to illustrate the power of such a cognitively based motivational system. There is also research evidence to support a cognitive basis for at least some of children’s gendered behaviors, although contrary to Kohlberg’s notion, a full understanding of gender constancy does not seem to be required. Rather, establishing basic gender identity (i.e., learning one’s own gender category) seems to be sufficient to foster a drive to learn about gendered behavior and a tendency to make gender-typical choices (e.g., Weinraub et al., 1984). Once gender stability is established, children are increasingly likely to make gender-based choices over what may be more attractive choices, as Ben did (see Martin, Ruble, & Szkrybalo, 2002; Ruble et al., 2006). Cognitive-developmental theories also suggest that when children achieve gender constancy, their thinking about gender differences should become more “flexible” and less stereotyped. They now understand that superficial characteristics can change without changing one’s underlying gender category. Therefore, children should be able to see that sex role stereotypes, such as girls wearing dresses and boys wearing pants, are social conventions, not moral imperatives or requirements for maintaining one’s gender identity. Indeed, children’s thinking about gender does become more flexible in middle childhood, as you will see in a later section (e.g., Conry-Murray & Turiel, 2012; Ruble et al., 2007). Some researchers theorize that young adolescents become somewhat more rigid in their thinking about what’s permissible for people of different genders (Ruble et al., 2006). The gender intensification hypothesis suggests that one way young teens cope with the demands of establishing an adult identity is to fall back on stereotyped notions of masculinity or femininity (Hill & Lynch, 1983), but there is little evidence for this position, especially for U.S. adolescents today (Priess, Lindberg, & Hyde, 2009). Gender Schema Theories. Cognitive theorists in the information processing tradition emphasize the role of gender schemas in influencing the behavior of children and adults (Bem, 1981; Markus, Crane, Bernstein, & Siladi, 1982). A gender schema is a network of expectations and beliefs about male and female characteristics. Schemas affect what we pay attention to, what we interpret, and what we remember about events. So, for example, if elementary school children hear stories or see pictures of men or women engaged in cross-sex behaviors—such as a woman doing carpentry work—they are likely to remember the pictures later in ways more consistent with their gender schemas. In this example, they might later remember that they heard about, or saw, a man working as a carpenter (e.g., Liben & Signorella, 1980, 1993; Welch-Ross & Schmidt, 1996). Gender schemas seem to affect both how children evaluate behavior and the kinds of behaviors they choose for themselves. In one study, when preschoolers were told either that a boy or a girl had spilled some milk, they judged the behavior more negatively if they believed the child was a boy, apparently based on a “boys are bad” stereotype (Giles & Heyman, 2004). Many studies demonstrate the power of stereotypical beliefs on children’s behavior. For example, when children are shown novel toys described as “girl” toys, girls play with the toys more and remember them better than if the same toys are described as “boy” toys; the reverse is true for boys (see Martin et al., 2002). Gender schema theorists suggest that the schemas children have for their own sex affects what behaviors they choose to learn about and what behaviors they choose for themselves, but they do not account for the exact mechanisms by which schemas are constructed. Social experiences and available role models presumably affect sex differences by affecting what children know or believe about what is gender appropriate. But, according to these theorists, it is the schemas, not the social experiences directly, that motivate children to adopt sex-typed behavior. There is evidence that knowledge of stereotypes influences children’s interests and judgments about what they are good at even when the sex difference is not real. For example, in a large U.S. sample of 6- to 10-year-olds, by second grade children endorsed the stereotype that boys are better than girls in math. Soon after, boys were more likely than girls to see themselves as good at math, even though typically the gender difference in math achievement emerges later in childhood (Cvencek, Meltzoff, & Greenwald, 2011). Research has not yet established clear links, however, between cognitive schemas and actual behavior. Children’s Knowledge of Gender Stereotypes. In general, cognitive theorists assume that the acquisition of knowledge about sex stereotypes influences the feminization and masculinization of children’s behavior, regardless of whether others reward or otherwise pressure children to adopt gender-typed behavior. From this perspective, it is important to learn what children know about sex stereotypes and when they know it if we want to understand the development of sex differences. Two-year-olds show little awareness of gender stereotypes. For example, Gelman, Taylor, and Nguyen (2004) recorded parent–child discussions of pictures depicting children and adults engaged in various activities. In the following exchange between a 2-year-old girl and her mother about a picture of a child playing with a toy truck, the little girl attributes ability not to gender categories but to individuals: Mother: Who can play with toy trucks? Mother: Hm? Child: Um, you. (Later . . .) Mother: Yeah, well who else? Child: Maybe Daddy. Mother: Daddy, yeah. Child: Maybe John. Mother: Yeah. (Source: Gelman et al., 2004, pp. 103–104) But by age 3, most children know something about gender-related preferences for toys and activities, and 4- to 6-year-olds have gendered expectations about people and their behaviors. In fact, 4-year-olds tend to be quite “sexist,” regardless of whether their parents explicitly encourage such stereotyping. Contrast the above exchange with this dialogue from the same study between a 4-year-old boy and his mother about a picture of a male dancer: Mother: Who can be a ballet dancer? Child: I don’t know. Child: Why is that a boy? Mother: Well, can a boy be a ballet dancer? Child: No. Mother: Why not? Child: (sighs) Mother: I’ve seen boy ballet dancers. Child: I don’t think so. (Source: Gelman et al., 2004, p. 106) By school entry, about age 5 or 6, knowledge of gendered activities and occupations is very extensive (Liben, Bigler, & Krogh, 2002; Signorella, Bigler, & Liben, 1993). In middle childhood, children become more aware of psychological stereotypes, such as expecting boys to be more competent, and they begin to expect that a person with one gender-typical trait or behavior will have others as well. By age 10, children are aware of differences in the ways males and females are evaluated in their culture. In particular, they recognize that females and many female-typical behaviors are devalued (Intons-Peterson, 1988). Of course, such awareness may help explain why females show a greater susceptibility to depression beginning in early adolescence than males do. Although knowledge of stereotypes increases dramatically in middle childhood, awareness that people vary in the degree to which they fit their gendered categories also grows. The following example of an exchange between a 6-year-old and her mother illustrates the child’s incipient (if grudging) understanding that gender assignment does not necessarily dictate traits, abilities, or preferences: Mother: Does Cynthia ever play with trucks? Child: Sometimes. Child: Girl trucks. Mother: What are girl trucks? Child: Pink ones. Mother: Does Cynthia have pink trucks? Child: Yeah. Mother: Really? Child: (nods “yes”) Child: Well she has pink cars but not pink trucks. Mother: So she drives the cars while you and Brian drive the trucks? Child: Yup. (Source: Gelman, S.A., Taylor, M.G. & Nguyen, S.P. (2004). Mother-child conversations about gender. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 69 (Serial No. 275). Republished with permission from Wiley-Blackwell.) However, knowledge of stereotypes does not necessarily lead to conduct in keeping with those stereotypes (Liben & Bigler, 2002). Similarly, individuals may vary in their behavior (both consistent with and inconsistent with stereotypes) depending on context (Bandura, 1986). For example, female officers in the United States armed services may behave in stereotypically masculine ways while on duty but may act in more stereotypically feminine ways outside work. A young boy may play house with his sister at home but never do so with other boys at school. Research also indicates that factors other than gender knowledge affect some sex differences. For example, cognitive theories explain children’s preferences for same-sex playmates as a function of the human tendency to value members of one’s own in-group over members of an out-group. Once children identify themselves as male or female, they should quickly begin the gender segregation process. But even though boys tend to learn their own gender category a bit earlier than girls do, girls show same-sex playmate preferences earlier than boys do. As Maccoby (1998) suggested, knowledge of one’s own gender identity may be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for gender segregation. In the next section, we will examine some of the social influences that may directly affect the development of sex differences, including children’s preferences for same-sex playmates. The Role of Parenting in Generating Sex Differences A number of theories, in many different traditions, have argued that parenting practices have a special role to play in the development of sex differences. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory. One of the oldest social influence theories of sex role development is Freud’s psychoanalytic theory (e.g., Freud, 1935/1960; see also Chapter 1). Freud argued that at about age 3, children begin to have vague sexual needs. These needs create a family triangle that plays out somewhat differently for boys versus girls. Boys are buffeted by a tempest of motives and emotions called an Oedipus complex. First, they direct their sexual urges toward their mothers because they are most strongly attached to their mothers as primary caretakers. Then, this desire for the mother, to usurp her time, to be physically close to her, puts a boy in competition with his father for her affections. The boy fears that his more powerful father will retaliate with a physical punishment that fits the crime—castration. Finally, the boy is so terrified by the prospect of his father’s retaliation that he redirects his energy into pleasing his father by identifying with him. This identification process involves both imitation and internalization. Identification explains why boys adopt sex-typed behaviors: They are acting like their fathers. It also explains how boys form a superego, a kind of conscience: They internalize their fathers’ values (see Chapter 7). In Freud’s theory, girls go through a similar process called the Electra complex. They direct their initial sexual desires toward their fathers, even though they too are more strongly attached to their mothers. That is because they experience penis envy, a desire to have what they naively assume is the greater genital pleasure that must come with having the external genitalia of a male. Then they find themselves in competition with their mothers, although their fear of their mothers’ displeasure is not so great as a boy’s because they assume that somehow they have already been castrated. They do not understand that their genitalia are simply more internal than are a boy’s. Eventually, they identify with their mothers to make peace, although because they do not fear castration, they do not identify as closely with their mothers as boys do with their fathers. Thus, girls too become gender typed in their behavior and form a superego. However, neither process is as intense for a girl as it is for a boy. This was Freud’s way of explaining why women are “morally inferior” to men, a belief that was endemic to the time and place in which Freud himself was enculturated. Although many aspects of Freud’s tale of sexual desire, competition, and fear in young children have become deeply embedded in our culture, efforts to validate the theory have been unsuccessful. For example, one prediction we can make from Freud’s theory is that traditional family structure—mother as primary caregiver, father as her sexual partner and a strong presence in the home—should be necessary for children to experience normal sex role development. Yet, sex role development is not impeded in children who come from single-parent homes, nor even in children who come from homes where both parents are of one sex (e.g., Bailey, Bobrow, Wolfe, & Mikach, 1995; Golombok & Tasker, 1996; Patterson, 2004). There is also little evidence that children model themselves after a single identification figure. Rather, research indicates that children will model themselves after others whom they perceive to be like themselves (e.g., same gender; Bussey & Bandura, 1984), as the cognitive theorists predict, and whom they perceive as competent. It also helps if the model is not scary or punitive, but rather is perceived as nurturant (Bandura, 1977). Social Learning Theories. Social learning theorists argue that many parents and other adults influence children’s sex-typed behaviors, both by modeling such behaviors and by differential treatment of boys and girls that teaches them to behave in sex-appropriate ways. Although young children recognize gender differences and can articulate gender stereotypes, parental and other environmental influences have a big influence on gender-typical behaviors as children develop their own gender concepts. What evidence is there that adults actually do behave differently toward children based on gender? First, we should note that in many ways, boys and girls do not appear to be treated differently. Meta-analyses indicate no differences in how much parents interact with their sons and daughters, in how much parents encourage them to achieve, in how much parents encourage help seeking, in how much warmth or responsiveness parents show, or in how effectively parents communicate or reason with them (e.g., Lytton & Romney, 1991). However, there are some important differences in parental behaviors. In what have been dubbed “Baby X” studies, adult participants interact with a baby they do not know (e.g., Seavey, Katz, & Zalk, 1975). When participants think they are interacting with a boy, they are more likely to handle the baby in active ways, such as bouncing; when they think the baby is a girl, they handle it more gently. Participants more often describe boys as big and strong, but they use terms like sweet and pretty more often with girls. As children get older, mothers talk more, use more supportive speech, and talk more about emotions with their daughters (e.g., Dunn, Bretherton, & Munn, 1987; Leaper, Anderson, & Sanders, 1998). Across cultures, girls are more often asked to help with infant sibling care, although across many cultures both boys and girls are recruited to care for young children (Best, 2010). Many parents place more pressure on preschool boys than girls not to cry or express feelings (Block, 1978). There are other parental differences as well, with fathers more likely than mothers to have different expectations of their sons than their daughters (Siegel, 1987). Fathers are more likely to be disapproving of cross-sex behavior in their sons than in their daughters, more likely to roughhouse with their sons, and more likely to be negative or confrontational with them (Maccoby, 1998). In the United States, this is true for Black, White and Latino fathers, who also engage in more literacy activities with their daughters than their sons by the time their children are 2 years old (Leavell, Tamis-LeMonda, Ruble, Zosuls, & Cabrera, 2012). Indeed, Katz and Walsh (1991) suggest that children come to see men as “the custodians of gender-role norms” (p. 349). Leavell et al. (2012) note that “fathers channel their children toward gender-typed activities well before their children have a clear understanding of gender roles” (p. 53). In some Western societies, boys typically experience stronger pressure to conform to gender-stereotypic behavior than do girls because the sanctions when boys deviate from such norms are more severe than they are for girls (Sandnabba & Ahlberg, 1999). Other differences in adult socialization practices with boys versus girls may be particularly important in laying the groundwork for later sex differences in psychopathology. Keenan and Shaw (1997) reviewed a number of findings that are consistent with such a conclusion. They report that preschool girls, in contrast to boys, are more often reinforced by their parents for compliant behavior and more often ignored for attempts to direct interaction in free-play situations (Kerig, Cowan, & Cowan, 1993). Parents also socialize children to deal with conflict in different ways. Girls are more frequently encouraged to yield to peers in conflict situations, for example, by giving up a desired toy (Ross, Tesla, Kenyon, & Lollis, 1990). Girls are also taught, to a greater degree than boys, to take others’ perspectives and feelings into account in situations involving conflict (Smetana, 1989). Preschool teachers have sometimes been found to react more negatively to girls than to boys for high levels of activity, including activity levels during play, and more positively to girls than to boys for dependency behaviors (Fagot, 1984). In sum, these authors conclude that there is evidence to suggest that early socialization experiences help channel the development of internalizing behaviors in girls and externalizing behaviors in boys. Some research also suggests that parents’ socialization behaviors can subtly vary depending on factors such as family composition and cultural background (see Leaper, 2002; Ruble et al., 2006). For example, in families with both male and female children, a mother’s behaviors are more affected by the gender of the child she is relating to than in families with only girls or only boys (McHale, Crouter, & Whiteman, 2003). African American mothers convey less traditional gender-typed attitudes to their children than European American mothers, whereas Latina mothers convey more traditional attitudes (see Ruble et al., 2006). When we evaluate typical differences in parents’ socialization practices, we have to ask, to what extent are adults’ behaviors causing sex differences in children, as social learning theorists would argue, and to what extent are they responses to already existing sex differences? As we have seen so many times, the causal processes here seem to be reciprocal. For example, parents make more attempts to “down-regulate” boys’ emotional responses in the preschool years (Block, 1978), but boys may also be slower to develop self-regulatory skills than girls. It seems likely that parents are influenced in part by the fact that boys have more impulsive emotional outbursts and in part by their desire to teach boys not to display weakness (Maccoby, 1998). Another example is that parents talk more to their daughters than to their sons. This may influence girls’ language development, but girls’ vocabulary growth begins earlier than boys’, and toddler girls are more talkative than toddler boys, which may help influence parents’ behavior as well (Leaper & Smith, 2004). The Role of Peer Interactions in Generating Sex Differences We have already emphasized how intensive the sex segregation process is, beginning as early as 2½ years of age, and becoming by middle childhood the most extreme sex difference that there is: Girls spend much of their unstructured time with girls, boys with boys. As we have seen, gender segregation may be influenced by cognitive processes, such that when children become aware of their gender identity, they value members of the same in-group more than members of the out-group. Some preexisting sex differences, influenced by either biology or parenting or both, may also make same-gender companions more appealing. In particular, Maccoby (1990, 1998) has suggested that girls tend to be wary of boys’ rough play and to turn away from it. If so, initial differences in children’s play styles are then magnified in same-gender peer groups. Here is a plausible scenario: Individual boys, each prenatally sensitized (or primed by parents) to respond positively to overtures for rough, arousing play, will choose each other as playmates. . . . And girls, individually sensitized by their parents to others’ feelings, or in a state of greater readiness to receive socialization inputs of this kind from their parents, will use (their) attributes to build a new and distinctively female type of interaction with their playmates . . . the whole is greater than the sum of its parts . . . merging individual children . . . into a group, will produce a new form of interaction that is different from what they have experienced with their parents. (Maccoby, 1998, pp. 296–297) The important point is that within their gendered peer groups children develop interaction styles that are more differentiated than either biology or parenting would predict (see Martin et al., 2005). Martin and Fabes (2001) observed 3- to 5-year-olds’ play-partner choices over a 6-month period. They found that “sex segregation was pervasive” among their 61 study participants. Over 80% of the children had clear same-sex play-partner preferences, even though teachers encouraged gender equity, and the stability of these preferences increased over the 6 months of the study. The results also demonstrated that same-sex peers seem to have a socializing influence on children, just as Maccoby suggests. Stereotyped sex differences, such as activity level differences, “developed or increased over time.” Most interesting was that there was a social dosage effect: Children who spent more time in same-gender groups showed greater increases in gender-related behaviors even after only a few months. The social dosage effect also has been reported in studies of older children and adolescents (McHale, Kim, Dotterer, Crouter, & Booth, 2009). In adolescence, when boys and girls begin to build cross-gender groups and relationships, their different interaction styles can create difficulties. For example, in studies of mixed-sex problem-solving groups, young women can be at a disadvantage. They tend to express agreement with others more often than young men do, consistent with their gendered discourse style, but unlike their experience in all-female peer groups, they may never get their chance to speak because males do less turn taking and are more domineering. Overall, they tend to have less influence on the outcome (Carli, 1990). Similarly, in heterosexual dyads, males do not offer as much support to their partners as females do for the expression of feelings. As you might expect, males seem less well prepared for the mutuality of intimate relationships, perhaps because of the discourse style they acquire in their larger, less intimate childhood groups (Leaper, 1994). Gilligan (e.g., 1993) and Pipher (1994) describe females as “losing their voice” when they reach adolescence because they feel pressure to adapt themselves to what others want them to be. As we saw in Chapter 7, there is little evidence that girls’ level of voice is compromised in this sense at adolescence (Harter et al., 1998; Steinberg & Monahan, 2007). Perhaps, instead, the more cooperative discourse style of females, in the face of the more egoistic male style, makes girls and women less powerful agents when interacting with males than when they are interacting with other females. A Multidimensional Theory of Sex Differences in Behavior As we have seen, several different explanations for gender differences in behavior have some empirical support, but all of them have some important limitations as well. Clearly what is needed is a multidimensional theory that takes into account multiple causal influences and that specifies how these influences transact to produce gender differences. A social-cognitive theory proposed by Bussey and Bandura (1999; see also Bandura & Bussey, 2004) takes a more complex approach to gender differences than the causal explanations we have considered so far. Bussey and Bandura specify three categories of variables that interact reciprocally to help shape the development of gender role, including gender differences in behavior. These factors include personal influences (cognitive conceptions of gender, affective, and biological features of the person), behavioral influences (learning of and execution of activities that are gender linked), and environmental influences (family, peer, and societal). All these influences interact reciprocally to mold the motivational and self-regulatory structures that determine behavior. For example, family and societal influences contribute to children’s knowledge base about gender and gender-linked competencies by serving as models and by providing rewards or sanctions for gender-appropriate or inappropriate behavior. In addition, both proximal and distal social forces help shape children’s patterns of expectations about how genders behave, their beliefs about how these behaviors will be evaluated by others, and their constructions about their own competence to enact the behaviors in gender-appropriate ways. Although Bussey and Bandura (1999) specify that affective and biological features of the person are important, in their more detailed analyses of how various causes interact in gender role development they tend to emphasize social (especially parental) and cognitive factors. They suggest that at least initially adult sanctions and direct teaching contribute most to the production of behaviors that are considered gender appropriate. As you have seen, research attests to the important role that children’s early socialization experiences play in the development of gender-linked behavior. Clearly, there are differences across cultures in the specifics of gender-appropriate behavior, but most cultures do place restrictions on what the genders should and should not do. Yet these behaviors are not shaped just by patterns of external contingencies. Children grow increasingly more adept at monitoring and evaluating themselves according to personal standards and according to the circumstances of the contexts in which they find themselves. Thus, cognitive factors play a larger role as children get older. Self-regulatory functions become progressively more internalized and direct children’s behavior in ways that maximize self-satisfaction and minimize self-censure (Bandura, 1986). Children learn to anticipate the consequences of their actions and can thus predict the responses their behaviors will elicit from others. These emerging capacities for self-monitoring and prediction are linked to the development of internalized standards for performance, largely based upon how others in the social world have responded to the behavior, the models that have been observed, and what has been taught directly. Gender-linked behavior is thus maintained by ongoing social influences operating through psychological mechanisms such as motivation, expectancy for success, and self-efficacy. These internal mechanisms have been constructed in the process of interacting with a world in which gender is a highly salient social category. Social-cognitive theory specifies that socialization by others and the self is embedded in cultural context. Not surprisingly, many gender differences described in this chapter are attenuated or even reversed in some cultures. For example, boys are typically more competitive than girls in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, but not in India. And in Israel, boys tend to be less competitive than girls (Strube, 1981). Among the cultural factors that seem to be important for some gender differences is how egalitarian a society’s attitudes and institutions are. As you saw with math achievement, the more egalitarian the society, the fewer gender differences we tend to find. Bussey and Bandura (1999) provide an attempt to take into account some of the complexity of interacting causal processes in gender role development, but much more work is needed to construct a theory that includes all the influences that we have seen to be important. Future theorists, for example, need to integrate the recent findings on peers’ power to affect the development of gendered behavior. In the next section, we will take a broader look at the whole arena of peer relationships and the place of peers in the lives of children. Peer Relationships In 1958, the Primary Mental Health Project, a program for early identification of at-risk students, was initiated in the first grades of several schools in Monroe County, New York. Data from social work interviews with mothers, classroom observations, teacher reports, other school records, and psychological evaluations such as intelligence, personality, and achievement tests were compiled for each of the children in the hope of identifying variables that would predict later adjustment difficulties. Based on these multiple measures, children were given either a “red” or “non-red” tag. Red-tagged first graders were those whose behavior, educational achievement, and social-emotional functioning reflected moderate to severe maladaptation. Out of the total of three academic-year samples (1958–1959, 1959–1960, and 1960–1961), approximately one third of the youngsters received red tags (Cowen et al., 1963). In a separate and fortunate development, the Medical Center of the University of Rochester initiated a county psychiatric registry concurrent with the school-based project. This registry provided an ongoing, longitudinal record of most persons in the county who were diagnosed with mental health problems and who had received treatment. These two unrelated sources of information made it possible to track the histories of the children in the Primary Mental Health Project 11 to 13 years later by means of registry entries (Cowen, Petersen, Babigian, Izzo, & Trost, 1973). As they moved into early adulthood, individuals who had been red-tagged as children showed up in the registry in disproportionate numbers. They represented more than two out of every three individuals on the list of those needing psychiatric care. You already know from reading the previous chapters that there is evidence for continuity of behavioral and emotional problems over time, so this is not too surprising. What is intriguing about this story, however, is what predicted these later problems best. In other words, what kinds of measures separated youth who ended up in the registry from their age-mates who did not? If researchers had known the answer to this question, they might have been able to identify and treat children before more serious problems surfaced. Remember that the researchers administered intelligence, personality, and achievement tests; obtained behavior rating scale data; amassed grade and attendance information; and interviewed parents. They also asked the children themselves to nominate their peers for various hypothetical roles, half positive (e.g., the lead character) and half negative (e.g., the villain) in a “Class Play” exercise (Bower, 1960). Researchers found through retrospective comparison that individuals on the county registry performed slightly less well than their age-mates on most assessment measures, but not significantly so. There was, however, one important exception: The extent to which children were nominated by their grade school peers for negative roles in the class play significantly predicted later membership in the registry. Children far and away outpredicted the adults in recognizing those children destined for later psychological problems. What did these children know? As we have seen in our discussion of sex role development, peers are a significant force in the lives of children. The story of how effectively grade school children’s feelings predicted their peers’ later mental health outcomes introduces us to the fascinating world of the peer group, its dynamics in childhood and adolescence, and its relevance to later outcomes. In particular, it implies that peer relationships in childhood are significant predictors of later mental health and social adjustment. The Peer Group, Social Competence, and Social Skills What makes for good peer relationships? To answer this question, we need to understand something about the nature of peer groups and the distinctions researchers make between social competence and particular social skills. The study of the peer group may be distinguished from the study of simple social interactions or even the study of friendship relationships in ways that are familiar to helping professionals working in therapeutic settings. Group counseling, for example, differs from individual counseling not only because there are more people involved in the process but also because the interrelationships and dynamics become much more complex. Groups are more than mere aggregates of relationships; through emergent properties such as norms or shared cultural conventions, groups help define the type and range of relationships and interactions that are likely or permissible. Further, groups have properties and processes, such as hierarchical organization and cohesiveness, that are not relevant to descriptions of children’s experiences at lower levels of social complexity. (Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 1998, p. 623) Social competence, a criterion for peer group acceptance, is a broad construct that is not restricted to one set of prescribed behaviors. Affective responses, such as empathy and valuing of relationships, and cognitive processes, such as perspective taking (see Chapter 5) and ability to make mature moral judgments (see Chapter 7), play a part in the repertoire of the socially adept individual. It is impossible to assess the social competence of a child without considering his skill in relating to others at every relationship level. Social but “nonfriend” interactions, as well as friendship relationships, are embedded within the larger peer group structure, each influencing and influenced by the other levels of social exchange. Remember, then, that a child’s success or lack of success within his peer group is not independent of basic interaction skills or the kinds of friendship skills we discussed in Chapter 6. Around the world, children find friends among their peer groups, favoring others of the same gender and with similar interests. Good social skills are important contributors to socially competent behavior at every level of interaction. They may be defined as discrete, observable behaviors such as making eye contact, using appropriate language, asking appropriate questions, and so forth that promote effective social interaction and that are part of the broader construct of social competence. Social skills training approaches grew out of the recognition that students who have peer group problems lack certain essential social skills or behave in ways that are counterproductive to smooth social exchange. Consequently, modeling, coaching, and reinforcement processes are used to teach students how to interact more adaptively in very basic ways. Both correlational and experimental studies of social skills training programs lend modest support to their usefulness in improving peer acceptance (see Bierman, 2003; Ladd & Asher, 1985; Ladd & Mize, 1983; Michelson, Sugai, Wood, & Kazdin, 1983). One possible reason for their limited effects is the unidirectional approach typically employed in these interventions. In other words, treatment often assumes that the socially troubled individual owns the problem. There is evidence, however, that if children are disliked, peers also process information about them in biased ways. For example, children interpret negative acts as intentionally malicious when committed by disliked children but not when committed by popular children (Dodge, Pettit, McClaskey, & Brown, 1986; Veenstra, Lindenberg, Munniksma, & Dijkstra, 2010). Bierman (1986, 2003) found that greater success could be achieved by combining social skills training for individual children with attempts to enhance the cooperative nature of these children’s peer groups. Thus, addressing the context within which the socially unskilled child functions, along with the transactional nature of his social interactions, allows for more lasting improvements. Social competence, including particular social skills, helps children experience success in friendship relationships. The same holds for children’s success in the larger peer context. Peer groups are complicated webs of social relationships, including friendship dyads, cliques, and crowds. These complex social networks emerge and take on great significance for children as early as middle childhood (Hallinan, 1979). In contrast, the social worlds of preschoolers and early elementary school children are less intricately constructed. By middle childhood, voluntary social or friendship groups of three to nine members, called cliques, become more common, although they are still rather informal. At this age the group’s structure is flexible, and member turnover is common. The importance of cliques reaches a peak in early adolescence, followed by a general decline in importance over the course of high school (called degrouping; see Shrum & Cheek, 1987). Crowds are larger, reputation-based groups, composed of numerous cliques, that become more important in midadolescence (Dunphy, 1963). The significance of both cliques and crowds for adolescent development will be discussed in Chapter 10. The peer group serves many important functions for children and adolescents. It provides opportunities for practice in communication, conflict resolution, joint goal setting, cooperative learning, and shared decision making. Important interpersonal goals—such as the development of empathy, tolerance for others, and a sense of belonging—are met within groups of peers. Skills acquired in activities such as team sports may provide training for certain competitive aspects of adult work roles (Lever, 1978). The peer group is like a real-world laboratory where the skills of living with and getting along with others are tried out and improved. Zarbatany, Hartmann, and Rankin (1990) explored the function of competitive activities (sports, physical games) and noncompetitive activities (talking on telephone, watching TV) within peer groups of early adolescents. These authors found that the two kinds of activities were important for facilitating different aspects of socioemotional development and social competence. Whereas participation in competitive activities provided opportunities for self-understanding by defining personal strengths and weaknesses, participation in noncompetitive activities enhanced a sense of acceptance and belonging in relationship to others. Analysis of the World of Peers Sarah is a sixth grader who attends middle school in a midsized school district. The school is a mix of White, Black, and Asian youngsters whose families live and work in the surrounding communities. Some parents work in the new technology industry developing on the outskirts of the town center. Others are employed in the one manufacturing plant that still operates downtown. Sarah is a talented member of her school’s track team and sings in the concert choir. She is active in her school’s student council as well. She has a few close friends whom she has known since early elementary school. Sarah is the one whom they depend on if they need some advice or help. She loves to spend time with her friends, texting, talking on the phone and going to movies. Recently, Sarah’s social life has become more important to her than ever. She spends a great deal of time in consultation with her friends, discussing what to wear and planning social activities. She pays a little less attention to her schoolwork now that she has so many other things to think about in her life. However, she still manages to maintain a B+ average. What can we say about Sarah and her place on the social map of middle school? The attempt to answer this question presents us with an interesting challenge. We have noted the complexity of peer group structures, so you may have already guessed that there are several levels of analysis. In general, researchers have approached this question from two complementary yet distinct perspectives: analysis of the individual group member’s characteristics within the peer group network and analysis of the different groups within the universe of peer groups. The first approach would help us understand Sarah’s status within her peer group and would typically depend on sociometric assessment. The second approach would help us understand the number and nature of the peer groups in Sarah’s school and would depend on more ethnographic means of analysis. Measurement of Individuals Within the Peer Group Sociometry Before we can understand the kinds of categories that describe children’s status within peer groups, we need to appreciate the means by which these differences were first identified. Sociometry, the classic way of assessing social competence, had its origins in the work of Moreno (1934), who used children’s nomination of their peers to evaluate peer status. Moreno viewed group processes as a mixture of positive forces (attractions), negative forces (repulsions), and indifference (absence of attraction or repulsion). He proposed that the interpersonal relationships within a group could be mapped out on the basis of knowing these social forces. Since this introduction by Moreno, sociometric techniques have diversified and have been applied in a variety of ways. McConnell and Odom (1986) offer the general definition of sociometric measures as “tests in which children make preferential responses to statements about peers in their social group” (p. 217), resulting in a score that defines a child’s social status. Typically, children might be asked to select the classmate or classmates he would most like to play with, work with, or sit next to in class. Although many varieties of analysis have been used in sociometric studies, such as weighting the nominations, the most straightforward approach is to count the number of positive nominations or mentions a child receives. This number, then, reflects the child’s social preference score. Sociometric techniques are most useful when they also include negative nominations, or children’s mention of peers with whom they do not want to work or play. Researchers have found that children who are rejected by peers cannot be identified without the inclusion of negative nominations (Hartup, Glazer, & Charlesworth, 1967). Social preference scores may range from highly positive to highly negative. A second score, called social impact, is computed by adding up the total number of nominations, both positive and negative. This measure indicates the degree to which the child gets noticed within his group (see Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006). Sociometric Categories Based on their scores on the dimensions of social impact and social preference, children can be classified into a variety of sociometric categories. Contemporary researchers most often use the methodology and categories identified by Coie and his associates (Coie, Dodge, & Coppotelli, 1982), which include five subgroups: popular, average, neglected, rejected, and controversial. Popular children receive many positive nominations and few negative nominations from their peers (high preference, high impact). Generally, they are well-liked members of the group and have relatively high visibility among their peers. Remember, however, that the term popular refers to a specific sociometric category and has a slightly more forgiving meaning than does the contemporary use of the term. In other words, a student does not have to be the captain of the football team to achieve popular status! Average children are those who receive an average number of positive and negative nominations (near the mean for the group on preference and impact). Neglected children are those who receive few nominations, either positive or negative. This latter group is characterized by its low level of social impact. Students who fall into the rejected category receive many negative and few positive nominations. They are typically disliked (low preference) but have generally high visibility (high impact). The final category, called controversial, identifies a relatively small group of students who receive many positive and many negative nominations (high impact, average preference). They have been named controversial because they share many of the characteristics of both popular and rejected youngsters. They are seen by some peers as aggressive but as class leaders by others. These categories are presented graphically in Figure 8.4. FIGURE 8.4 Dimensions and types of social statuses. SOURCE: Coie, J. D., Dodge, K. A., & Coppotelli, H. (1982). Dimensions and types of social status: A cross-age perspective, Developmental Psychology, 18, 557–570. Adapted with permission from the American Psychological Association. Individual Characteristics Related to Sociometric Status What are the children in these categories like? Although it is tempting to think of each group as homogeneous in personality and behavior and thus clearly separable from the others, this kind of simplicity does not fit well with the facts. For example, all rejected children do not behave in aggressive ways. Nor do aggressive rejected children always behave aggressively. Popular children, despite their good qualities, are not perfect. They may also experience peer-related problems from time to time. In this section, we will describe general identifying characteristics of the groups, with greatest emphasis on popular, rejected, and neglected categories, the three groups most frequently studied. The controversial category has been more difficult to examine because of its much smaller size and lack of measurement stability. Remember that the categories suggest general tendencies to behave or to process social information in certain ways much, but not all, of the time. Popular Popular children are notable for their use of perspective-taking skills. Upon entering a group, these children can adopt the group’s frame of reference and join in without calling undue attention to themselves or to their own needs (Putallaz & Wasserman, 1990). They can be assertive, but they are not deliberately antagonistic or disruptive to others (Dodge, Schlundt, Schocken, & Delugach, 1983). In this, they demonstrate high levels of self-regulation and self-control. Popular children also manifest greater cognitive and social problem-solving ability than do children from other groups. Black and Hazan (1990) studied the language patterns of popular preschool children and found them to be particularly adept at communicating clearly with others and following others’ conversations. Positive correlations have also been found between popular status and perceived social self-concept (Harter, 1981) and self-efficacy (Ladd & Price, 1987). For college students, high sociometric status (being liked and admired by peers) is a powerful predictor of feelings of well-being (Anderson, Kraus, Galinsky, & Keltner, 2012). In general, popular students tend to be prosocial, cooperative, intelligent, and capable of working well with others. They are likely to enjoy close, dyadic relationships with friends, although the domains of popularity and friendship are not necessarily overlapping. In other words, popularity is not a prerequisite for friendship. Sociometrically average and neglected groups also develop friendships. Peer acceptance and friendship make separate contributions to children’s overall adjustment. For example, loneliness in adolescence is more closely associated with lack of friendships than with low peer acceptance (see Ruben et al., 2006). Certain other attributes, such as physical attractiveness (Langlois & Stephan, 1981) and scholastic competence (Coie & Krehbiehl, 1984), are also associated with popular status. If you think about Sarah, the sixth grader from our earlier example, you might conclude her sociometric status to be popular. Rejected The children who are rejected by their peers have received a great deal of research attention. Rejected children are the least socially skilled of all the groups and also the most heterogeneous category. Originally, researchers took the position that aggression was the primary attribute of children in this social group. In fact, being aggressive is still the most commonly cited behavior associated with being rejected by peers (e.g., Haselager, Cillessen, van Lieshout, Riksen-Walraven, & Hartup, 2002). However, it soon became clear that children can be rejected not only because they aggress against their peers (rejected-aggressive group) but also because they withdraw from them (rejected-withdrawn group). Both highly aggressive and highly withdrawn children can face rejection by peers. Efforts to enhance peer acceptance may be more effective when they address both rejected children and their peer groups as a whole. The characteristics of rejected children contrast sharply with those of the popular group. Instead of modulating negativity, as is the case with popular children, rejected-aggressive youngsters demonstrate high levels of instrumental aggression, verbal negativity, and disruptiveness. You might wonder whether these children are rejected because they are aggressive or act aggressively because they have been rejected. Several longitudinal studies demonstrate a causal link between aggression and subsequent rejection. This evidence is different from most sociometric research findings because it helps to explain what causes a child to be rejected. Over a period of several days, Dodge (1983) observed the interactions of small groups of children who initially did not know each other. After each play session, children were asked to complete a sociometric measure for their group. As the experiment progressed, some children began to take on popular status, whereas others were rejected. As in other studies of this type (Coie & Kupersmidt, 1983; Kupersmidt, Burchinal, & Patterson, 1995), aggression was the characteristic that best predicted rejection by the other children when all other differences were controlled. In addition to aggression, rejected youngsters are more likely to demonstrate lower levels of perspective taking, self-control, and positive social interaction skills. Particular deficits in information processing, marked by perceptions of hostile intent or hostile attributional bias (see Chapter 7), are significant features of their social cognition. Once rejected, these youngsters are prevented from engaging in the very kinds of social interactions that might help them develop more positive social skills. If you remember Jason, our example from Chapter 7, you might imagine him fitting into the rejected category. Controversial children also demonstrate high levels of aggressive behavior, but they possess correspondingly positive attributes, such as greater sociability and cognitive ability, that buffer their abrasive characteristics and may make them attractive to their peers. As we indicated earlier, however, aggression is not characteristic of all rejected children. Even though estimates indicate that approximately 50% are aggressive (Bierman, 1986), another 10% to 20% are extremely withdrawn (Parkhurst & Asher, 1992). Interestingly, social withdrawal begins to elicit the disapproval of peers in middle to late childhood. Whereas isolation in early childhood is not nearly so stigmatizing (Younger, Gentile, & Burgess, 1993), presumably because it is not very important at this age, extreme social withdrawal in middle to late childhood is perceived as deviant and may provoke rejection by the group (Rubin, Coplan & Bowker, 2009). Rejected-withdrawn children are more socially anxious than other groups and likely to behave in socially inappropriate ways. Poor perspective-taking skills and general social ineptness may lead these youngsters to behave in ways that are considered odd, infantile, unpredictable, or potentially embarrassing to peers. Consequently, popular peers may ostracize them, just as they ostracize their more aggressive counterparts, for failing to fit in. Children in the rejected category are at special risk for peer victimization (e.g., Hanish & Guerra, 2004). Both rejected-aggressive and rejected-withdrawn children do have social networks, but their social groups are smaller and are characterized by lower levels of intimacy and interaction (e.g., Ladd, Kochenderfer-Ladd, Eggum, Kochel, & McConnell, 2011). Overall, it is important for helping professionals to recognize that rejected children are a heterogeneous group. Neglected Neglected children can be distinguished from children in the average group primarily because they have somewhat lower levels of peer interaction. In their meta-analysis of peer relations studies, Newcomb, Bukowski, and Pattee (1993) reported some differences between neglected and average groups. Sociometrically neglected children are less aggressive than average children, are less likely to be highly visible within the peer group, and show less sociability, but they are perceived by their peers as relatively likeable. These authors conclude that neglected children are simply not choosing to participate very actively within their group of peers. Unlike rejected-withdrawn children, peers do not make them feel especially anxious (Ladd et al., 2011). Children in the neglected group are similar to those in the average group in their ability to have friendships and are as likely as other children to have a best friend (Ruben et al., 2009). Therefore, even though this group has certain sociometrically distinctive characteristics, neglected children are similar to average children in many respects. Being neglected, as distinct from being in the rejected-withdrawn subgroup, which also incurs high levels of peer neglect, does not seem to be associated with developmental problems (Rubin et al., 2006). Average Average children, as you might have guessed, receive an average number of nominations. They are at neither extreme on the impact or preference dimensions. They show lower levels of social competence than popular children and less aggression than rejected-aggressive youngsters. As with the neglected group, no problematic outcomes are associated with this sociometric category. Gender and Cultural Differences Differences between boys and girls across sociometric classifications have received relatively little research attention (Rubin et al., 2006; Ruble et al., 2006). Those studies that have addressed gender differences report that as children get older, particularly as they approach adolescence, greater intolerance of gender-inconsistent behavior is expressed for males than for females. Boys are more likely to be rejected for behaving in feminine ways, whereas girls who behave in masculine ways are more likely to be accepted by their peers (Berndt & Heller, 1986). Perhaps for this reason, socially withdrawn girls are less likely to be rejected than similar boys. It seems that shyness and social anxiety is perceived as more normative for girls (Gazelle, 2008). Much of the data on peer relations and social status groups is drawn from research in the United States and Canada. Yet it seems very likely that peer relationships, including judgments of social behavior that affect acceptance or rejection of peers, would vary in different cultural contexts. Only limited information exists on cultural differences in peer group classifications, and some of it indicates that differences in values do have important effects. In China, for example, popular children are likely to be cautious, restrained, and shy (e.g., Chen, Ruben, & Li, 1995), whereas in North America such children are often rejected. Shy, socially anxious Chinese children are more likely to meet with approval and cooperation when they make social gestures, whereas North American children are likely to be ignored or victimized. Interestingly, some recent work indicates that things may be changing in China. Shyness and social withdrawal put children more at risk for social problems and feelings of depression than they once did (see Rubin, Coplan, Chen, Bowker, & McDonald, 2011). Chang et al. (2005) argue that over time, cultural change in China has weakened the link between shyness and popularity. Generally, across Western and non-Western cultures, aggression is associated with peer rejection, and helpfulness is associated with popularity (e.g., Chang et al., 2005; see also Ruben et al., 2006). However, aggressive behavior is not necessarily associated with rejection in North America. When aggressive children are more socially competent in other ways (e.g., good at perspective taking) they may be considered part of the controversial category we have just discussed, and may even be perceived as popular, especially as children get older (e.g., Rodkin & Roisman, 2010; see Chapter 10). Research in China indicates that aggression is more severely sanctioned there, and that aggressive children are more likely to feel isolated, perhaps because of greater emphasis on maintaining harmony (see Rubin et al., 2011). And yet, a nationally representative study involving over 9,000 middle school children in China found bullying to be an important problem, with over 25% of both boys and girls affected (Cheng et al., 2010). Overall, it appears that despite some cross-cultural variation, aggressive behavior in children is a universal problem, with consequences for the perpetrators and the victims. Even though all children, regardless of culture, are likely to experience some peer conflicts, societies differ in how adults intervene. In societies that value individualism, such as the U.S., children are often encouraged to verbally defend themselves, to negotiate, and to seek fairness for themselves, often with an adult acting as arbitrator. In more collectivist cultures, such as China and Japan, children at odds with peers are not likely to be singled out or to be encouraged to act on their own behalf. Rather, adults are likely to expect the peer group to manage the conflict and to establish harmony among themselves, bringing each child’s behavior into line with group expectations (e.g., Tobin, Wu, & Davidson, 1989; see also Greenfield, Suzuki, & Rothstein-Fisch, 2006). There is an important lesson here for helping professionals: In a multi-cultural society such as the United States . . . there is a tendency for each interactant to see the other’s behavior through the implicit lens of his or her own value system. It is therefore important for educators and clinicians to be aware of the potential differences between children to help each child to better understand that children may have different perspectives on proper peer interaction, and that these differences can be acknowledged, respected, and even appreciated. (Greenfield et al., 2006, p. 684) Stability of Categories and Outcomes Once classified, do children maintain their status in the peer group throughout childhood and adolescence? Many researchers have studied the long-term stability of these sociometric classifications (Asher & Dodge, 1986; Newcomb & Bukowski, 1984) and have found that the most extreme categories (popular and rejected) are also the most stable, at least over short periods (Rubin et al., 2006). Both neglected and controversial status categories show instability even in the short term. Those studies that have looked at the long-term stability of sociometric classifications have produced mixed results. In general, the impact of peer group classification is moderately stable, particularly for the broad dimensions of acceptance and rejection, with the category of peer rejection being the most stable of all. Denham and Holt (1993) propose that this stability stems from children’s early experience with each other. Once a child’s reputation has been formed on the basis of early social interaction, his reputation endures despite evidence to the contrary. What are the long-term outcomes for children who belong to these different categories? Recently, a number of prospective or follow-up studies have used early peer group designations to predict later performance on various measures of adjustment, much like that of the Rochester Registry. The broad-based categories of early acceptance and rejection have been studied most frequently and provide the most consistent results. Not surprisingly, peer acceptance has been associated with myriad positive outcomes, both psychologically and academically. The outcomes change dramatically, however, for rejected-aggressive children, who often have poorer academic records, are more likely to repeat grades, are absent more frequently, are at greater risk of dropping out, and report more criminal behavior and drug use (see Coie, Terry, Lenox, & Lochman, 1995; Ladd & Burgess, 1999; Parker & Asher, 1987; Wentzel & Asher, 1995). The strongest linkages, by far, have been found between early aggression and peer rejection on one hand, and later externalizing problems on the other hand—the early-starter model of antisocial development described in Chapter 7 (see Dodge et al., 2003). Researchers have also investigated outcomes for rejected-withdrawn youngsters and have found evidence for later internalizing problems such as depression and loneliness (e.g., Gazelle & Rudolph, 2004). This is especially true for children who have no friendships (see Rubin et al., 2006). A prospective study by Ladd and Burgess (1999) followed three groups of children from kindergarten through second grade: aggressive, withdrawn, and those with a comorbid profile of aggression and withdrawal. Consistent with predictions from developmental psychopathology, the children with multiple risks were predisposed to the most severe and enduring outcomes. The children who exhibited aggression and withdrawal in kindergarten were the most likely of all the groups to have troubled relationships with teachers and peers in second grade, to report more loneliness and dissatisfaction, and to express greater feelings of victimization. Measurement of the Peer Group: Another Level of Analysis Let us turn our attention to peer groups, the cliques and crowds we referred to earlier. These are networks of like-minded individuals who become associated with a specific set of norms, dress, and behaviors, like “jocks” or “brains.” When we examine peer processes from this angle, we do not focus on the accepted or rejected status of particular children. It is certainly possible to be a popular member of a group of jocks as well as a popular brain. These peer groups appear to develop more significance in late childhood to early adolescence for the reasons specified in previous sections of this chapter. Moreover, adolescents may be better able to recognize and describe their peer groups effectively because they become increasingly proficient in thinking abstractly about categories as a function of their cognitive development. Brown (1990) noted that the term peer group has been used rather loosely in the past, often applied to the whole spectrum of peer relationships, from dyadic friendships to membership in large crowds. This lack of clarity compromises our understanding of the role that each type of relationship plays in development. We use the terms peer group and clique somewhat interchangeably here, consistent with the view that these units are small enough to allow for regular interaction among members and to serve as the center of most peer-related interaction. Crowds, as we noted earlier, are larger collectives, composed of multiple cliques, which serve as social categories for students rather than as actual friendship groups. You might think of crowds as actual peer “cultures” that represent approaches to behavior, attitudes, and values. In Chapter 10, we will take a closer look at crowds. As we noted already, crowds are a more potent force in the lives of middle and late adolescents than for elementary school and early adolescent children. Peer group analysis at the level of cliques and crowds can be done in various ways. In general, identification of peer groups or cliques requires students to specify who “hangs around” with whom in their classroom. Based on this information, maps of the social structure of classrooms or schools can be drawn using sophisticated methodologies such as social network analysis (Cairns, Gariepy, & Kindermann, 1990) or composite social-cognitive mapping (Kindermann, 1993). Why Do Cliques Form? Perhaps you are wondering why cliques surface in middle childhood and take on such significance in the first place. Common terms such as in-group, clique, pecking order, and even more pedantic ones like status hierarchy make many adults uncomfortable, particularly when these terms are applied to children. This is so because these descriptors imply a set of winners and losers in the game of social relationships. Adults often prefer to believe that children are less critical and more tolerant of each other than these descriptors suggest. But like it or not, there is strong evidence for the existence of stable status groups among children and adolescents. What motivates the development of distinct cliques? Two major forces are at work: first, the need to establish an identity, and second, the need for acceptance (approval) and belonging. As we shall see in Chapter 10, peers play a central role in the process of identity or self-development. The search for the self rests largely on comparing oneself to and distinguishing oneself from others by means of social comparison processes (see Chapter 6). One’s own identity becomes more distinct to the degree that it can be contrasted to that of another. Children who tend to dress, act, or otherwise express themselves in similar ways gravitate to each other. Together, they form a type of social group that provides some identity to its own members and a basis of comparison to, and for, others. A group’s identity is based on shared activities, values, clothes, and behaviors (see Fiske & Taylor, 1991, for a review). Recognizing and understanding group characteristics helps early adolescents construct a map of the social world and provides them with a knowledge base about human differences. Individuals’ needs for acceptance and belonging also help explain the significance of the peer group. Children as well as adults want to be liked by their associates and will typically engage in the kinds of behaviors that result in their friends’ praise or approval (Hartup, 1983). In addition to this kind of external social reinforcement, youngsters are also motivated by more internal goals. Berndt and Keefe (1996) argue that children and adolescents are intrinsically motivated to identify with their friends in behavior, dress, and academic achievement, but because they get satisfaction from emulating their friends’ characteristics and being part of a group, not because they fear retribution if they fail to conform. Peer Groups’ Influence on Behavior Our understanding of peer group processes must accommodate the power of both their beneficial as well as their potentially harmful aspects. As a helper, you have undoubtedly read about peer pressure. If you are also the parent of a middle or high school–aged child, you may have lost some sleep over it. Adults frequently blame early to late adolescent behavior and misbehavior on peer pressure, a notion that almost always has a negative connotation. They may imagine that children and adolescents are forced to conform to peer group standards to avoid humiliation or punishment. No one disagrees that peers become increasingly more influential as children mature. However, studies also show that the influence of peers is primarily indirect rather than overtly coercive (Berndt, Miller, & Park, 1989). Furthermore, peers can motivate students to engage in beneficial as well as risky behaviors, such as avoidance of drugs (Steinberg, 1996; Steinberg & Monahan, 2007). Of course, not all peer group effects are totally benign. The peer group delimits the range of opportunities by its very nature as a group with norms and roles. Within any peer culture, the range of acceptable activities is circumscribed. For example, the peer group determines who may be included as a member, how leisure time is spent, and how the members should dress and behave. In some cases, peer group members may use both indirect (e.g., teasing) and direct (e.g., confrontation) means to promote adherence to these group norms (Eder & Sanford, 1986). Unfortunately, the norms for certain groups may support deviant, antisocial behavior. Many interventions that address typical developmental problems make the implicit assumption that peer pressure is a cause of most early to late adolescent difficulties. Many of these intervention models are built upon “resistance” training, which attempts to prepare children to do battle with dangerous peers. But is this the way it really works? And do these assumptions make sense? It may be possible to shed some light on this issue, and to improve interventions as well, by reviewing a few principles of peer group dynamics. First, peer groups or cliques are generally homogeneous. There is a well-documented tendency for peer groups to exhibit homophily, or a degree of similarity among members on behavioral or attitudinal attributes of importance. This is why you can often identify the members of a group by the way they dress or on the basis of what they do after school. Second, groups are formed based on processes of influence and selection (Cohen, 1977; Kandel, 1978). Basically, influence refers to the fact that the peer group can cause an individual to conform to the norms of the group. For example, if a youngster is part of a peer group that disparages getting good grades, the child presumably reduces his investment in doing homework in order to be accepted by the group. Researchers have found that the influence of the group is not usually a result of coercive pressure, however. Instead, normative social processes, like positive reinforcement, observational learning, and in some cases discussion and information exchange seem to be important (e.g., Harakeh & Vollebergh, 2012). “The idea of a group of friends putting pressure on a single child to do whatever they want the child to do is a myth” (Berndt & Murphy, 2002, p. 283). Less attention has been paid to the complementary process, called selection, in which individuals choose to affiliate with others who share similar behaviors or attributes. For example, youngsters who are highly motivated academically are drawn to peers who are similar in this respect. As children mature, they become more able to select the environments that suit them, perhaps influenced by their genetically based predispositions (Scarr & McCartney, 1983). Contrary to conventional wisdom, which emphasizes the importance of peer influence, many recent studies have found that selection processes are at least as important in the formation of peer groups. For example, Kindermann (1993) investigated how fourth- and fifth-grade students’ peer groups affected their academic motivation. He found evidence for an initial selection process, with students selecting a peer context early in the school year that reflected their unique level of motivation. Interestingly, membership in the high- or low-motivation peer groups predicted academic achievement at the end of the year, suggesting that some complementary peer influence processes were at work throughout the year to maintain the levels of motivation. Ennett and Bauman (1994) looked at this issue as it relates to teenage cigarette smoking. Once again, they found support for both selection and influence processes. Adolescents were drawn to cliques where smoking was the norm if they smoked or viewed smoking as desirable (selection). But it was also the case that nonsmokers in smoking cliques were more likely to begin smoking than were nonsmokers in nonsmoking cliques (influence). What is important to remember is that both processes contribute to peer group formation and maintenance. Overemphasis on peer influence processes may compromise our understanding of other dynamics, such as motivation to affiliate with similar individuals. Once established, peer groups constitute important social contexts for young people that reinforce certain ways of thinking and behaving. Obviously, peer groups differ in the degree to which they provide a healthy developmental context for children and adolescents, yet their impact can be profound regardless of their benefit or harm. Paxton and her associates (Paxton, Schutz, Weitheim, & Muir, 1999) studied female cliques that varied in their levels of concern about body image and eating. Those girls who showed higher levels of eating-related disorders also inhabited more negative social environments, which appeared to amplify their distorted ideas about body image. As children mature into adolescents, much more of their time is spent in the company of their peers. The body of research on peer relationships teaches us that we would do well to consider the peer network in our conceptualization of problems and in the structuring of our interventions. A recent study speaks clearly to this final point. Reasoning that some positive modification in environment could alter the course of development for at-risk students, Mahoney (2000) studied the trajectories of 695 boys and girls from elementary school to young adulthood. He specifically focused on the role that participation in extracurricular activities in school played in ameliorating the difficulties of those participants who were most at risk. Not too surprisingly, most of the students who participated in extracurricular activities (one or more years of involvement in 6th through 10th grades) graduated from high school and did not become involved in criminal activity as young adults. This result was most obvious for students in the highest risk category. Children’s resilience is enhanced when they participate in beneficial activities along with other members of their peer group. What was surprising, however, was that this benefit was limited to those high-risk students whose peer groups also participated in the activity. There was no appreciable gain from participation unless the youngster’s peer group shared in the activity. Participation in positive, highly organized, and supervised activities enriched the adjustment of the whole group, reinforcing more socially adaptive behavior for everyone. It may be that raising the index of positive adaptation for the whole group attracts more adaptive members (selection) while providing a context that promotes healthier activity (influence). Applications As children mature, they are exposed to influences from many contexts, and the relative power of these influences shifts with development. Friendships, peer groups, and other extrafamilial settings such as school play increasingly important roles. Focusing on children’s relationships with their peers has become a major clinical objective, given what we now understand about their importance. First of all, functioning well within a peer group is one of the most significant accomplishments in children’s lives (Sullivan, 1965). Good peer relationships operate as a powerful protective factor, providing children and adolescents with experiences of friendship, opportunities for problem solving, and enhancement of perspective taking and empathy. The opportunity to feel validated by others in your age group, who share many of your ideas and feelings, contributes to a sense of self-worth, relatedness, and security (Sullivan, 1953). Second, problematic peer relationships are risks because they elicit or maintain maladaptive behavior and deprive youngsters of the kinds of protective effects mentioned above. Peer group problems figure prominently in developmental models of antisocial behavior (the early-starter pattern). As you recall from Chapter 7, accumulated evidence supports links between early childhood characteristics, such as difficult temperament or poor emotion regulation, and family factors, such as poverty, poor parenting skills, or insecurity of attachment, and the development of coercive family interaction patterns. These, in turn, fuel social information-processing deficits that set the stage for aggression toward peers and problems with teachers once children enter school. Lack of academic success and chronic peer rejection reduce motivation for school work and promote positive identification with aggressive and deviant groups. Conduct disorder, possibly continuing as adult antisocial behavior, can be the final outcome of this developmental trajectory. Fortunately, not all children with these high-risk profiles demonstrate adult aggressive outcomes; approximately half show no disorders in adulthood (Cairns & Cairns, 2000). Yet we are well advised to take peer problems seriously because they figure so prominently in the histories of children with conduct disorders, which are the most frequent referral problems in outpatient clinics (McMahon, Greenberg, & CPPRG, 1995). Assess Carefully Helpers should keep in mind that there is more than one route to peer rejection. Understanding rejection profiles can help us tailor our interventions to be most effective. Although we tend to group rejected children together or divide them into aggressive and withdrawn types, Bierman (2004) emphasizes that we can differentiate the social behaviors that contribute to rejection into at least four constellations: aggressive/disruptive (fighting, stubbornness, threatening, lying, meanness); inattentive/immature (disruptive, irresponsible, dependent, poorly organized), low levels of prosocial behavior (uncooperative, temperamental, bossy, humorless); and socially anxious/avoidant (solitary, withdrawn, nervous, cries easily). As you have seen, it is possible for aggressive children to be rather well liked if, for example, their aggression (dominance and competitiveness) is balanced by strengths in areas like athletics and sense of humor. Rejection is more likely when aggression comes in the form of being a “sore loser” or a “hothead.” Meanness without provocation, inability to regulate negative affect, deliberate disruption of peer group activity, and low rates of cooperative behavior are danger signals. Peer and teacher ratings of behaviors or direct observation in naturalistic settings are useful for assessment because aggressive children do not always report feelings of distress and may overestimate their own popularity. Rejected-withdrawn children typically do not show aggression. These children annoy others by their strange or immature behavior, social awkwardness, and failure to “get” the rules governing social conventions. Because these are the children who are most likely to be victimized, self-reports of their own distress, loneliness, or social anxieties provide the most reliable estimate of problems. Some overlap in symptoms can exist in peer-problem profiles. Some victims can also be aggressive, for example, the “provocative” as opposed to “passive” victims described by Olweus (1993) (see also Cook, Williams, Guerra, Kim, & Sadek, 2010). These children retaliate aggressively to the taunts and teasing of their peers who are aggravated by their obnoxiousness. Careful observation and evaluation are required to understand the dynamics of each of these social categories for treatment purposes. This socially anxious girl responds well to play therapy in which she can project her feelings onto a toy. Skills Are Not Enough Rejected children have obvious deficits in what are popularly called social skills. Historically, the clinical approach to peer problems was based on a behavioral-psychoeducational model, focusing on manipulating the antecedent conditions and consequences of discrete behaviors, such as reinforcing children to make eye contact or approach a peer group. Evidence has demonstrated that these prescriptive teaching approaches fell far short of their mark. The focus on isolated skills does not generalize to naturalistic settings (Gresham, 1981) and does not appreciably alter the quality of peer relationships for rejected children (Asher, Markell, & Hymel, 1981). Given advances in developmental knowledge, emphasis has turned to promotion of social competence, a more broad-based concept that involves the “capacity to coordinate adaptive responses flexibly to various interpersonal demands, and to organize social behavior in different social contexts in a manner beneficial to oneself and consistent with social conventions and morals” (Bierman, 2004, p. 141). The key is that children need to learn to regulate their social behavior in contexts that are constantly changing. Thus, social interaction process skills might be construed as the overarching goal, even though one might also teach component skills when appropriate. Of note here is that many of the concepts we have been discussing such as social information processing, emotion regulation, perspective taking, empathy, and so forth play an enormous role in the pursuit of satisfying peer relationships. So, if teaching single skills is not advised and advancing social competence is preferred, what can we do to help? Include the Peer Group Interventions are most successful when they take into account the transactional nature of these problems, considering what elicits the difficulty and what sustains it. For example, one of the reasons behavioral skill-based approaches are not successful is because these interventions fail to change the target child’s level of peer acceptance, even when the child’s actual level of prosocial behavior has increased (Dodge, Coie, Pettit, & Price, 1990). Children acquire reputations in their social groups, generally pointing in either the “good” direction if the child is well liked and socially adept or in the “bad” direction if the child seems socially unskilled. Remember that children tend to see things concretely, in black-and-white terms, and that they will perceive new information selectively so that their schemas remain consistent. Interactions with the target child after a schema for that child has been constructed are marked by attention to evidence that confirms the disliked child’s antisocial characteristics (called confirmation bias; Gurwitz & Dodge, 1977) and discounting of evidence that indicates a departure from his antisocial role. Children also interpret ambiguous or neutral behavior in ways that are consistent with their schema (Peets, Hodges, Kikas, & Salmivalli, 2007). Because these social forces operate to maintain homeostasis, they are quite resistant to change. Efforts to enhance social competence should target not only the peer-rejected child but also the child’s peer group (Mikami, Lerner, & Lun, 2010). Peers can be encouraged to initiate more positive interactions with a rejected child through cooperative activities. They may also be taught to clearly communicate that they will not tolerate aggression. The goal should be to create “niches of opportunity” (Bierman, 2004, p. 44) wherein the disliked child can behave more prosocially to modify the peer group’s stereotypical schema. Bierman and Furman (1984) found that combining cooperative activities with other social competence interventions had more lasting effects than cooperative activities alone. Olweus’s Bullying Prevention Program (Olweus & Limber, 2002) also takes a comprehensive approach. This program approaches bullying as a problem that resides in the whole system, not just within the bully or victim. Consequently, this universal intervention targets all individuals in a school through classroom meetings and activities that focus on effects of bullying, parent meetings, teacher training, and outcome assessment. It is very important for helpers to offer well-researched universal programs in schools, given that 70% to 80% of the children who need mental health treatment get their only services there (Burns et al., 1995). Treat the System Perhaps the most important clinical consideration that follows from recent research in the peer relations field is that interventions need to be directed simultaneously to multiple targets. One exemplary model based on the principles of prevention science is Fast Track, a 10-year, broad-based program that integrates both universal (school-based PATHS curriculum for all children) and targeted interventions (parent groups, social skills training for children, academic tutoring, and home visitations for high-risk children and their families). Interventions are theoretically driven by the developmental early-starter model of conduct disorder and designed to conform to the principles of prevention science. To assess the effectiveness of this program, participating schools have been randomly assigned to intervention and control conditions for purposes of outcome assessment. Early assessments (after the first 3 years) have indicated that treated children are significantly less aggressive, disruptive, and noncompliant than controls (CPPRG, 2002). The backbone of the technique used with children in this program is described as social competence coaching (Bierman, Greenberg, & CPPRG, 1996). A few guidelines for effective coaching programs (from Bierman, 2004) can be useful for helpers: The content of interventions should include important research-based domains of social competence that offer children a variety of behaviors, which can be flexibly applied to many different social situations. These domains include: social participation (how to join peers and feel comfortable in peer contexts, etc.), emotional understanding (how to identify and express feelings, etc.), prosocial behavior (how to interact cooperatively), self-control (how to cope effectively with frustration, etc.), communication skills (listening and speaking appropriately, etc.), fair-play skills (being a good sport, etc.), and social problem-solving skills (similar to the steps of the problem-solving models discussed in Chapter 6). These skill domains should be taught by incorporating each of the following four steps: (a) presenting skills through modeling, discussion, giving examples and nonexamples; (b) allowing children to practice skills using role-plays or other structured exercises; (c) providing feedback on children’s performance by means of discussions, self-evaluations, and so on; and (d) fostering generalizations of skills to the real world of peer relationships. For this last goal, the more the actual peer group is involved in activities, the better one is able to create niches of opportunity for the child with social problems. Create a positive environment so that changes can be practiced and sustained. The warmth and reinforcing qualities of the counselor or coach help reduce anxiety, motivate participation, and increase group cooperation. Gender and Risk What, if any, are the special needs and problems of children that attach to gender? Certain clinical syndromes are more frequently reported among boys, including ADHD and learning disorders. One’s risk for internalizing disorders in adolescence is clearly increased by being female, as are risks for eating disorders and sexual abuse (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Externalizing disorders are more often reported in boys, except for adolescent conduct disorder (Johnston & Ohan, 1999). However, some have suggested that we may have failed to recognize the distinct trajectory of girls’ aggression that emerges by late childhood (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995). Girls tend to display a pattern of nonconfrontational, relational aggression (social ostracism, spreading rumors, alienation of others) along with direct confrontational approaches. In contrast, boys escalate their use of direct confrontational aggression at adolescence as the peer group’s demands for masculine behavior increase. The fact that boys’ aggression has been more visible should not diminish the importance of girls’ antisocial behavior for treatment and prevention because of its links to later interpersonal problems with partners and children, anxiety, and depression (see Pepler et al., 2010). The forms that problem trajectories take are also influenced by gender-role expectations. If girls’ expression of emotions is tolerated, even encouraged, then boys’ emotional expression is actively discouraged. You have learned that behaviors considered appropriate according to gender are more restrictive for boys than for girls and that parents often reinforce different behaviors for their sons and daughters. Some authors, who provide clinical insights into the particular challenges faced by boys, argue that the “boy code” that is enforced in the masculine socialization process works like a gender straitjacket. Just as some girls’ voices may be suppressed in certain contexts, they argue that some boys also go unheard (see Box 8.2). The boy code requires learning that feelings of fear, weakness, and vulnerability should be suppressed to appear brave and powerful. Although we may be primed to notice symptoms of depression in girls because they fit our conceptions of what depressed behavior looks like, we may miss the cues in boys. Adults need to avoid shaming boys for expressions of vulnerability and to provide them with the time and safety they need to open up. We should not take boys’ stoicism as a given. Box 8.2: Meeting the Special Needs of Boys Although boy babies are on average more active and intense in their reactions than girls, there is little consistent evidence of difference in emotion or emotional expression in the first two years (Blakemore, Barenboim, & Liben, 2009). By 3 to 4 years old, some differences in emotional expression are emerging, at least in U. S. samples, with boys beginning to hide feelings of sadness and fear more than girls (Kyratzis, 2001) and with girls beginning to hide feelings of pride more than boys (see Else-Quest, Higgins, Allison, & Morton, 2012). Way (2011) points out that learning to hide emotions linked with vulnerability, as boys seem more likely to do, can be an impediment to friendship and intimacy, even though friendship is as important to males as it is to females. Pollack (1998) and Kindlon and Thompson (1990) make the case that boys need support if they are to preserve their emotional lives in a culture that undermines and constrains the expression of emotion among males. Too often, the only messages boys hear are those that advise them to be strong, competitive, and unemotional. These authors emphasize that this state of affairs is supported by multiple systems, from peer groups to adults, that do not take kindly to expressions of male vulnerability. In fact, boys are well schooled from their very early years in a “boy code” (Pollack, 1998) that prizes courage, activity, and strength, and devalues sensitivity and empathy. Sometimes the code prescribes that boys engage in bullying or be “silent witnesses to acts of cruelty to others” (Kindlon & Thompson, 1990, p. 82). In relation to adults, highly active and rambunctious boys are often more likely than girls to receive harsh punishment. As we have seen, harsh punishment is related to increases in aggression and reductions in empathy. The collective consequence of these gendered experiences can be the numbing of emotional awareness and its guarded expression. These authors advocate that parents, teachers, and other helpers concerned about boys’ development need to support the full range of boys’ emotional expression by building upon their special strengths. One way is to capitalize on boys’ task orientation by encouraging good problem solving. Another way is to respect their preference for activity by providing appropriate opportunities to exhibit strength and skill. Advocating a more oblique approach to the expression of emotion, Kindlon and Thompson (1990) suggest using indirect questions with boys that presuppose underlying emotional complexity, such as “I know you were disappointed about not getting a part in the play last year. Do you want to take the risk and try out again?” (p. 241) rather than “What do you want to do?” Above all, adults need to avoid harsh and shaming punishment, combat the culture of bullying, and model that it is acceptable for men to be both caring and strong. Thus, boys will be given permission to be strong and caring as well. Boys may feel especially ill at ease in the culture of psychotherapy where emotional expression is often de rigueur. For counselors who work with young male clients, Kiselica (2003) offers some practical guidelines for making psychotherapy “male-friendly.” Several of his suggestions are listed below. Be flexible about where to meet and how long to hold sessions. Display magazines or other reading material in your office that is of interest to boys, such as sports magazines. Avoid face-to-face seating arrangements in favor of a side-by-side setup; offer a snack to the boy before starting the counseling session. Become acquainted with contemporary teenage slang or be honest enough to ask what the boy’s words mean if you are not familiar with the vocabulary. Pay attention to the boy’s cues regarding pacing the session; be mindful of the boy’s comfort level with respect to sensitive topics. Avoid asking too many questions; take the heat off from time to time by focusing on more practical problems like making a team or finding a job. Support autonomy strivings and motivation to continue therapy by scheduling appointments directly with the male client, if possible. Use appropriate humor and self-disclosure to facilitate engagement. Evidence from many studies that have examined gender differences in behavior demonstrates that for most characteristics there is actually very little gender difference. Therefore, we need to remember that girls and boys have many similar qualities and needs. Feelings, either good or bad, should not be off-limits because one happens to be a boy or a girl. Counselors can help by examining their own schemas or constructions about what it means to be male and female. That way, we will not selectively attend to information that fits our schema while we discount other important information. For healthy development, both genders need safe spaces in which to exercise their power and to express their vulnerabilities. Summary The Biology of Sex The sex chromosome pair consists of two XX chromosomes in females but an XY pair in males. Development in a male direction is initiated by expression of the SRY gene on the Y chromosome, which triggers the transformation of the indifferent gonads into testes. Testes produce masculinizing hormones, including androgens, which influence the development of internal and external reproductive organs and some brain structures. In the absence of the SRY gene and the masculinizing hormones, the natural course of development is in the female direction, beginning with the indifferent gonads becoming ovaries. More males are conceived than females, but males are more vulnerable than females to a host of hereditary diseases because of their susceptibility to X-linked recessive disorders. One result is that many more males fail to survive the prenatal period, and males have higher mortality rates at all ages postnatally as well. Sex Role Development The first step is learning to label oneself as male or female by about age 2½. Next comes gender stability, by 3 or 4 years, which means realizing that gender doesn’t fluctuate over time. Finally comes gender constancy, realizing that gender cannot change. This may not emerge until age 6 or 7, although there is controversy on this issue. Social processes, involving active teaching by others, influence learning one’s gender identity. Gender-atypical children, whose genitalia are either ambiguous or inconsistent with their biological sex, often acquire the identity that is socially assigned even if it is inconsistent with their biological sex. Cognitive development may also influence the acquisition of gender identity. For example, logical thinking may help a child understand gender constancy. Also, being given accurate information about what is and isn’t important for gender assignment is helpful. Biological sex may also influence children’s gender identity, even when social input is inconsistent with biology. Some gender-atypical individuals have eventually rejected their assigned identity, apparently feeling more comfortable adopting an identity that is consistent with their biology. Meta-analyses of many different behaviors, personality characteristics, and preferences have identified some that usually vary between males and females. Certain characteristics are found across the life span, whereas others typify specific developmental periods. Some have changed historically, such as differences in math problem solving. The average differences are usually quite small. Perhaps more important than the small sex differences in laboratory measures of behavior, is that boys and girls spend their time differently: boys more often with boys, and girls with girls. Gender segregation begins as early as 2½ years old for girls and 3 years old for boys and increases with age. In their segregated groups, girls and boys behave differently. For example, boys are more active and engage in more aggressive play when they are with boys than with girls or adults. Girls’ play and talk is more cooperative or collaborative, whereas boys’ play and talk is more competitive and domineering. Where do sex differences come from? Biology seems to play a role in some traits. For example, girls exposed prenatally to male hormones have stronger male play preferences in childhood than normal girls. Cognitive developmental theories argue that children are motivated to acquire gender-appropriate behavior once they identify themselves as male or female. Gender schema theories also hypothesize that children choose to act in ways that are consistent with their gender schemas, that is, their networks of expectations and beliefs about male and female characteristics. Parenting processes are also thought to contribute to gendered behavior. Freud’s psychoanalytic theory posits that preschoolers identify with the same-sex parent in an effort to resolve the Oedipus complex (in boys) or the Electra complex (in girls). Identification involves imitation, so girls begin to act like their mothers, and boys begin to act like their fathers. There is little evidence to support this theory. Social learning theorists assume that parents play a more direct role, teaching children to adopt gendered behaviors through the use of rewards and punishments. There are some differences in the ways parents treat girls and boys, and there are differences in the kinds of pressures they place. But there are many similarities as well. Peers appear to play a role in engendering sex-typed behavior. Children spend a great deal of time in their sex-segregated peer groups, and in these groups some preexisting sex differences appear to be magnified. Recent research indicates that the more time preschoolers spend in gendered groups, the more sex-typed their behavior becomes (the social dosage effect). Clearly what is needed to explain sex role development is a multidimensional theory that considers all the contributing elements: biology, cognitive processes, and parent and peer socialization pressures. Peer Relationships In a longitudinal study of children at risk for later mental health problems, one early risk factor stood out as highly predictive of later problems: peer rejection. Evaluating social competence involves examining social skills at every level of social interaction, both within friendships and outside them. Interventions designed to improve specific children’s social skills have moderate success, but they might have more success if both the disliked child and the children with whom the target child interacts were included. Peer groups include dyads, cliques, and crowds. The clique and crowd structures begin to emerge in middle childhood and are crystallized in early adolescence. They play a role in the development of self-understanding, and they provide a sense of acceptance and belonging. In sociometry, children’s status among their peers is measured. Children in a class are asked to select which children they would most, or least, like to interact with in different contexts. Each child can be categorized on the basis of a social preference score (number of positive less negative nominations) and a social impact score (total nominations, positive and negative). Popular children have high social preference and social impact scores. They have many social skills, tend to be attractive, and are cognitively competent as well. Rejected children may be either aggressive or withdrawn, and neither group demonstrates the positive social skills of the popular children. They have low social preference scores but high social impact scores. Neglected children have especially low social impact scores but are not perceived negatively by their peers. They may choose not to participate centrally in group activities. Controversial children have some of the qualities of popular children and some of the qualities of rejected children. They are seen by some as leaders and by others as disruptive. Average children score in the average range on both social preference and social impact. They have less social competence than popular children, more than rejected or neglected children. Preferred qualities in peers seem to differ somewhat across genders and cultures. For example, boys, especially as they approach adolescence, are more likely to be rejected for cross-gendered behavior than girls. Shy, socially anxious behavior is valued more in some cultures, such as China, than in places like the United States. Aggressive behavior is generally sanctioned in all cultures, and bullying is found to be a problem cross-culturally, but there are differences as well. In the United States, children are expected to defend themselves in conflict situations, and adults serve as arbitrators. In more collectivist cultures, children who “fight back” are seen as behaving inappropriately, and peers are expected to help resolve conflicts. Popular and rejected categories show the most stability over time and have fairly predictable long-term consequences: positive for popular children, negative for rejected children. The strongest links are found between rejected-aggressive status in childhood and later externalizing problems. Cliques play a role in identity development. Kids with similar characteristics form groups that provide some identity and a basis for social comparison. Cliques also serve needs for acceptance and belonging. Peer groups are formed and maintained both through influence and through selection processes. Influence is largely indirect (e.g., teasing) rather than directly coercive (e.g., confrontation) and can cause an individual to conform. Selection refers to the fact that individuals choose to affiliate with others like themselves.

CHAPTER 8 Gender and Peer Relationships:

Middle Childhood Through Early Adolescence It’s

re

cess time for the third graders at Columbus Elementary. Four girls take turns jumping rope, while

other small clusters of girls are playing hopscotch or sitting and talking. One pair whispers

conspiratorially, occasionally giggling and glancing up at the g

irls playing jump rope. One girl skips

across the grass alone and then sits on a swing, watching three friends play a climbing game on the

modern jungle gym. The game has something to do with the plot of a TV show they saw the night

before. A crew of boys

is playing a variant of tag, in which whoever is “it” must not only catch

someone else (who will then become “it”) but must also dodge the assaults of players who risk being

caught to race past and punch the boy who is “it” in the back or arms. A boy watch

ing on the

sidelines suddenly jumps into the tag game, punching the player who is “it.” The others gather round,

shoving and yelling at the intruder. When he says, “I can play if I want to,” one boy shouts more

loudly than the rest, “Let him play, but he’s

gotta be it.” In the remaining 10 minutes of recess, the

intruder catches three different boys, but the captives are forcibly freed by their compatriots, and the

intruder never escapes being “it” despite his bitter protests. Moments before the recess ends

, he

stomps off in a rage, shouting epithets at the others. As the third graders move off the playground,

recess begins for the higher grades. Soon a group of sixth graders, seven boys and one girl, are

playing basketball on the paved court; another larger

group, all boys, is playing soccer on a grassy

field. Most of the sixth

-

grade girls are standing around in circles, talking. We could watch a large

assembly of elementary school children on any playground in the United States

—

the roof of a

private Manhatt

an school; the small, fenced yard of a Chicago public school; or, as in this example,

the ample playing fields, paved courts, and wood

-

chipped, well

-

equipped play area of a sprawling

school in an affluent Seattle suburb. Despite the constraints of the sett

ing, some key elements of the

children’s behavior would be strikingly similar. Most of the girls would be playing or talking in clusters

of two or three, separately from the boys. The boys would be playing in larger groups, and often their

play would consi

st of some mostly good

-

natured roughhousing. Some children would probably be

alone. They might stand apart, or they might push their way into a group where they are not

welcome and then find themselves in conflict with others. Occasionally, a child of one

sex might play

comfortably with a group of the opposite sex, but generally she or he will be a quiet, peripheral

member of the group. More often than not, this child will be a girl. Sometimes, groups of boys will

interfere with the play of a cluster of gir

ls, most often to chase them or to upset their game. The girls

might chase the boys back, always with their girlfriends along for support. These patterns will be

familiar to anyone who has ever participated in, or observed, a children’s recess. In this cha

pter, we

will examine two major features of child development that contribute to these patterns. The first is

sex role development in childhood and early adolescence, including the formation of a gender

identity and the acquisition of gender

-

related behavi

ors. (We will discuss the emergence of sexual

orientation in Chapter 9.) The second is the formation and influence of peer relations in the lives of

children and young adolescents, including both the degree to which children are able to establish

satisfyin

g relationships with their peers and the degree and kind of influence that peer groups wield.

Sex role development and peer relations have traditionally been separate disciplines in the

developmental sciences, and to some degree we will discuss them separa

tely here. But, as you will

see, it is becoming more and more clear not only that peer interactions differ as a function of gender

but that peer processes may be very important in shaping gendered behavior. For helpers,

understanding the processes of sex r

ole development can be a key element in providing valid

supports to children and adults as they struggle with identity issues, self

-

acceptance, and self

-

esteem. Many coping difficulties, both externalizing and internalizing problems, are more typical of

ei

ther one gender or the other in our society, or they have different features and implications

depending on the sex of the client. It has also become increasingly obvious that a major function of

counselors, teachers and other helpers who work with children

and adolescents is to identify and

intervene with individuals whose peer relationships are distorted. Many developments

—

including

CHAPTER 8 Gender and Peer Relationships: Middle Childhood Through Early Adolescence It’s

recess time for the third graders at Columbus Elementary. Four girls take turns jumping rope, while

other small clusters of girls are playing hopscotch or sitting and talking. One pair whispers

conspiratorially, occasionally giggling and glancing up at the girls playing jump rope. One girl skips

across the grass alone and then sits on a swing, watching three friends play a climbing game on the

modern jungle gym. The game has something to do with the plot of a TV show they saw the night

before. A crew of boys is playing a variant of tag, in which whoever is “it” must not only catch

someone else (who will then become “it”) but must also dodge the assaults of players who risk being

caught to race past and punch the boy who is “it” in the back or arms. A boy watching on the

sidelines suddenly jumps into the tag game, punching the player who is “it.” The others gather round,

shoving and yelling at the intruder. When he says, “I can play if I want to,” one boy shouts more

loudly than the rest, “Let him play, but he’s gotta be it.” In the remaining 10 minutes of recess, the

intruder catches three different boys, but the captives are forcibly freed by their compatriots, and the

intruder never escapes being “it” despite his bitter protests. Moments before the recess ends, he

stomps off in a rage, shouting epithets at the others. As the third graders move off the playground,

recess begins for the higher grades. Soon a group of sixth graders, seven boys and one girl, are

playing basketball on the paved court; another larger group, all boys, is playing soccer on a grassy

field. Most of the sixth-grade girls are standing around in circles, talking. We could watch a large

assembly of elementary school children on any playground in the United States—the roof of a

private Manhattan school; the small, fenced yard of a Chicago public school; or, as in this example,

the ample playing fields, paved courts, and wood-chipped, well-equipped play area of a sprawling

school in an affluent Seattle suburb. Despite the constraints of the setting, some key elements of the

children’s behavior would be strikingly similar. Most of the girls would be playing or talking in clusters

of two or three, separately from the boys. The boys would be playing in larger groups, and often their

play would consist of some mostly good-natured roughhousing. Some children would probably be

alone. They might stand apart, or they might push their way into a group where they are not

welcome and then find themselves in conflict with others. Occasionally, a child of one sex might play

comfortably with a group of the opposite sex, but generally she or he will be a quiet, peripheral

member of the group. More often than not, this child will be a girl. Sometimes, groups of boys will

interfere with the play of a cluster of girls, most often to chase them or to upset their game. The girls

might chase the boys back, always with their girlfriends along for support. These patterns will be

familiar to anyone who has ever participated in, or observed, a children’s recess. In this chapter, we

will examine two major features of child development that contribute to these patterns. The first is

sex role development in childhood and early adolescence, including the formation of a gender

identity and the acquisition of gender-related behaviors. (We will discuss the emergence of sexual

orientation in Chapter 9.) The second is the formation and influence of peer relations in the lives of

children and young adolescents, including both the degree to which children are able to establish

satisfying relationships with their peers and the degree and kind of influence that peer groups wield.

Sex role development and peer relations have traditionally been separate disciplines in the

developmental sciences, and to some degree we will discuss them separately here. But, as you will

see, it is becoming more and more clear not only that peer interactions differ as a function of gender

but that peer processes may be very important in shaping gendered behavior. For helpers,

understanding the processes of sex role development can be a key element in providing valid

supports to children and adults as they struggle with identity issues, self-acceptance, and self-

esteem. Many coping difficulties, both externalizing and internalizing problems, are more typical of

either one gender or the other in our society, or they have different features and implications

depending on the sex of the client. It has also become increasingly obvious that a major function of

counselors, teachers and other helpers who work with children and adolescents is to identify and

intervene with individuals whose peer relationships are distorted. Many developments—including