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LEARNING A GENDER ROLE
Human beings are either male or female, and children learn at an early age to identify themselves as one or the other. At the same time, they also learn to behave in a way that is considered typical of males or females. In short, they learn to adopt a masculine or feminine gender role.
The concept of gender role has been explained by John Money, one of the leading researchers in this field, as "all those things that a person says or does to disclose himself or herself as having the status of boy or man, girl or woman, respectively. It includes but is not restricted to sexuality in the sense of eroticism. A gender role is not established at birth, but is built up cumulatively through experiences encountered and transacted, through casual and unplanned learning, through explicit instruction and inculcation."
When a child is born, the parents, relatives, friends, and neighbors first try to find out whether it is a boy or a girl. One look at the baby's external sex organs normally supplies the answer, and this answer has immediate social consequences.
An adult is used to approaching boys and girls very differently. For example, he is more likely to praise a baby boy for his strength and a baby girl for her pretty face than vice versa. In our particular culture, boys are usually dressed in blue, girls in pink. (Most Americans consider pink a feminine color.) Boys are given different names than girls, and their hair is usually cut in a different style. They are presented with different toys and encouraged to play different games. Indeed, even in his first months of life a boy may be touched, picked up, and held in a different manner, and he may receive different and fewer caresses than a girl. As he grows up, he is told that "big boys don't cry" and that he should learn to control his emotions. A girl, on the other hand, is expected to show tenderness and affection. According to a popular nursery rhyme, boys "are made of snips and snails and puppy dog tails" while girls "are made of sugar and spice and everything nice." Thus, boys do not find themselves rewarded for a gentle, quiet demeanor, and girls soon learn to suppress their aggressive impulses. (See also "The Social Roles of Men and Women.")
Under the influence of these adult attitudes, approaches, hints, examples, and expectations, boys and girls gradually develop a concept of themselves as sexual beings. They also learn how the two sexes relate to each other. By the time children begin to have a command of language (between 18 months and 2 years of age), the establishment of their gender roles is well under way. In this period, they strongly identify with the parent of their own sex and, after about another 2 years, their self-identification as male and female is usually irreversible. It should be noted that 4-5-year-old children may still be confused about male and female sex organs, and that they may define males and females according to other criteria, such as height, shape, clothing, hairstyle, etc. This does not mean, however, that they have any doubts about their own masculinity or femininity. It only indicates that, for children of this age, the sex organs are not yet of any decisive importance.
There are some rare cases in which children with sexual malformations are misdiagnosed at birth and thus brought up in a gender role inappropriate to their biological sex. When the mistake is later discovered, it may become necessary to reverse the sex assignment. In the early months of life, such a reassignment of sex is often possible if all adults who come in contact with the child are consistent and completely firm about it. However, after the first 18 months the attempt is less likely to succeed, and after the child's fourth birthday it is virtually guaranteed to fail. (See also "Sexual Malformations.")
There are also certain cases where children who are clearly male or female adopt an ambiguous, defective, or erroneous gender role. The problems of these individuals are discussed in another section of this book. (See "Transsexualism.")
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