For some years investigators, myself included, have attempted to study sex-role development by observing the reinforcements and models provided children by parents, teachers and peers. While these studies have documented the existence of sex-determined socialization, they have done little to document the processes of development itself, for we still do not understand how children actually use the information parents and others provide them. Somehow, a child must screen the information received, eliminating the contractions and accepting those portions for which he or she is ready. It is our hypothesis that sex-typed socialization really doesn't produce an effect until a child has started to acquire gender categories. To test this hypothesis, we have designed a simple gender discrimination task and a gender recognition task which allow us to test very young children for understanding of gender. We have also developed interactive, real-time behavior codes for use in the home and in peer playgroups. We believe that we have isolated the beginning of the appropriate age range for establishing a relationship between gender labelling and sex-role behaviors. The understanding of the child's internal processing will allow us to ask questions about the effectiveness and appropriateness of parental rearing techniques. By knowing how and why a child responds to its parents, we are now able to recognize how the parents' socialization techniques effect the child. We plan to measure both the parents child rearing and the child's social behavior in two settings and using different measures. What patterns of interaction help a child develop positive social behaviors? Are there sex-determined differences in family processes which lead to the different patterns of problem behaviors in boys and girls that we have observed in our laboratory. We think that we have the techniques to document what occurs when parents develop particularly effective techniques and when the process of socialization goes awry.
| Fagot, B I; Kavanagh, K (1993) Parenting during the second year: effects of children's age, sex, and attachment classification. Child Dev 64:258-71 |
| Fagot, B I; Hagan, R (1991) Observations of parent reactions to sex-stereotyped behaviors: age and sex effects. Child Dev 62:617-28 |
| Fagot, B I; Leinbach, M D (1989) The young child's gender schema: environmental input, internal organization. Child Dev 60:663-72 |
| Fagot, B I; Leinbach, M D (1985) Gender identity: some thoughts on an old concept. J Am Acad Child Psychiatry 24:684-8 |
| Fagot, B I; Hagan, R; Leinbach, M D et al. (1985) Differential reactions to assertive and communicative acts of toddler boys and girls. Child Dev 56:1499-505 |
