Young children are just beginning to develop their understanding of gender identity. The document discusses several key points: children see gender in rigid categories at first but become less influenced by biological factors over time; play activities and social interactions help shape a child's emerging gender identity; and research finds children tend to take on stereotypical gender roles in pretend play but become more flexible in adolescence.

1. Gender and Identity

2. Young children and gender identity
Johnny (age 4 ½) I'm going to be an airplane builder
when I grow up.
Jimmy (age 4) When I grow up, I'll be a mommy.
Johnny No, you can't be a mommy. You
have to be a daddy.
Jimmy No, I'm going to be a mommy.
Johnny No, you're not a girl, you can't be a
mommy.
Jimmy Yes, I can.

3. Young children and gender identity
• Jimmy is at an age where he can label himself
as a boy.
• He believes that he can be a mommy when he
grows up.
• Jimmy is working on constructing a gender
identity and his current conception of this
identity does not restrict him to remaining the
same gender throughout his life.

4. Young children and gender identity
• Young children’s understanding of gender can
be described as a search for certainty.
• Children look for certainty in creating gender
categories but they base their decisions about
gender on social and cultural characteristics.
• Young children are less influenced by
biological knowledge as they do not fully
understand this knowledge.

5. • Young children often make mistakes
about gender illustrating their
rigidity and their naive certainty
regarding gender.
• As children's knowledge of gender
grows in complexity, basic biological
knowledge is added to their social-
cultural understanding.
• The toys that children play with and
how adults play and interact with
them can influence their
construction of this identity

6. • One research study examined how primary school
children (aged 7 to 11 years) engage in pretend role play.
• The groups of children were asked to choose between
play situations of a hospital, hotel, or school, and they
had to choose the roles that they were going to play from
a set provided.
• The children's play was observed and their talk was
examined.
• In choosing their roles, boys took the high-status
positions of doctor, manager and head teacher slightly
more often than girls.
• Those boys taking high-status positions used their role to
exert domination and power far more often than did
girls.
What does the research say?

7. What does the research tell us?
• The gender roles the boys took on and
constructed could be described as ‘typically
masculine’ and those of the girls as ‘typically
feminine’.
• Particularly when playing in mixed groups, the
children constructed the gender roles as
oppositional to each other.
• In general, the research found that the girls
took on sensible, selfless, mature, and
facilitating behaviours, and boys took on silly,
selfish, immature, and demanding behaviours.

8. What does this mean?
• Children look for certainty in terms of gender
in the early years and can be stereotypical as a
result.
• Children's knowledge of gender in relation to
their own identity and that of others develops
over time.
• It gradually becomes more flexible and
incorporates diversity of roles, it also becomes
more reliable.

9. In summary
• Our gender identity is generally constructed
when we are children.
• Gender identity is different to our biological sex
or our sexual orientation
• It is our understanding of how something or
someone is manly or womanly.
• In the early days young children base this mostly
on social and cultural information.
• Young children can be rigid and stereotypical in
their understanding of gender e.g. boys play with
cars, girls play with dolls.

10. • This changes over time and our gender
identity becomes more flexible and adaptable.
• Our understanding of gender is important as it
can influence how we perceive ourselves and
our identity.
• Sometimes people who are biologically male
or female may identify more strongly with a
different gender.
• Sometimes people may not identify as either
male or female in terms of gender.