Theories of Gender Development
2.	Theories of gender-typed development
	a.	Psychoanalytic theory (Rollins, 1996, p. 124-125)
		1.	The basic message of Freud's view is that both little girls and little boys want love and fear the loss of it. Personality must be understood in a social context of intimate interpersonal relationships.
		2.	Although there is much to criticize about psychoanalytic theory, particularly from a feminist perspective, Freud made major contributions to the understanding of the unconscious mind and is the father of psychotherapy. Freud began writing in the late nineteenth century, and his theory reflects the biological determinism of the time.
		3.	In psychoanalytic theory, the source of psychic energy for the individual are the instincts that drive the individual to take certain actions. There are two categories of instincts--the life instincts and the death instincts. The psychic energy of the life instincts is the libido, which is an expanded form of sexuality, the goal of which is pleasure.
		4.	Freud conceptualized personality as having three structures--the id, ego, and superego. The id is the reservoir of the instinctual needs of the individual, and of psychic energy--the libido. The ego is the rational part of the personality that operates according to the reality principle. The ego tries to help the id attain its pleasures within the constraints of the environment. The third structure in the personality is the superego, which is the moral center formed through a process of internalization of parental and societal values.
		5.	Freud formulated psychosexual stages of development through which children pass and viewed these stages as critical for adult personality. Each child passes through these three stages in the same sequence--the oral, anal, and phallic stages. During each stage, the libido is focused on a specific erogenous zone of the body. The oral stage lasts from birth to some time during the second year of life. The erogenous zone of the oral stage is the mouth, the lips, tongue, and cheeks. The sensation of biting, sucking, tasting, and swallowing provide the sexual satisfactions (broadly defined) of this stage.
		6.	The second psychosexual stage is the anal stage, during which toilet training occurs. The demands of the parents cause the child to delay the gratification of defecation. Conflicts may arise between parent and child during this stage, with implications for later personality. According to Freud, boys and girls pass through both the oral and anal stages in a similar manner.
		7.	It is the third psychosexual stage--the phallic stage--that Freud differentiated the development of boys and girls. The genitals become the erogenous zone of the phallic stage. It is during the phallic stage that the boy goes through the Oedipal complex, which he named for the Greek myth described in the play Oedipus Rex in which Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother, not knowing his relationship to them.
		8.	During the phallic stage, the child develops an unconscious incestuous desire for the parent of the opposite sex. The Oedipus conflict refers to the boys conflict between his sexual longings for the mother and his fear of the father, whom he perceives to have a special relationship with the mother. He fears that his father will cut off his penis, which Freud termed castration anxiety. So strong is his fear that the boy represses his sexual desire for his mother, and replaces his sexual desire for the mother with identification with the father, which provides the boy with a certain amount of vicarious satisfaction. he tries to become like the father, copying his mannerisms, behavior, and, most importantly his oral values. His superego forms as a means of resolution of the Oedipus complex.
		9.	According to Freud, the Electra complex is less clearly developed. The girls first love object, like the boy's is the mother. She switches to the father as a new love object when she discovers she does not have a penis. She blames the mother for the castration and therefore transfers her love to the father. Girls develop penis envy (believing that at one time they did have a penis but it was cut off)., The desire for the penis was also called the masculinity complex by Freud This view of themselves as castrated males results in inferior feelings about their own bodies. Although the girl does come to identify with her mother, the resolution of the Electra complex is less clearly cut, leading to what Freud said is a poorly developed superego in women. The girls desire for a penis becomes transformed into her desire to be impregnated by the father. Penis envy is later transformed into maternal urges, particularly the desire for a son who brings with him the longed-for penis. (Freud, 1948)
		10.	Following the first three stages of psychosexual development is the latency period, which lasts about five or six years, during which time the sex instinct is largely dormant. The fourth and final stage of psychosexual development is the genital stage, which begins at puberty. During this stage, according to Freud, the girl must renounce the clitoris in favor of the vagina as the primary source of sexual pleasure to become a mature woman.
		11.	Freud posited that females have a more passive orientation, whereas males have an active one. As a result, Freud hypothesized that there are gender differences in defense mechanisms used by males and females. Females are more likely to use repression, especially for sexual impulses, and to turn aggression inward (masochism).
		12.	Feminist criticisms of Freud
			a.	Feminists believe that women envy men's power, not their penises. Historical evidence indicates that men envy women's capacity to give birth. Feminists believe that gender is socially constructed, and that biology is not destiny.
			b.	Most major feminist theorists have been very critical of Freud's theories. One area of criticism is Freud's biological determinism, which is summed up in his statement, "biology is destiny." Kate Millet, in her book, Sexual Politics (1970), charges that Freud's message infers that female inferiority is organic and therefore unalterable. She said that if women do envy men, it is not because of their penises, but rather because of their power in society. Millet is a social constructionist who believe the development of gender to be cultural rather than biological.
			c.	Feminists are also critical of what they call Freud's "phallocentric" views, that the clitoris and vagina are inferior to the penis. Scientific research has not demonstrated penis envy among women. Sally Allen and Joanna Hubbs (1987, p. 82) have traced "pregnancy envy" in the male to seventeenth-century alchemical treatises. "The alchemist, who exemplifies the primordial striving for control over the natural world, seeks nothing less than the magic of maternity conferred on the 'lesser' half of the species. Pictorial emblems of the seventeenth century, for example, depict the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus.
			d.	Freudian theory posits that women who strive for accomplishments outside of the home are driven by penis envy. "Psychoanalysis thus became a central brainwashing device to keep women passive. The catchword of the 50s became "adjustment" which meant, in essence, acceptance of a role with which one is dissatisfied. What Freudian called the "feminine mystique" could equally be called the Freudian mystique. It told women that it was normal to be passive and dependent and abnormal to have intellectual ambitions.
			e.	One of the problems with Freudian theory is that many of its premises are difficult if not impossible to test scientifically because the processes are largely unconscious.
			f.	Another general criticism is that psychoanalytic theory was based on work with clinical patients rather than normal people. Hence, Freud's theory of female development may fit neurotic women but not normal women.
	b.	Karen Horney (Rollins, 1996, p. 126)
		1.	A psychoanalytically trained therapist, Karen Horney rejected Freud's biological determinism. She said that if women feel inferior, it is because of the way they are treated in society, not because of biological destiny.
		2.	Karen Horney developed a more social psychological theory. She believed that sex was not the primary motivating force for people, but rather a need for security.
		3.	Horney was the mother of three daughters. Based on her own sense of pleasure and pride she had felt in childbirth, she developed the idea of womb envy among males. "When one begins, as I did, to analyze men only after a fairly long experience of analyzing women, one receives a most surprising impression of the intensity of this envy of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood, as well as of breasts and the act of suckling (Horney, 1967, pp. 60-61).
		4.	She further speculated that men have to compensate for their womb envy through achievement in work and the disparagement and belittling of women. If women feel unworthy, it is for social and cultural reasons, rather than because of any biological inferiority.
		5.	Horney further developed a more modern view of women, encouraging them to pursue careers. She herself received an M.D. degree from the University of Freiburg, having begun her medical studies there only six years after women first gained admission to medical school in Germany (Horney, 1980).
	c.	Social learning theory (Donelson, 1999, p. 159)
		1.	Social learning theory is derived from American behaviorism. Behaviorism, as developed by John Watson and Burrhus Fred Skinner, assumes that it is unnecessary to discuss internal events such as thoughts and feelings; the emphasis is on behavior and observable events in the environment. The application of learning principles to human behavior is called social learning theory. When applied to child development, social learning typically refers to the positions of Albert Bandura, Richard Walters, and Walter Mischel. Bandura and Mischel have increasingly considered internal factors in explaining learning in humans, but the background of behaviorism still is evident. For example, social learning theorists see identification as a useless concept; to them, both imitation and identification describe the same behavior, "the tendency of the person to reproduce actions, attitudes or emotional responses exhibited by real-life or symbolic models.
		2.	The social learning position assumes that children get rewarded for behavior consistent with their gender role. Children like rewards and thus "identify with" or become attached to and imitate the same-sex parent to gain more reinforcement. In In Freudian theory, children imitate the same-sex parent because of a central motive to keep love; in social learning theory, children imitate the same-sex parent because of a motive to attain rewards or reinforcements.
		3.	The most basic mechanism assumed relevant is reinforcement. When people, or other organisms, receive reinforcement for a response, the response is likely to increase in frequency. Thus, if Marcia plays with a doll and a parent smiles (a reinforcement), she is likely to play with dolls again. If she plays with her bother's rubber bat and ball and the parent does not smile, playing with them is less likely to happen again. If a parent scowls at her (an aversive stimulus, or punishment), Marcia is likely to play with the bat and ball less often. The effect of the reinforcer (or punishment) can spread through generalization. A response reinforced in one situation is likely to appear in other situations (stimulus generalization): Marcia is likely to play with a doll at a neighbor's house or in day care. When one response has been reinforced, other similar responses are likely to be emitted (response generalization)--Marcia is likely to play with doll clothes or was doll diapers in a toy washing machine.
		4.	Generalization has limits, however. The child may not receive reinforcement in all situations or with all similar responses. In such case, discrimination learning takes place: The child learns to discriminate between the conditions under which the response is likely to be followed by a reinforcer and those in which it is not likely to, and may be followed by an aversive stimulus. If mother does not mind Marcia playing with "boys' toys" but father does, Marcia will learn not to play with boys' toys when father is around but may continue to do so when only mother is present.
		5.	Parents who do allow their children to play with toys of the other gender often find out their own views are not matched by those of other people or by the other children at school. The child may come to discriminate between the liberal safety of home but play only stereotypically at school. Parents may be surprised to see that the impact of peer pressure at school outweighs their own reinforcement at home. For example, one little boy was very attached to a doll his grandmother had made for him. When he went to school for the first time, he took the doll with him. The jeering he experienced from the other boys was so severe that as soon as he got home, he dumped the doll in the garbage. How can one predict whether parents or peers will prevail? With difficulty at best, but peer pressure is quite strong and can, for awhile at least, override parental teachings.
		6.	The other mechanisms relevant in social learning theory are observational learning and imitation. Children learn simply by watching. If they also imitate (perform) the observed behavior, they may receive reinforcement. It is assumed that girls who imitate feminine models and boys who imitate masculine models are rewarded for the imitated behavior. The basic research paradigm used by Bandura and his colleagues in laboratory investigations was to have models act in fairly distinctive ways or make unusual remarks, and then give the observing children a chance to show those same actions. Generally, the models who were more likely to be imitated were those who were warm and nurturing, dominant, or powerful (controlling resources, such as lemonade or nice toys), or who were ore skillful than the child.
		7.	The likelihood of imitation is increased if the model is rewarded and decreased if the model is punished. When the model is not rewarded, children nonetheless learn, and they learn as much from punished models as from rewarded ones. This was demonstrated by first noting what children spontaneously did after the modeling. As expected, they performed more acts observed in a rewarded model than a punished one. However, in the second phase of the study, when offered incentives for showing what else they had learned, it became clear that they had acquired responses from the punished model as well. The model's reward or punishment influenced the likelihood of performance but not of acquisition. Although not spontaneously imitated immediately, the punished response had been learned and was available for performance. One of the implications is that because children observe both women and men, they are learning from both and have the responses in their repertoire. What they do depends on what they expect for their actions.
		8.	Evaluation
			a.	Social learning theory seems to be based on straightforward common sense, which has much appeal. Unlike Freudian theory, it has the advantage of parsimony, using very few constructs or concepts. By the concept of reinforcement, the theory can address the fact that children show gender-differentiated behavior even before they have a cognitive understanding of gender. The theory also allows for the very quick learning that can happen because of observation.
			b.	However, social learning theory is seductively simple. Basically, it sees children as passive recipients of cultural messages. Children are not little copies of their same-sex parents. Certainly we all know anecdotes of children imitating parents, but many studies do not find correlations between the behavior or attitudes of parents and those of the children. And children often are more extreme or stereotypic than the parents. For example, the 4-year-old girl who insisted that women can be nurses but not physicians. The case for the young child's gender-typing being the result of parental reinforcement and modeling is not very compelling.
			c.	Social learning does occur, but "there also appear to be large gaps in its explanatory power" (Jacklin, 1989, p. 130). For example, children show many responses they have never seen modeled. A particular problem for the theory, as well as for other theories, is that gender-typing happens before it is predicted to happen. In the case of social learning theory, the preference for same-gender models occurs later than predicted, and girls often show imitation of both males and females than boys do. According to the theory, children attach to the same-gender parent, thus developing gender identity and showing greater imitation of same-gender people, But, until about age 10, children do not prefer a same-sex model over on of the other sex.
			d.	A central concept in social learning theory is reinforcement. The definition of reinforcement is circular. A reinforcer is a stimulus that reinforces, namely, it increases the probability of a response. The theory does not predict what kinds of events will be reinforcing or when an event that usually has been reinforcing will not control behavior. Two-year-old children may find being given a doll reinforcing, but two years later, that is repulsive to many boys but still reinforcing for many girls. The social learning position does not help us to understand why.
			e.	Further, behaviors are said to be under reinforcement control. Yet, children often will not do things for which they would be rewarded. Boys particularly are often reluctant to do what they see as feminine, even if they see another boy or adult man perform the behavior and receive praise. Several studies have also shown that children, particularly boys, strongly resist "giving up" a gender-typed behavior in order to obtain reinforcement. In one study, children chose a toy as a prize for participating in research; all chose a gender-typical toy (e.g., necklace, truck). Then, a favorite teacher greatly loved by the children (4- and 5-year-olds) suggested four reasons why the child should trade it for a cross-gender toy. Both boys and girls resisted the suggestions, but boys appeared to be very uncomfortable. They actively argued with the teacher and discredited her advice, saying she was ill or overworked; for example, "Poor teacher, she must have a real bad throat" and "She has too much to do today."
			f.	In short, children have ideas about acceptable behavior that influence receptiveness to reinforcers and attention to models; children's self-reinforcement may be more important to them than the reinforcement given by others. In other words, the gender roles seem to take on a life of their own. Social learning positions have difficulty with this. Cognitive developmental theory is better on this score.
	d.	Cognitive developmental theory (Donelson, 162-165)
		1.	Cognitive developmental theory evolved from Jean Piaget and Barbara Inhelder's work on children's way of thinking (1956). Lawrence Kohlberg (1966) is the dominant pioneer in applying cognitive views to gender development. His original work on children's gender-typing and on the development of moral reasoning was on boys (and then men). The research was extended to girls and women, but a gender bias can be claimed for some aspects of both theories.
		2.	Kohlberg assumes that children have a basic desire to understand the world and be competent in it. Thus, he takes a proactive stance about children: Children "are not passive products of social training" (Kohlberg, 1966, p. 85). Both Freud and social learning theorists have reactive positions, in which the child simply reacts to the environment. At young ages, however, children's ways of dealing with information are different from those of adults because children's thinking is very concrete rather than abstract. In addition, their thinking is egocentric. They see from their own perspectives and evaluate others on the basis of their own judgments.
		3.	The basic reasoning suggested by Kohlberg is something like "I am good. I am a girl. Therefore, girls are good. Mom is a girl, so Mom is good. I want to be competent in being a girl. So, I will identify with Mom and do what she does." In the child's view, doing girl things is rewarding in and of itself. Children like the love of others (as psychoanalytic theory suggests) and the rewards others give (as social learning theory suggests), but the important rewards are internal ones of seeing themselves as behaving consistently with their gender identities. What is thought to be consistent with the identity is a cognitive judgment by the child. Within this view, children are active participants in their own socialization, a process called self-socialization (Maccoby & jacklin, 1974).
		4.	More formally, Kohlberg maintained that the first and most important step toward a stable gender identity is a self-categorization or self-label as a girl or boy. This self-label then becomes an organizer of information. Cues about the categorization are not genital differences, as emphasized by Freud, but more easily observable differences in physical size, hairstyle, and clothing. The second major cognitive step is developing a system of values, so that children value what is associated with their own sex (they are egocentric). Then they being to imitate appropriate behavior and avoid the inappropriate. Third, because of the differential valuing and differential modeling, they develop an identification (or emotional attachment) with the parent of the same sex. The identification leads to additional imitation.