Children Learn Whether They are Male or Female through Environment
- By : Karyn W
We take it for granted that boy should do the right thing for boys, wear boy clothes, girls should should do right thing for girls, wear girl clothes, but how do the children’s cognition about men and women? What is their inner activity?
1. Gender not equal to temperament
Sex is determined by sex chromosomes, hormones, etc. The determinants of temperament depend not only on biology, but also on social cognition, family, parents and even religious beliefs.
But most of the time, whether we think of ourselves as men or women, temperament is consistent with our gender. This is a recognition that comes into play when we are young, and children can usually decide whether they are boys or girls at the age of two or three.
2. Role model
In the early days, children pay close attention to the men and women around them, and they build their expectations by observing them. But children can selectively absorb the habits of adults. Professor of psychology at the university of New York showed us a case: a boy’s mom drinks coffee while his dad drinks tea drinking. To the professor surprise, the boy didn’t know the rules until he saw a man was drinking coffee. What lessons can we learn? Remember that your child is paying attention to what’s going on around them. If you want your child to know that a man can do housework and a woman can fix things, tell him about it with action.
3. Dress
By the time the children start preschool, they know that clothes can be divided into boys’ and girls’ and that they might not want to cross the line. During preschool, the children had a very conservative view of the behavior of girls and boys. This is because they have been identified as a gender, and it is important to get along with people in a way that others consider normal behavior. Once children reach the age of 5 or 6, they slowly relax their previous conservative views and realize that gender has nothing to do with what needs to be done.