Children’s Physical Gender Schemas: Acquisition and Features

Abstract

Studies on how physical gender schemas develop in children have traditionally utilized forced-choice and close-ended tasks, finding that the ability to make gender-related distinctions develops in the first years of a child’s life. To reduce demand characteristics that reinforce gender binaries in children’s models of gender, we relied on open-ended discourse analysis to study children’s physical gender schemas. We focused on whether children’s ability to ask questions that distinguish gender groups was greater in older than younger children. Participants were 44 3–4-year-olds, 35 5–6-year-olds, and 23 7–8-year-old children in the U.K. who were led through a guessing game to elicit gender-related beliefs and compare their beliefs about gender to their beliefs about other entities such as living things. When asking questions to distinguish gender binary groups, older children judging gendered individuals were more likely to ask questions that stereotypically distinguished the gender groups than younger children. Older children were also more likely to focus on individuals’ biological properties, clothing, and hair length than were younger children. Thus, the development of a child’s understanding of physical gender schemas gender is discrete, developing gradually at least until the age of 8.