Sex-Role Pressures and the Socialization of the Male Child

Abstract

Lawrence K. Frank recently suggested that current changes in women's are likely to lead to feelings of anxiety, inadequacy, and hostility in men because of a lack of synchronization in role-change on their part ( 13 ) . Increasingly, others have noted evidence of socialization and adjustmental difficulties stemming from male role demands at the adult and adolescent levels (3, 5, 17, 18, 19, 20, 38, 39). Differential rates of referral of boys and of girls to child guidance centers have long pointed to markedly greater incidence of failure in functioning in boys as compared with girls (7, 8, 14, 29, 30, 40). Delinquency rates notoriously have favored young males (36), and recent studies of educational underachievement in the gifted have revealed that underachievement occurs twice as frequently among boys as among girls ( 16). Finally, a current study of the development of concepts of women's roles, originally focussed on girls, increasingly has been revealing data pointing to the existence of such exigent stress in the boy's implementation of male as to call for serious and systematic examination. In this paper we shall attempt a preliminary statement of the problem, based on an integration of theory and research findings in the areas of personality and learning processes, along with illustrative case materials, selected from the protocols of 41 young male Ss (8 and 11 years old) interviewed in the course of our study.2 One definition might be in order at this point. By social roles we mean all the personal qualities, behavioral characteristics, interests, attitudes, abilities, and skills which one is expected to have because one occupies a certain status or position; in this case, that of being a male human being. These expectations are usually common to a whole culture and are mediated to the individual child early in life by persons in contact with him-first by his parents and other adults close to him, then by his peers and adults with whom he comes into more 'Adapted from a paper presented at the Biennial Conference of the Play Schools Association in October, 1958. The investigation referred to here was supported by a research grant, M 959 (C), from the National Institute of Mental Health, Public Health Service. The author wishes to thank Dr. Frank Hardesty for his critical reading of preliminary drafts of this paper and for helpful suggestions during informal discussions. 'Half of the Ss came from professional families and half mainly from the lower middle and working classes. Ss were interviewed individually by one of seven interviewers, whose minimal education was at the master's level. Ss were asked to respond to a variety of pictorial and verbal techniques, which required from six to ten hours to administer. Responses were story endings to unfinished stories, interpretations of pictured situations, and comments as to sex-type on a series of pictures depicting common activities. Ss' teachers were also interviewed.