HOW DOES A SMALL CHILD LEARN THAT IT IS A BOY OR A GIRL?

Theory 2

The second theory rejects Freudian psychosexual psychology, and believes that sexual identity is formed by copying, but that a boy child, for example, copies his father initially because of some ‘innate’ tendency towards being a male, perhaps due to the effects of pre-natal testosterone. Once the child forms the identity-link with his father (or some other male), he models his behaviour on his father’s, so that he can obtain his father’s love and approval. In this theory a child learns his gender-identity in the way he learns about other concepts. He learns that a furry object with a small face and four legs, which purrs, is called a kitten. He learns more about the kitten as he hears other people talking about it, and as he observes how it drinks milk. He learns even more by playing with it.

By the age of 2, a child has learnt to identify a large and increasing number of objects, but is still learning to identify men and women, boys and girls, by the way they look, by what they wear, by the way their hair is cut, by the absence or presence of hair on their faces, and by watching and listening to them as they discuss each other. In other words, he identifies that men and women, boys and girls, tend to have different appearances and to do different things, or the same things in a different way. He learns that women stay at home, look after children, cook, keep houses tidy, shop, gossip, and are likely to cuddle him. He contrasts this with the observations that men -including his father – do not stay at home, go out more, work, do certain things involving strength and power (like putting out the rubbish, cutting the lawn, or being soldiers and policemen), and are less likely to cuddle him. He is learning that people have gender-roles, but he has not yet learned that he has a gender-identity. That comes a little later.

In this theory, the child learns how to behave sexually by observation and imitation in the same way he learns other social behaviours.

Any child observing the behaviour of others (‘models’) can take one of three actions. It can ignore the behaviour; it can imitate it; or it can behave differently. Children tend to imitate if they see the ‘model’ as similar to themselves, or as powerful, or as friendly, or as someone who will reward them. If the ‘model’ is seen to have all these attributes, the child will imitate; the fewer the attributes, the greater the chance that it will behave in an opposite way.

A boy child tends to copy male figures because he perceives them as similar to him and as powerful, and this copying is reinforced by the behaviour to him of his parents, other adults, and other children. Parents encourage him to imitate his father and discourage him from imitating his mother.

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