How Do Children Acquire Gender Identity?

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Sex identity, is determined by our genes that we inherit from our parents. Most people are either male or female clearly defined by biological matter, but as in nature there are always variants – hermaphrodites which means that the child develops both male and female characteristics there are also children born with a rare condition in which the child seems female but male genitalia appear at puberty. Sometimes a child is born who is genetically male but does not develop or not fully develop male genitalia. It is then for the parents of the child to decide whether the child should be bought up as a male or a female and whether surgery is needed.
Gender Identity, different to sex identity as sex identity is biological whilst gender is social: …show more content…
Parents concepts of gender roles and choosing the gender the child becomes and how that child adapts depends on the imitation, role play and ‘operant conditioning ‘– where the child is rewarded for behaving in gender appropriate ways .Kohlberg(1966) combined biological and social learning approaches to his theory ‘The cognitive – development approach’, the idea begin that the stages were largely to do with biological maturation, but what the child learned during those stages was largely a matter of social learning and the way the family and child classified/ identified themselves. Kohlberg suggested that the process of acquiring gender identity and begins when the child identifies its self as a boy or a girl and begins to construct its own ideas about gender and what is appropriate gender behaviour. However if the child believes itself to be a boy yet biological it’s a girl and the parents decide to raise the child as a girl the child will natural be confused but still present tendencies to be a ‘tomboy’ it will be the parents shaping the activities and allowing the child to develop both male and female characteristics that will successfully allow the child to develop as a female adult. John
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