Early in childhood, children already have an awareness of prescriptive stereotypes—or beliefs about what a girl or boy should do (e.g., “girls should play with dolls”). In the present work, we investigate the relation between children’s own prescriptive gender stereotypes and their perceptions of others’ prescriptive gender stereotypes within three groups of children previously shown to differ in their prescriptive stereotyping—6- to 11-year-old transgender children ( N = 93), cisgender siblings of transgender children ( N = 55), and cisgender controls ( N = 93). Cisgender and transgender children did not differ in their prescriptive stereotypes or their perceptions of others’ prescriptive stereotypes, though the relationship between these variables differed by group. The more cisgender control children believed others held prescriptive stereotypes, the more they held those stereotypes, a relation that did not exist for transgender children. Further, all groups perceived the stereotypes of others to be more biased than their own stereotypes.
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Do transgender children (gender) stereotype less than their peers and siblings?
In the present work, we ask whether socially transitioned, transgender children differ from other children in their endorsement of gender stereotypes and response to others' gender nonconformity. We compare transgender children (
- PAR ID:
- 10041666
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Developmental Science
- Volume:
- 21
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 1363-755X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract The present research applied a multidimensional framework to the study of gender stereotypes by investigating whether elementary school children display different levels of endorsement when considering distinct gender stereotype constructs (ability, category, and interest) and feminine versus masculine stereotypes. Study 1 (
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Abstract Gender stereotypes are harmful for girls’ enrollment and performance in science and mathematics. So far, less is known about children’s and adolescents’ stereotypes regarding technology and engineering. In the current study, participants’ (
N = 1,206, girlsn = 623; 5–17-years-old,M = 8.63,SD = 2.81) gender stereotypes for each of the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) domains were assessed along with the relation between these stereotypes and a peer selection task in a STEM context. Participants reported beliefs that boys are usually more skilled than are girls in the domains of engineering and technology; however, participants did not report gender differences in ability/performance in science and mathematics. Responses to the stereotype measures in favor of one’s in-group were greater for younger participants than older participants for both boys and girls. Perceptions that boys are usually better than girls at science were related to a greater likelihood of selecting a boy for help with a science question. These findings document the importance of domain specificity, even within STEM, in attempts to measure and challenge gender stereotypes in childhood and adolescence. -
Gender is one of the central categories organizing children’s social world. Clear patterns of gender development have been well-documented among cisgender children (i.e., children who identify as a gender that is typically associated with their sex assigned at birth). We present a comprehensive study of gender development (e.g., gender identity and gender expression) in a cohort of 3- to 12-y-old transgender children (n = 317) who, in early childhood, are identifying and living as a gender different from their assigned sex. Four primary findings emerged. First, transgender children strongly identify as members of their current gender group and show gender-typed preferences and behaviors that are strongly associated with their current gender, not the gender typically associated with their sex assigned at birth. Second, transgender children’s gender identity (i.e., the gender they feel they are) and gender-typed preferences generally did not differ from 2 comparison groups: cisgender siblings (n = 189) and cisgender controls (n = 316). Third, transgender and cisgender children’s patterns of gender development showed coherence across measures. Finally, we observed minimal or no differences in gender identity or preferences as a function of how long transgender children had lived as their current gender. Our findings suggest that early sex assignment and parental rearing based on that sex assignment do not always define how a child identifies or expresses gender later.more » « less
