Sexuality in Childhood

Two key issues related to gender are gender identity and gender roles. Gender identity refers to the ways in which people come to recognize themselves as male or female. For young children, identity as a boy or girl is typically based on clothing (Couchenour and Chrisman 1996), hair length, and toy and game preferences (Byer, Shainberg, and Galliano 1999). For example, Johnny wears pants so he must be a boy, and Susie has a pink coat so she must be a girl. As children grow and develop, however, they often enhance their identities by comparing their bodies with other children's and adults' bodies and learning to more strongly identify themselves with people of their same sex based on the physical aspects they have in common (Schuhrke 2000). Although researchers originally thought gender identity was an inborn, genetic factor, it is now commonly understood that gender identity is greatly influenced by environmental experiences, specifically parental response. Many researchers have also found that the sense of maleness or femaleness a child has is established by the age of three (Renshaw 1971).

Gender roles, as defined by Curtis Byer, Louis Shainberg, and Grace Galliano (1999), are the totality of social and cultural expectations for boys/girls, men/women in a particular society at a particular time in history. Through gender role socialization, culture, conversation, and interactions significantly affect children's ideas about appropriate gender roles (Couchenour and Chrisman 1996). A major source of information concerning gender roles comes from within the home and often involves parents' nonverbal communication, as children are just as likely to learn from parents' behavior and expressions as they are to learn from verbal communication. In many ways, parents nonverbally communicate to their children that males and females are different. One way in which this difference may be communicated is in the ways parents deal differently with sons and daughters. From the time of birth, boys are generally handled more roughly, girls are spoken to more gently, each are given sex-stereotyped toys to play with, and are encouraged to play in different ways with girls playing in small groups and boys playing in larger groups (Kahn 1985). A second way in which gender roles are conveyed nonverbally is through modeling. Parents often demonstrate a differentiation of sex roles in their division of household labor which gives children a "strongly sexdifferentiated view of family life" (Kahn 1985, p. 282). Bettina Schuhrke (2000) asserts that as parents teach their children about sexuality, "they are transmitting expectations of future ability to perform traditional sex roles skillfully and vigorously" (p. 29). Thus, parents repeatedly, though often inadvertently, reinforce the idea that males and females are different and should act according to their prescribed gender roles.