Question

Explain the roles of at least THREE of the following factors on gender role development: a) prenatal hormones, b) different socialization for boys and girls, c) modeling, and d) gender schemas.

Compare and contrast authoritarian, authoritative, neglectful/uninvolved, and permissive-indulgent parenting styles. For each parenting style, be sure to explain: a) whether parents are responsive to their children (are the parents warm and supportive, democratic in decision making), b) whether the parents place demands on their children (are there rules the children have to follow), and c) what strategies, if any, the parents typically employ to discipline children.

Answer 1

Gender Role Development: Gender role development is an individual's personal sense of gender identity, including cultural and social perspective about being male or female.

1. Prenatal hormones : Prenatal hormones are primary determinants of an individual's sexual orientation. Hormonal theory of gender identification focuses on role of hormones in fetal sex differntiation which influences the sexula orientation and gender identity in future.

3. Modeling :

Gender roles are culturally influenced and create expectations for appropriate behavior for males and females. An understanding of these roles in children at the young age is important for their social development. Gender roles are influenced by the media, family, environment, and society.

A child's understanding of gender roles impacts how they socialize with their peers and form relationships. Many children have a firm sense of their gender identity. In addition to biological maturation, children develop within a set of gender-specific social and behavioral norms in family structure, natural play patterns, close friendships. The gender roles encountered in childhood play a large part in shaping an individual's self-concept and influence the way an individual forms relationships later on in life.

4. Gender Schemas Gender schema theory has provided a useful framework for examining the cognitive processing of gender information once gender schemas are developed.

Children do not categorize themselves as "I am girl" or "I am a boy" and act in accordance with that schema across situations and activity domains. Rather there are differences in their gender conduct depending on a variety of circumstances.

Gender schema theory is a process that helps to explain why gender stereotypes become so psychologically ingrained in our society. Specifically, having strong gender schemata provides a filter through which we process incoming stimuli in the environment. This leads to an easier ability to take information that is stereotyped . In case of adolescent development, Bem states that children must choose among a plethora of dimensions, but that gender schemas lead to the regulation of behaviors that conform to the cultural definition of what it means to be male or female.

Parenting style:

(Note: Here I am trying to answer this quetion with the help of table, wherein all the 4 parenting styles are described with the help of 3 factors (a, b and c) mentioned in the question:

	Authoritarian	Authoritative	Neglectful or Uninvolved	Permissive or Indulgent
Responding children in decision making	They are firm on their clearly stated rules. Give-and-take policy while decision making with their children is discouraged	Warm and communicative with their children. Balance between child’s desired for independence and parent’s desire to listened to be	Absolute freedom is given in decision making but least bothered about consequences of decision taken by children.	Warm, accepting, lenient. They measure their child as a mini-adult in case of decision- making.
Placing demands on children	Highly demanding but not very responsive. They have strong need for obedience	Demanding as well as responsive. High expectations but more freedom of expression is given.	Demand nothing, expect nothing . Absolute freedom.	More responsive than demanding. Parents are too busy, troubled, less-involved
Strategies used for discipline	Authoritarian parents are very strict and controlling. If they see kids are not listening to their orders, for them option is punishment.	They want their children to be assertive, socially responsible, self regulated and cooperative.	Indifference or inability to deal with their children.	They may be indifferent towards disciplining child. They tend to give their kids what they ask for.