There are many opportunities for a child to learn and develop their own understanding of what “
gender” is. Thus as children progresses from childhood into
adolescence they will already have been exposed to many factors that will influence their ideas and attitudes for normative social behaviors regarding gender roles. Social models, such as parents, siblings, and the media become extremely important during different stages of the child's development.
Parents: Parents play a vital part in a child's early life, for they are the first group of people that a child meets and learns from. The information that surrounds a child at home becomes reinforcements for desired behaviors of a male or female. Studies have shown that as immediate as 24 hours after a child is born most parents have already engaged in gender
stereotypic expectations of sons or daughters. Through examples such as painting a room pink or blue, encouragement to participate in shared sex-typed activities, offering gender differentiated toys, or treating the opposite sex child differently, these parent-child interactions have long lasting influence on how a child connects to certain gender-specific behaviors. Furthermore, various evidence suggest that certain household differences affecting how a child is raised can influence how similar (or different) a child is to the opposite sex, therefore how “feminine” or “masculine” the child can potentially become. For instance, as certain research demonstrates, in the absence of a father figure boys are generally more “feminine” than those living with a father. This demonstrates the significance of father-son modeling. The same research reveals that boyhood femininity is more strongly correlated with parental reinforcement such as a father or mother's desire for a girl and/or their approval for feminine behaviours.
Siblings: Apart from parents, children also seek reinforcement from their older siblings. Therefore, inconsistencies for gender behaviors can also be as a result of children emulating their siblings of opposite sex. Sibling's influence is often most effective when the sibling is of an age that is more advanced than the child himself, therefore increasing the motivation for the child to model after their brother or sister. The impact of older siblings are power predictors for the younger sibling's gender role attitudes, sex-typed personality qualities, and masculine leisure activities. Findings suggest that girls develop less traditional attitudes than boys, thus, relative to stereotypically traditional development, older male siblings are more conscientious towards masculine activities, which are evidently modeled after by younger siblings more than feminine activities. Moreover, older brothers tend to have stronger influence over a younger sibling's sexual development. There is evidence that the relationship between older brother and younger sister can, in fact, influence the sister to become more feminine, abiding to more stereotypical gender-typed development than girls with older sisters. Biological studies show that dizygotic twins with the opposite- sex co-twin gender show more sex-typed behaviors than same-sex twins. Conversely, this can also develop in an opposite direction in which children may try to diverge themselves from their siblings as much as possible, making their differences more salient; however, this may be more evident in first-borns possibly due to the birth order. Research also show that children often engage in play with same-sex peers, and exclude others who are different from the norm. For example, children who want to join a group will only be allowed to engage in play if they are a same-gender peer who has had prior experience with the activity, or an opposite-gender peer who has not had prior experience. The desire to engage in play can influence a child to behave like to their peers. In later life, as children starts to move away from their parents, the role of friendship becomes much more influential.
Media: Children learn about different gender categories by observing various forms of
media. They often look for gender roles, with whom they can relate to, from books and television. Conversely, these sources of media will also stereotypically shape a child's understanding for gender acceptable behaviors. Studies examining the effects of gender stereotyping in children's literature describe that, most often than not, gender views are affiliated with stereotypes which are both culturally and individually constructed. In children's literature, male characters appear to be more central as well as less emotional and stronger. Female characters on the other hand worked out their feelings through expression, they are more dependent and usually adopt the roles of more domesticated characters. Moreover, these characteristics are also seen in
television programing. For example, in most prime-time television shows women receive twice as many comments about her appearance than men. Similarly, a study investigating the cartoon “
Pokémon” and gender role expresses the differences in “good” and “bad” characters. Jesse and James (villains of the story) are portrayed to have adopted counter-stereotypical portrayal. While Jesse is seen as more aggressive and James as more feminine, it subtly teaches children that nontraditional or nonstereotypical gender role behaviors are bad. Furthermore, children in the story have difficulty recalling a male Pokémon revealing that there is an imbalance in which prominence is given to male characters. These depictions of male and female character roles can potentially become unconsciously influential in the way a child constructs gender views. ==Atypical gender development and controversies==