Cognitive-developmental theory

Lawrence Kohlberg. According to CDT children attend to same-sex models because they have developed a consistent gender identity. The notion of gender identity is of great importance within CDT. According to Kohlberg, children go through 3 stages in the developmental of gender identity:

  1. Basic gender identity (age 2 to 5 years): boys know they are boys, and girls know they are girls, but they believe that it would be possible to change sex (e.g. by wearing clothes appropriate to the opposite sex).
  2. Gender stability (5 and 6 years): there is an awareness that sex is stable over time (e.g. boys will become men), but less awareness that sex remains stable across different situations, such as wearing clothes normally worn by members of the opposite sex.
  3. Gender consistency (6 or 7 years upwards): children at this stage realize that sex remains the same over time and across situations.

Advantages and Disadvantages of CDT

Advantages:

Gender identity seems to develop through the 3 stages proposed by Kohlberg

Reaching full gender identity increases sex-typed behaviour

Disadvantages:

Sex-typed behavior is shown by most boys and girls by the time of their second birthday – several years before they have reached gender consistency.

The theory ignores the external factors (e.g. reward and punishment from parents) that determine much early sex-typed behavior.

Gender-schema theory

Martin and Halverson. They argued that children as young as 2 or 3 who have acquired basic gender identity start to form gender schemas. These schemas consist of organized beliefs about the sexes, and they help to determine what the child attends to and how he or she interprets the world. The first schema that is formed is an in-group/out-group schema; this consists of organized information about which toys and activities are suitable for girls. Another early schema is own-sex schema: this contains information about how to behave in sex-typed ways (e.g. how to dress dolls for a girl).

According to the theory, gender schemas are used by children to organise and make sense of their experiences. If they are exposed to information that doesn't fit one of their schemas (e.g. a boy combing the hair of his doll), then it is predicted that the information will tend to be distorted, make it fit the schema.

As Shaffer (1993) pointed out, another study that supports gender schema theory was reported by Bradbard et al. (1986). Boys and girls between the ages of 4 and 9 were presented with gender-neutral objects such as burglar alarms and pizza cutters. They were told that some of the objects were "boy" objects, whereas others were described as "girl" objects. There were two key findings. First, children spent much more time playing with objects that they had been told were appropriate to their sex than with sex-inappropriate objects. Second, even a week later the children remembered whether any given object was a 'boy" or a "girl" object.


 

Attachment. Theories of attachment

Psychoanalytic approach

According to Freud, babies are initially attached to their mothers because their mothers are a source of food as well as a source of comfort and warmth.

The evidence indicates strongly that attachment behaviour in babies does not depend only on the provision of food. Harry Harlow carried out a series of well-known studies on very young monkeys. These monkeys had to choose between two surrogate (or substitute) mothers, one of which was made of wire and the other of which was covered in cloth. Milk was provided by the wire mother for some of the monkeys, whereas it was provided by the cloth mother for the others. The findings were clear-cut. The monkeys spent most of their time clinging to the cloth mother, presumably because of the "contact comfort" she provided. Freud's notion that the first attachment is to a food source was not supported. The monkeys spent little time on the wire mother even when she Supplied milk.

It could be argued that Harlow's work on monkeys is not relevant to the study of human attachment. However, Schaffer and Emerson , in the study mentioned earlier, found with about 40% of humans infants that the adult who fed, bathed, and changed the infant was not the person to whom the infant was most attached. Once again, there is not the simple link between food and attachment behaviour assumed by Freud. Infants were most likely to become attached to adults who were responsive to them, and who provided them with much stimulation in the form of touching and playing.

If we are to develop a full understanding of the attachment between mother and child, it is necessary to have good ways of measuring it. Ainsworth and Bell developed what is known as the "strange situations" test. The infant (normally about 1-year old) is observed during a sequence of eight short episodes. For some of the time, the infant is with its mother, whereas at other times it is with its mother and a stranger, just with a stranger, or entirely on its own. The child's reactions to the stranger, to separation from the mother, and especially to being re-united with its mother are all recorded. These reactions allow the infant's attachment to its mother to be placed in one of three categories:

1. Secure attachment: the infant is distressed by the mother's absence, but it rapidly returns to contentment after the mother's return, immediately seeking contact with her. There is a clear difference in reaction to the mother and to the stranger. About 70% of American infants show secure attachment.

2. Anxious and resistant attachment: the infant is insecure in the presence of the mother, becomes very distressed when the mother leaves, resists contact with the mother after her return, and is wary of the stranger. About 15% of American infants are anxious and resistant.

3. Anxious and avoidant attachment: the infant does not seek contact with the motlier, shows little distress when separated from the mother, and avoids contact with the mother upon her return. The infant tieats the stranger in a similar way to the mother, often avoiding or ignoring him or her. About 15% of American infants are anxious and avoidant.

Why do some infants have a secure attachment with their mother, whereas others do not? According to Ainsworth’s caregiving hypothesis, the sensitivity of the mother (or other caregiver) is of crucial importance. Most of the mothers of securely attached infants are very sensitive to their needs, and are emotionally expressive. The mothers of anxious attend resistant infants are interested in them, but often misunderstand their behaviour. Of particular importance, these mothers tend to vary in the way they treat their infants. As a result, the infant cannot rely on the mother's emotional support.

Finally, there are the mothers of anxious and avoidant infants. Many of these mothers are relatively uninterested in their infants, often reject them, and tend to be self-centred and rigid in their behaviour. However, some mothers of anxious and avoidant infants behave rather differently. These mothers act in a rather suffocating way, always interacting with their infants even when they don't want any interaction. What these two types of mothers have in common is that they are not very sensitive to the needs of their infants.

Cultural differences

So far we have discussed findings obtained mainly from the middle-class American culture. However, there are interesting cross-cultural differences in the type of attachment shown by children. This issue was explored by Sagi et al. They used the strange situations test with infants in the United States, Israel, Japan, and Germany. Their findings for the American infants were similar to those mentioned previously: 71% of them showed secure attachment, 12% showed anxious and resistant attachment, and 17% were anxious and avoidant.

The Israeli infants behaved rather differently from the American ones. Secure attachment was shown by 62% of them, 33% were anxious and resistant, and only 5% were anxious and avoidant. These infants were living in a kibbutz or collective farm, and were looked after by strangers much of the time. However, they had a close relationship with their mothers, and so tended not to be anxious and avoidant.

Japanese mothers practically never leave their infants alone with a stranger. In spite of the differences in child-rearing practices in Japan and Israel, the Japanese infants showed similar attachment styles to the Israeli ones. Two-thirds of them (68%) had a secure attachment, 32% were anxious and resistant, and none was anxious and avoidant. The complete absence of anxious and avoidant attachment may have occurred because the infants were faced with the totally new situation of being on their own with a stranger.

Finally, the German infants showed a different pattern of attachment to the other three groups of infants. Only 40% of them were securely attached, which was less than the number of infants (49%) who were anxious and avoidant. The remaining 11 % were anxious and resistant. These findings probably occurred because German mothers display less outward affection towards their children than do mothers in other countries.

The findings of Sagi et al. demonstrate that there are large cross-cultural differences in attachment. However, they also show that the goal of producing securely attached children can be reached in various ways.