Development of Gender Identity

Klinefelter syndrome patients have an XXY genotype. It occurs in 1 out of 750 males. They will appear to be male and will have some secondary sexual characteristics, except they will have poorly-developed genitals and less body hair. The male child with Klinefelter syndrome often has poor language skills with reading difficulties in school and slow language acquisition.

The Klinefelter child tends to be cooperative, shy, and passive as children, which remains as part of their emotional and behavioral characteristics throughout life. The study of men with Klinefelter syndrome has indicated that aggressiveness is largely biological rather than environmental.

Researchers in evolution attempt to explain how certain gender characteristics have developed. The argument is that the division into gender roles was particularly adaptive to the hunter-gatherers in the dawn of mankind. In this type of society, the division into separate gender roles was advantageous. Hunting of game necessitated agility, good visuospatial skills, and speed. Women required other skills to care for children, grow or gather food, and make clothing and shelter.

In the biosocial approach to gender determination, there is an interaction between biology and environment, which together play a role in the development of gender. Parents and others in society treat a phenotypic boy and a phenotypic girl differently, which steers their overall development. Prenatal exposure determines sex hormones and their role in giving the child a phenotypic sex. Children continue their gender development through social labeling and different treatment of the genders.

According to the biosocial role, gender identity is relatively neutral prior to the age of three and may be changed, depending on how the child is treated. The boy who is biologically male who is raised as a girl will have the gender identity more closely mirroring that of a girl. This is called the neutrality theory.

DEVELOPMENT OF GENDER IDENTITY

Interestingly, while Western cultures generally think of two genders, this is not always the case in other cultures. In these cultures, there are more genders than just masculine and feminine. In this culture, gender wasn’t even studied until the 1970s. This was