Atypical Gender Development

Summary

The authors conducted a study in regards to the atypical gender development of children. Atypical is a term used to define those who have gender variance and don't yet know what to identify as. Ultimately, the goal of the study is to find if genetic or environmental contributions play a part in the process of defining your gender. To conduct this study, they used the families of opposite twin pairs, along the ages of 3 and 4 to observe the gender development of each. As a result they looked at the boys who were highly feminine and at the girls who were highly feminine compared to others of the same gender. To pursue the study they took the two groups and looked at the behaviors in relation to gender as well as the environment around

They had the samples look upon their childhood and their current identity and most reported “gender nonconformity in terms of identity and sex typed behavior”(Knafo 3). This study, focused more on how in adulthood usually experiences from your childhood consist of mostly bad ones, and if adults between the ages of 17 up to 50 remembered this as one its because it impacted them enough to scar them for life. In the results section we have to charts. One for male and one for female, and its an illustration of those who show behavior or the opposite gender at a young age and those who recall feeling this way and did or did not do nothing in adulthood about it. With these charts I was able to understand this is more frequent in the life of males. Males have a tougher time when it comes to behaving any less of what expected of them just because they are males. Women are a little harder to narrow down because it has been normalized for women to do things like play soccer or basketball but unfortunately for men its not as

I learned that if a male happens to have a smaller body than most males he will face identity issue because he won't feel like like he has male characteristics. Ironically, their body type and behavior will slowly turn less masculine because they feel they are acting like a gender they look nothing like. For females its been concluded that it's more of a environmental factor and, even if they are as feminine as they can be its still possible they can feel attraction to male things. For example one of the common “male” activities is heavy fitness, there is women who are driven to the need to have overly sized muscles and a “ripped” body. This concept is usually seen on males but when a female does it her gender isn't question. In the long run, women come in all shapes and sizes, there is no particular body type that is considered the perfect “women”, of course there is the prefered body types but its not necessarily expected for women to look a certain way as it is for men.

Since the moment parents decide to know the gender of their babies they seem to right away go for blue or pink to represent that. I feel us humans should let an individual itself grow up to pick weather they are blue or pink. I think a similar study I could design on this is giving an individual, the option of both boy and girl toys, outfits, shoes etc.