Patterns of Gender Development Across Intersections of Age, Gender, and Ethnicity-Race.

Two components of gender identity are gender similarity, how one's self-concept relates to the major gender collectives (i.e., female, male), and felt pressure to conform to gender norms. The development of these components across ages and contexts has been understudied. The focus of this study was to examine variations in gender similarity and felt pressure across multiple intersecting contexts: developmental stage, gender, and ethnic-racial group. Six data sets were harmonized and means were compared across 2628 participants (51% girls, 49% boys) from four different developmental cohorts (childhood n = 678, early adolescence n = 1322, adolescence n = 415, and young adulthood n = 213) from diverse ethnic-racial backgrounds (45% White, 23% Latinx/Hispanic, 11% Black/African-American, 7% Asian-American, 5% American Indian, and 5% Multiracial). Results revealed nuanced patterns: Gender intensification was supported in early adolescence, primarily for boys. Young adult men reported lower levels of pressure and gender typicality than younger boys, but young adult women's levels were generally not different than younger girls. Surprisingly, young adult women's levels of own-gender similarity and pressure from parents were higher than adolescent girls. Expectations of gender differences in gender typicality and felt pressure were supported for all ages except young adults, with higher levels for boys. Finally, there were more similarities than differences across ethnic-racial groups, though when there were differences, minoritized participants reported heightened gender typicality and pressure (largely accounted for by higher scores for Black and Latinx participants and lower scores for White and Multiracial participants). These results add to what is understood about contextually dependent gender development.

A Dual Identity Approach for Conceptualizing and Measuring Children's Gender Identity.

The goal was to test a new dual identity perspective on gender identity by asking children (n = 467) in three grades (Mage  = 5.7, 7.6, 9.5) to consider the relation of the self to both boys and girls. This change shifted the conceptualization of gender identity from one to two dimensions, provided insights into the meaning and measurement of gender identity, and allowed for revisiting ideas about the roles of gender identity in adjustment. Using a graphical measure to allow assessment of identity in young children and cluster analyses to determine types of identity, it was found that individual and developmental differences in how similar children feel to both genders, and these variations matter for many important personal and social outcomes.

Gender-based relationship efficacy: children's self-perceptions in intergroup contexts.

This research introduces a new construct, gender-based relationship efficacy, which refers to beliefs about one's ability to relate to own- and other-gender peers. Study 1 investigated 204 fourth graders (M age = 9.56) and confirmed that own-gender and other-gender relationship efficacy represent distinguishable aspects of preadolescents' social competency beliefs that are differentially related to outcomes with own- and other-gender peers, including outcome expectancies and friendships with own- and other-gender peers. Study 2 provided further evidence of the distinctiveness of relationship efficacy for own- and other-gender peers among 403 seventh (M age = 12.48) and 453 eighth (M age = 13.50) graders and found gender and age differences. Developmental changes and implications for research on intergroup relationships are discussed.

'It's not that we hate you': understanding children's gender attitudes and expectancies about peer relationships.

Widespread gender segregation, evident throughout elementary school, seems to imply that girls and boys have negative feelings and thoughts about one another, and classic theories of inter-group processes support this idea. However, research has generally overlooked children's feelings and perceptions about gender-related interpersonal interactions. This paper investigates the nature of children's attitudes about same- and other-gender peers, and explores how those attitudes relate to the expectancies and beliefs children hold about same- and other-gender peer interactions. Children (N= 98 fifth graders) completed questionnaires assessing their global liking of own- and other-gender peers (Yee & Brown, 1994), positive and negative attitudes about own- and other-gender peers, and outcome expectancies related to interacting with own- and other-gender peers. Results indicated that rather than being characterized by out-group negativity, children's inter-group gender attitudes are best characterized by an in-group positivity bias. Children's positive and negative affective attitudes were also significantly associated with outcome expectancies. In contrast, global liking of own- and other-gender peers was less predictive of outcome expectancies. Thus, the greater specificity of the affective attitude measures appeared to be a more predictive and potentially fruitful gauge of children's feelings about own- and other-gender peers. Results are discussed in terms of the need for finer grained and more extensive studies of children's gender-related feelings and cognitions about own- and other-gender peers.