This monograph provides an overview of historical theories in gender differentiation and suggests several new methods designed to assess the gender-related attitudes toward others and the gender-related characterization of the self in both children and adults. Old theories are tested and critically assessed in terms of more current ideas about gender differentiation. Includes commentaries by Diane Ruble and Kim Powlishta.
This text offers a unique developmental focus on gender. Gender development is examined from infancy through adolescence, integrating biological, socialization, and cognitive perspectives. The book’s current empirical focus is complemented by a lively and readable style that includes anecdotes about children’s everyday experiences. The book’s accessibility is further enhanced with the use of bold face to highlight key terms when first introduced along with a complete glossary of these terms. All three of the authors are respected researchers in divergent areas of children’s gender role development and each of them teaches a course on the topic. The book’s primary focus is on gender role behaviors – how they develop and the roles biological and experiential factors play in their development. The first section of the text introduces the field and outlines its history. Part 2 focuses on the differences between the sexes, including the biology of sex and the latest research on behavioral sex differences, including motor and cognitive behaviors and personality and social behaviors. Contemporary theoretical perspectives on gender development – biological, social and environmental, and cognitive approaches – are explored in Part 3 along with the research supporting these models. The social agents of gender development, including children themselves, family, peers, the media, and schools are addressed in the final part. Cutting-edge and comprehensive, this is the perfect text for those who have been searching for an advanced undergraduate and/or graduate book for courses in gender development, the psychology of sex roles and/or gender and/or women or men, taught in departments of psychology, human development, and educational psychology. Although chapters have been designed to be read sequentially, a full author citation is included the first time a reference is used within an individual chapter rather than only the first time it is used in the book, making it easy to assign chapters in a variety of orders. This referencing system will also appeal to scholars interested in using the book as a resource to review a particular content area.
Gender Development is the first book to examine gender from a truly developmental perspective and fills a real need for a textbook and source book for college and graduate students, parents, teachers, researchers, and counsellors. It examines the processes involved in the development of gender, addressing such sensitive and complex questions as what causes males and females to be different and why they behave in different ways. The authors provide an up-to-date, integrative review of theory and research, tracing gender development from the moment of conception through adulthood and emphasising the complex interaction of biology, socialisation, and cognition. The topics covered include hormonal influences, moral development, play and friendships, experiences at school and work, and psychopathology.
This book presents leading experts on the scientific study of gender, providing their views on what we know today about the relationship between gender nonconformity in childhood and future adult sexual identities or behaviors. This book explores the topic from a wide range of perspectives, including historical, sociological, psychological (social and developmental), and psychiatric viewpoints. Parents, parent educators, therapists, and counselors who work with gay, lesbian, and bisexual adolescents or adults and/or gender atypical children will find this resource insightful and very useful. It presents highly respected authorities offering their own expertise and perspectives on a subject of much cultural controversy. Chapters explore: historical and cultural examples which suggest that homoerotic relationships during adolescence or early adulthood do not necessarily lead to homosexuality; the difficulty in identifying an example of a pattern of childhood behaviors that is predictive of outcome; a review of empirical retrospective and prospective literature; whether there is a causal link between childhood gender nonconformity and sexual orientation; and the diagnostic category of Gender Identity Disorder in the most recent DSM. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health.
Research in developmental psychology--which examines the history, origins, and causes of behavior and age-related changes in behavior--seeks to construct a complex, multi-level characterization of behavior as it unfolds in time across a range of time scales, from the milliseconds of reaction time to the days and weeks of childhood, the decades of the human lifespan, and even beyond, to multiple generations. Behavior, in this view, is embedded within what is essentially a dynamic system of relations extending deep within individuals. Thorough and engaging, this handbook explores the impact of this research on what is now known about psychological development, from birth to biological maturity, and it highlights the extent to which the most cutting-edge developmental science reflects a new kind of intellectual synthesis: one that reveals how cultural, social, cognitive, neural, and molecular processes work together to yield human behavior and changes in human behavior. With insightful contributions from more than 50 of the world's leading developmental scientists, these two volumes will serve as an influential and informed text for students and as an authoritative desk reference for years to come.
Now published by SAGE! With its seamless integration of up-to-date research, strong multicultural and cross-cultural focus, and clear, engaging narrative, Development Through the Lifespan, by best-selling author Laura E. Berk, has established itself as the market’s leading text. Known for staying current, the fully updated Seventh Edition offers the latest, most relevant research and applications in the field of human development. New and compelling topics, rich examples, coupled with Berk’s signature storytelling style, makes this edition the most accessible and engaging text available to students today. Included with this title: LMS Cartridge: Import this title’s instructor resources into your school’s learning management system (LMS) and save time. Don’t use an LMS? You can still access all of the same online resources for this title via the password-protected Instructor Resource Site. Learn more.
Developmental theorists have struggled with defining the relations among biology, psychology, and sociocultural context, often reducing psychological functions of a person to either biological functioning or the role of sociocultural context - nature or nurture - and considering each area of human development separately. New Perspectives on Human Development addresses fundamental questions of development with a unified approach. It encompasses theory and research on cognitive, social and moral, and language and communicative development, in various stages of life, and explores interdisciplinary perspectives. New Perspectives on Human Development revisits old questions and applies original empirical findings, offering new directions for future research in the field.