Investigating the Effect of Gender Stereotyping in Children's Development and Psychology

Overview

Gendered parenting teaches children the reality of gender roles in society but interferes with recognizing their true skills. This project aimed to investigate how early childhood gender-based stereotypes can affect the emotional and physical resilience of children (0-7-yr-old). It was hypothesized that gender stereotypes have no impact on the physical strength of children but may make little boys emotionally weaker than girls. To validate the hypothesis, data was collected through surveys from 244 respondents, and additionally, two experimental studies were conducted on 55 five-six-year-old children. One study evaluated emotional responses to a movie, while the other compared physical strength through different exercises. The experimental results for emotional strength showed that little boys have low resilience to emotions and are weaker than girls. However, the majority(42%) of the survey population believe that both genders are equally strong emotionally, and yet 60% of the adults and the majority(44%) would have long conversations with girls than with boys. The experimental results for physical strength showed that both boys and girls were equal in the measures of their physical strengths. However, the majority(50%) of the survey population believe that boys (0-7-yr-old) are physically stronger than girls, and 70% of adult males would prefer to play physical games with boys over girls. In conclusion, gender stereotyping not only causes a negative impact on the emotional strength of little boys but also alters the mindset of both genders into making them believe that boys are stronger than girls, thereby affecting little children’s psychology.

Investigating the Effect of Gender Stereotyping in Children's Development and Psychology

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