International Journal of Behavioral Development © 2000 The International Society for the

2000, 24 (4), 398–406 Study of Behavioural Development

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Perspectives on gender development

Eleanor E. Maccoby
Stanford University, California, USA

Two traditional perspectives on gender development—the socialisation and cognitive perspectives—

are reviewed. It is noted that although they deal quite well with individual differences within each sex
with regard to degree of sex-typing, they do not offer satisfactory explanations for some of the most
robust gender dimorphisms: namely, gender segregation and the divergent patterns of interaction
within all-male as compared with all-female dyads or groups. These patterns are briey summarised,
and their similarity to those found in nonhuman primates and other mammals is noted. It is argued
that an ethological perspective, and its modern successor the psychobiological perspective, are
needed, along with the more traditional perspectives, to provide a comprehensive account of gender
development as it occurs in dyads and groups as well as within individual children.

In the last several decades there have been important shifts in
psychologists’ thinking about gender development. There were
empirical questions Žrst of all: In what ways, to what degree,
and how consistently, did boys and girls differ in the
developmental pathways typically taken? And there have been
notable changes in the points of view psychologists have
brought to bear in their efforts to understand and explain
whatever gender differentiation was thought to occur. Two
viewpoints about gender development were dominant for many
years: the socialisation perspective and the gender-cognitive
perspective. These perspectives are Žrst described below, and
then their limitations are pointed out, stressing how narrow
these views were concerning the nature of the gender-
differentiated phenomena that need to be understood. The
paper turns then to considering how much an ethological
perspective, when added to the traditional pair, can contribute
towards achieving a more comprehensive view of gender
development. Finally, some more recent thinking from
psychobiology is brought to bear in the interests of moving
toward an integration of the several perspectives.
The direct socialisation perspective
At mid century, psychologists asked: By what processes do
children become ‘‘sex-typed?’’ By sex-typing, they usually
meant that children take on the attributes that are typical and/
or valued (expected, normative) for their own sex. In seeking
answers, they worked from the stimulus-response (S-R)
principles of the reinforcement learning theories that domi-
nated the Želd of psychology at that time. From this point of
view, sex-typed behaviours were a set of habits. Boys and girls
would develop different sex-typed habits if socialisation
agents—parents, teachers, older children—reinforced girls for
‘‘feminine’’ behaviours and provided negative consequences
when they displayed behaviours thought to be more appro-
priate for boys. Similarly, boys were thought to be ‘‘shaped’’
toward the version of ‘‘masculine’’ behaviour deemed proper
in the particular society where the children were growing up.
Implicit in this viewpoint is the idea that individual
differences within each sex, and mean differences between the
sexes on any given trait, are essentially reections of the same
processes. Thus, it would be assumed that if one aspect of
becoming masculine for a boy is to learn not to cry, then boys
on the average would be subject to more socialisation
pressures, that is, would be told, more often than girls, ‘‘That
didn’t really hurt’’, or ‘‘It’s only a scratch’’, or ‘‘Don’t be a
crybaby’’, or ‘‘Oh, toughen up!’’—and would develop stronger
inhibitions against crying then would girls. At the same time,
some boys would receive stronger, more consistent pressures of
this kind than others, and so some would develop stronger
crying inhibitions, and become more ‘‘masculine’’ than others.
Differential socialisation pressures on boys and girls could
take a variety of additional forms, beyond differential positive
and negative reinforcement: for example, via providing
different toys for children of the two sexes, or attributing
different characteristics to them. And by giving boys and girls
distinctive names and dressing them differently, their gender
was announced to allcomers with the message: ‘‘This child is a
boy/girl, to be treated accordingly.’’ Distinctive socialisation
pressures on boys and girls were thought to begin at birth, to be
fairly strong, and to be consistent in some respects throughout
a given culture.
A secondary perspective which inuenced some of the
developmental research at mid century was derived from
psychodynamic theory. This theory was more developmental
than S-R learning theory, which did not specify particular
periods during growth that would be optimal for children’s
acquisition of sex-typed behaviours. Freud’s theory of psycho-
sexual development posited a transition at about the age of four
or Žve, when the resolution of Oedipal conicts would involve
children’s identifying with their same-sex parent and thus
taking on the appropriate sex-typed characteristics of that

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr Eleanor E. Maccoby,

Department of Psychology, Stanford University, 2130
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94305–2130, USA.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 2000, 24 (4), 398–406
parent. This transition was thought to be more difŽcult for
boys, who had to break a prior identiŽcation with their
mothers, and in becoming masculine would need to distance
themselves from all things feminine. Echoes of this theory are
found in the work of Chodorow (1978). In the 1950s and
1960s, Robert Sears and colleagues (Sears, Maccoby, &Levin,
1957; Sears, Rau, & Alpert, 1965) attempted to integrate S-R
and psychodynamic theories in their studies of the relation-
ships between parental child-rearing practices and the degree
of children’s sex-typing. The results failed to conŽrm Freudian
theory. As Sears and colleagues wrote, in summarising their
Žndings: ‘‘The box score for primary identiŽcation theory as an
explanation of gender role is poor’’ (Sears et al., 1965, p. 194).
How well have the assumptions about children of the two
sexes being socialised differently stood up empirically? It is
certainly true that parents give their children sex-typed names,
dress them differently, and decorate their rooms differently.
Also, all languages of the world provide different ways of
speaking about male and female persons. In English and other
Indo-European languages, the sexes are distinguished by
pronouns—he, she, his, hers—which surely facilitates chil-
dren’s learning to code themselves and others as to gender. In
addition, there are distinctive ways of speaking to children that
emphasise stereotypical qualities, such as saying to a four-year-
old ‘‘That’s my sweet little girl’’ or ‘‘There’s my big strong
boy’’. Still, it has proved surprisingly difŽcult to document
differential treatment of boys and girls by their parents,
especially when children are young. Several reviews have
summarised child-rearing practices used by parents with sons
and daughters (mainly in modern Western societies). When it
comes to the traditional dimensions of child rearing (e.g.,
permissiveness, restrictiveness, monitoring, responsiveness,
warmth) few differences have been found in the way parents
deal with sons as compared with daughters (Huston, 1983;
Lytton &Romney, 1991; Maccoby &Jacklin, 1974). Although
it is often assumed that parents react differently to assertive
behaviour by sons and daughters, and draw young daughters
into greater emotional closeness with themselves than they do
with young sons, evidence to date does not support these
assumptions. There are some ways in which parents do
consistently differentiate: they do more roughhousing with
sons, offer dolls more often to girls (and toy trucks to boys),
and talk about feelings more with girls (see Maccoby, 1998, for
a summary of studies). And fathers in particular show negative
reactions to any behaviour by their sons that seems effeminate.
Of course, when socialisation differences are found, the
ubiquitous issue of direction of effects arises. Do parents offer
dolls to girls, trucks to boys, because they want their children
to be appropriately ‘‘masculine’’ or ‘‘feminine’’, or because
they have discovered that these are the toys the children prefer?
If they roughhouse more with boys, is this because they have a
stereotypical view of what kind of play boys ought to like, or
because boys actually do like it more than girls and ‘‘train’’
their parents over time to play in ways that boys Žnd most
enjoyable? There is good evidence that boys’ and girls’
different initiatives can indeed evoke different reactions from
their parents (see the summary in Maccoby, 1998). But, these
reactions, in their turn, can then inuence the children, so the
existence of child-to-parent effects do not by any means
preclude parent-to-child effects (Ge et al., 1996; O’Connor,
Deater-Deckard, Fulker, Rutter, & George, 1998).
Experimental studies have been doneDownloaded
in which unfamiliar
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children are given an arbitrary gender label. In such studies, an
399
infant is chosen whose sex cannot be easily identiŽed when the
child is dressed. Unfamiliar adults are then offered the
opportunity to interact with the infant, or view the infant on
videotape, the child having been introduced to some of the
subjects as a girl, to others as a boy. The adults’ reactions to the
child, and interpretations of the child’s behaviour, are then
recorded. Such studies control for the direction-of-effects
problem, because differential eliciting properties of male and
female infants are ruled out by design. Although early studies
suggested that adults’ reactions and interpretations were
indeed inuenced by the child’s gender label, a review of 23
gender-labelling studies (Stern & Karraker, 1989) found that
overall effects were quite weak and quite inconsistent from
study to study.
No doubt there are subtle differences in parental treatment
that are not captured in the rather coarse-grained net that
researchers have cast, and certainly what seem to be rather
minor differences can accumulate over many repetitions into
signiŽcant inuences on children. And surely, socialisation
differences would be more apparent in traditional societies
where there are more rigid status differences between men and
women. Still, we would have to say that to date, the
socialisation theory that grew out of the S-R learning
perspective of the mid century and stressed the role of parents
as ‘‘shapers’’ of sex-typed behaviour rests on a weak empirical
foundation.
Of course, a socialisation perspective does not need to focus
so exclusively on parents as the developmental psychology of
the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s tended to do. There were a
number of reasons for this focus. First of all, much of the
research at that time involved infants and children of preschool
age, in families in which few mothers worked outside the home.
Thus it was natural to assume that parents were indeed the
most inuential socialisation agents. In addition, there was a
pervasive assumption that the early years were a time of great
plasticity, when children were especially subject to ‘‘shaping’’
with respect to characteristics thought to be pervasive and
long-lasting, such as the gendered aspects of the self. In recent
years much more attention has been given to the inuence of
other socialisation agents, such as out-of-home caregivers,
peers, teachers, and coaches, whose positive or negative
reactions to children’s behaviour can provide additional
shaping for children’s sex-role development in ways that can
supplement—or sometimes even contradict—the inuence of
parents.
In fact, to test a theory of direct socialisation adequately, it
would be necessary not only to demonstrate that socialisation
agents deal differentially with the two sexes, but that these
different socialisation experiences are related to any differences
in developmental trajectories that appear in male and female
children. Much depends, then, on what aspects of gender
enactment are chosen as ‘‘outcomes’’ in efforts to test
socialisation theory. This issue will be considered more fully
below.
The indirect socialisation perspective
Beginning in the 1960s, social learning theory added learning
by imitation (often called modelling) to reinforcement as a
powerful process involved in gender socialisation. In social
learning theory, children were still seen as being shaped by
direct positive and negative reinforcement. But it was also
shown that children could learn vicariously from seeing how
400 MACCOBY / PERSPECTIVES ON GENDER DEVELOPMENT
other children’s gender-appropriate or gender-inappropriate
behaviour were reacted to by others (Bandura, 1965). Apart
from learning about the consequences of such behaviour,
children could also learn by observation what behaviours were
characteristic of each sex. And of course, they could learn these
things not only from what they observed within their families,
schools, and neighbourhoods, but from Žlms or TV, or as
depicted in stories (Mischel, 1966). The introduction of
observational learning gave great added power to learning
theory. But it also brought some complications. In daily life,
boys and girls are exposed to models of both sexes. Both boys
and girls presumably would learn the same facts concerning
what behaviour is appropriate for boys, what for girls. The
theory called for selective imitation, such that boys would adopt
behaviour depicted by male models, or adapt their own
behaviour according to the reinforcement patterns they saw
being provided for male, rather than female, children. At the
least, this required that children would know their own gender
and that of the people whom they observed. Then too, it
required that children should be able to summarise and
generalise from multiple exemplars, and deal with exceptions.
In addition, it called for some motivation to adopt the
behaviour patterns of people who are ‘‘the same as me’’ with
respect to gender. Clearly, the theory called for the extensive
incorporation of cognitive elements in gender development.
The cognitive perspective
In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a strong surge of interest in
gender cognitions. Although a cognitive perspective on
developmental processes had been strongly anticipated in
Europe for many decades, it was the ‘‘cognitive revolution’’
that took place in American psychology beginning in the 1960s
that set the stage for an active revision of American views about
child development. Children were increasingly seen not as
passive recipients of socialisation pressures, but as active
selectors and users of information pertinent to their develop-
mental levels and personal goals. And children began to be
seen as developing the capacity to adopt standards, and
regulate their own behaviour in conformity to these standards,
thus contributing to their own socialisation.
Vast amounts of information are available to children
concerning the way gender is enacted in the world around
them. In the 1970s, 1980s, and continuing into the 1990s,
research focused heavily on how children acquire knowledge
and develop stereotypes and scripts concerning what is usual,
or considered ‘‘appropriate’’, for people of the two sexes. (See
Ruble & Martin, 1998, for a review.) It became evident that
gender is a highly salient category for children, perhaps because
it is neatly binary, because it is so heavily culturally
emphasised, and because socially ascribed sex and biological
sex are so completely redundant. The distinction, in other
words, is easy to make, and there is good evidence that children
do indeed make it very early in life. Gender categories, once
applied, have been shown to be a convenient hook on which
children can easily hang stereotypes about gender attributes
(Gelman, Coleman, & Maccoby, 1986) and assimilate new
incoming information to these stereotypes. Gender schema
theories introduced in the early 1980s held that children form
cognitive structures that organise their gender knowledge into a
set of expectations that guide and Downloadedorganise their
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perceptions (Bem, 1981; Martin & Halverson, 1981).
Knowledge about the characteristics of the two sexes, and
about the norms for their behaviour, is clearly necessary, but is
it sufŽcient by itself to motivate children to adopt socially
prescribed roles and standards? Several hypotheses have been
advanced concerning the ways in which children’s knowledge
of their own gender identity and that of others could function
to set motivational processes in motion:
1. When observing the contingencies that are experienced
by other children, the observer is able to select the
experiences of children of their own sex as most relevant
to inferences about what might happen to themselves.
This allows observational learning to be focused
speciŽcally on the acquisition of behaviours and stan-
dards that apply differentially to the child’s own sex.
2. Out of a need for cognitive consistency, children want to
adapt themselves (i.e., conform) to what they believe is
appropriate for their own sex. Kohlberg (1966) proposed
that this motivation would not appear until approxi-
mately the age of 5–7, when he thought children achieve
a Žrm level of gender constancy. Because Kohlberg
urged the importance of gender constancy, evidence has
accumulated that the functional elements of gender
constancy (namely, identity and stability; see Maccoby,
1990; Ruble & Martin, 1998) are achieved at consider-
ably younger ages than Kohlberg believed.
3. When they have achieved a stable gender identity,
children classify themselves as members of a same-sex
group. They identify with this group, see members of the
other sex as belonging to an outgroup, and want to be
like members of their own-sex group.
These possibilities are not mutually exclusive, and may all
combine to generate the motivation for children to: (a)
selectively imitate same-sex models (if they are known to be
good exemplars of their gender category—see Perry & Bussey,
1979); (b) seek, select, and remember preferentially informa-
tion that is relevant to, and consistent with, children’s own-sex
schemas, and (c) reject, ignore, forget, or distort schema-
inconsistent material (see Ruble & Martin, 1998, for a
summary). With the acquisition of a stable gender identity,
children can also begin to monitor their own behaviour with
reference to a self-accepted standard of what is appropriate for
their own sex (Bussey & Bandura, 1992).
The socialisation and cognitive perspectives discussed so far
combine into a kind of social constructivist approach. Insofar
as children of the two sexes are found to differ in their
behaviour, interests and/or value, it is thought that this
differentiation comes about for three reasons: because adults
shape children in this way; because peers shape each other
according to the way they themselves have been socialised; and
because children—once they have established a Žrm gender
identity—socialise themselves to conform to what they know to
be stereotypical for children of their own sex, within the limits
of what their own competencies permit (Bandura & Bussey,
1999).
Sometimes, the use of the word ‘‘stereotypes’’ is taken to
mean that attributes assimilated to social categories are
arbitrary, so that our concepts about the two sexes may be
quite artiŽcial or distorted. How accurate are our gender
stereotypes? In their review, Deaux and LaFrance (1998) note
social that it is hardly possible to check the reality base of some of our
stereotypes, because they refer to characteristics that are very
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 2000, 24 (4), 398–406 401

difŽcult to measure objectively. People’s beliefs about certain Limitations of these perspectives
attributes of the two sexes that can be objectively assessed,
In the 1980s and 1990s, it began to be evident that these
however, turn out to be quite accurate (e.g., that women are
perspectives were not serving well, on the whole. First of all, it
more involved than men in the care of young children). This
was increasingly clear that sex differences in children’s
work has been done with adults, and we can only assume that
psychological attributes as usually measured were not sub-
the accuracy of children’s gender stereotypes would improve
stantial, and Žndings were inconsistent from one study to
with age, as they accumulate information about a larger and
another. Focusing on individual variation along dimensions
larger sample of exemplars.
such as ‘‘masculinity’’, ‘‘femininity’’, ‘‘androgyny’’, or ‘‘degree
At the end of the 20th century, then, a predominant
of sex-typing’’ was not turning out to be a strategy that
perspective on gender development is a dual one focusing on
accounted for much variance in behavioural outcomes.
individual differences. Its central themes are that children will
Although this might mean that gender simply is not an
differ in the degree to which they become sex-typed as a result
important factor in children’s daily lives, it could also mean
of: (a) the strength of the socialisation pressures they have
that gender matters only in certain contexts, so that aggregat-
experienced; and (b) the nature and coherence of their gender
ing across contexts attenuates gender-related phenomena that
schemas—their knowledge about the characteristics stereo-
are in fact quite strong. If so, it would appear that research
typically associated with each sex, and about what the social
should turn to studies of moderating contexts. And, in
expectations are for persons of their own sex. Of course,
addition, look for gender-related outcome variables that are
socialisation and cognitive factors in gender development are
more robust than ‘‘sex-typing’’ as we have measured it with
not truly distinct. For example, socialisation pressures are one
toy- or activity-preference tests or clusters of personality traits.
source of information enabling children to develop their
The socialisation and cognitive perspectives have proved
knowledge concerning the gendered norms that they are
disappointing in another respect: Empirical tests have failed to
expected to adopt. The direct socialisation experiences
give consistent support for the predicted connections between
children have, in other words, constitute a major source of
processes and outcomes. As noted above, the similarities in the
information upon which cognitive structures are built. Indeed,
ways socialisation agents treat boys and girls far outweigh the
the whole cultural milieu in which a child grows up presents to
differences. Still, some differences are found. Ruble and
children an array of cultural beliefs and practices concerning
Martin’s comprehensive review of studies examining connec-
gender, and when children draw on these to construct their
tions between differential socialisation and sex-typed outcomes
gender schemas, it can reasonably be said that they are being
shows very meagre relationships. They say: ‘‘Although adults
socialised by the surrounding culture into becoming co-
and peers treat boys and girls differently in many ways,
practitioners of these cultural forms.
especially concerning activities and interests, the role of these
An emphasis on cognitive and socialisation factors by no
processes in children’s gender-related preferences and behaviors
means precludes a recognition of possible biological inuences
remains to be demonstrated’’ (Ruble &Martin, 1998, p. 982).
that may generate different predispositions in boys and girls.
In a similar vein, they note that variations among children in
Nowadays, there is widespread recognition of the importance
the level of their knowledge of gender stereotypes are generally
of biological factors. However, as biological sex and socially
unconnected to individual differences in sex-typed behaviour
ascribed gender are so completely redundant, it has proved
(e.g., Powlishta, 1995). This is by no means a fatal blow to
difŽcult to tease them apart. Something is known concerning
cognitive theories of gender development, because in many
sex differences in brain structures and functions. For example,
respects gender cognitions are important in their own right,
in males, more functions are lateralised, so that they are
regardless of how and whether they ‘‘drive’’ individual
associated with activation primarily in one hemisphere of the
differences in sex-typed behaviour. Furthermore, children’s
brain, whereas in females, the two hemispheres are more likely
understanding of gender identity—their own and that of other
to be both activated for a speciŽc function. However, the
people—does appear to be somewhat connected to other
possible behavioural impacts of these structural differences are
aspects of gender development early in life. However, under-
far from being understood. A good deal is known concerning
standing of gender identity is virtually complete in most
the physiological events during gestation that differentiate the
children by the age of about 3, and hence (as it varies so little)
genital structures of male and female fetuses. And we know,
cannot correlate with individual differences in sex-typing that
too, something about the way in which prenatal hormones
emerge after approximately the Žrst three years of life.
organise the developing fetal brain so as to create different
Similarly, in some contexts and at some ages, there is very
propensities and sensitivities in the two sexes—tendencies
little individual variation in the choice of same-sex playmates,
which will manifest themselves behaviourally at various times
so that this aspect of sex-typing cannot be predicted from
during postnatal development, perhaps requiring either a
individual cognitive or personality characteristics.
biological or environmental trigger for their activation.
Clearly, a rethinking of the long-dominant perspectives
As noted above, most accounts of gender development do
described above is in order, and has begun. A major
note possible biological underpinnings for some of the gender
reorientation is a shift away from a focus on individual
differentiation that occurs. And there is considerable interest in
differences in outcomes, and an increasing focus on some
taking biological explanations one step backward to the genetic
robust outcomes for groups—gender effects which might
factors that may control biological differentiation. But we are a
appear primarily, or only, in certain speciŽc social contexts.
long way from having traced pathways from genes to the
behavioural attributes that typically differentiate the sexes. In
psychology, the great bulk of work has been concerned with the
social and cognitive factors that are thought to underlie this
Robust gender phenomena in the context of groups
differentiation, over and above what anyDownloaded
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tions may call for. began to emerge in the late 1970s that the answer could be
402 MACCOBY / PERSPECTIVES ON GENDER DEVELOPMENT
found in the context of pairs or larger groups of children
engaged in social interaction. Jacklin and Maccoby (1978)
observed 92 pairs of previously unacquainted children, all close
to 33 months of age, as they interacted with each other and
with toys. Tallies were kept of the instances of social
behaviours (both positive and negative, verbal and nonverbal)
each child directed toward his/her partner. Some of the pairs
were composed of two boys, some of two girls, and some were
mixed-sex pairs. Results were that children of both sexes
directed about twice as much social behaviour toward partners
who were of their own sex as they did to other-sex partners.1 It
is notable that when data were computed without regard to the
sex of the child’s partner, boys and girls displayed virtually
identical levels of social behaviour. In other words, there was
no overall sex difference in a personality dimension that might
be called ‘‘sociability’’. This Žnding underlines the fact that
analyses which look only at the behaviour of individual
children without regard to social context can totally obscure
powerful gender phenomena. It is no surprise, then, that many
simple comparisons between boys and girls have shown sex
differences to be weak or absent. Theorists who have
emphasised the importance of context, and variations in the
salience of gender from one context to another, might rightly
see the Žndings of the Jacklin and Maccoby study as a
vindication of their position. But there is something very
speciŽc about the context that turned out to be important in
this work: It was the sex of a child’s interactive partner that
mattered, not context construed as environmental setting or
prior priming conditions. The study points to the importance
of group composition, and/or of relationships, in how gender is
enacted.
Astudy of preschoolers, conducted at about the same time,
helps us to understand the above Žndings. Wasserman and
Stern (1978) laid down a strip of carpet on a playroom oor,
and asked a child (sometimes a boy, sometimes a girl) to stand
quietly at one end of it. Another child was then placed at the
‘‘starting’’ end of the strip, and asked to walk along it to the
standing child. It turned out that children would walk up quite
close to the standing child, facing directly forward, if the
standing child was of their own sex. Approaching an other-sex
child, however, both boys and girls would turn away as they
approached and stop sooner. Notably, this occurred whether
they were acquainted with the standing child or not, indicating
that we are seeing here a form of other-sex avoidance that is not
driven by previous experience with another child, but rather by
the other child’s membership in a gender category.
Perhaps we are seeing here an instance of the kind of self-
regulation pointed to by cognitive social learning theorists, in
which a child recognises the sex of another child, knows that it
is considered inappropriate to associate with children of the
other sex, and hence inhibits the approach to the other child. It
appears, though, that children begin to show cross-sex
avoidance at such a young age that they may not yet be able
to code their own gender identity and that of other children
reliably and explicitly. In traditional theories, there has never
been a claim that the cognitions involved are conscious or
deliberate, but still, gender-cognitive processes are assumed to
occur at some level. An alternative possibility is that there is
simply an uncognised raw emotion connected with gender
categories. The early paper by Zajonc: ‘‘Feeling and thinking:
1
These results were replicated in a study of English children
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from 19 to 39 months (Lloyd & Smith, 1986).
Preferences need no inferences’’ (1980) presented evidence
that indeed preferences (liking/disliking, approach/avoidance)
can be primary, immediate, without (or prior to) activation of
related cognitions. Recent writings by Panksepp (1998), stress
not only the immediacy of emotional reactions, but their deep
mammalian origins. ‘‘Primal’’ emotions, including affective
reactions to certain characteristics of same- or other-sex
conspeciŽcs, are claimed to be instinctive and species-wide.
Given a pattern of wariness toward children of the other sex,
and/or especial interest in, or compatibility with, own-sex other
children, it is predictable that when children have a choice of
playmates, they will congregate in same-sex pairs or groups. In
childhood, there is a clear pattern of cross-sex avoidance and/
or same-sex preference that begins in about the third year of
life and becomes progressively stronger though middle child-
hood. Children’s tendency to congregate socially with others of
their own sex has long been noted in the developmental
literature, and has been thoroughly documented, in a variety of
cultures and subcultures (see Hartup, 1983; Maccoby &
Jacklin, 1987; and Ruble & Martin, 1998, for reviews). In
modern Western societies, it is manifested most strongly in
situations not structured by adults, though in more traditional
societies the structures adults provide for children certainly
contribute to it. The phenomenon of gender segregation in
childhood is remarkably robust, with very little overlap, by the
age of 5 or 6, between the distributions of the two sexes with
respect to the gender of the other children with whom they
spend their free social time (Maccoby, 1998).
The students of gender segregation have been concerned
with the factors that bring it about (see Leaper, 1994) and with
the implications for how gender development should be
studied. Clearly, one implication of gender segregation is that
it is important to continue to study and understand the nature
of the group processes that occur in all-male as compared to
all-female dyads or groups, sustaining the progress that has
already been made in this work. There is now considerable
evidence that the groups or dyads formed by girls, as compared
with boys, differ with respect to the agendas they enact, and in
their prevailing interaction ‘‘styles’’. The nature of these
differences has been summarised elsewhere (Maccoby, 1998;
Ruble & Martin, 1998). Here it is sufŽcient to note a few
dominant trends:
1. The themes that appear in boys’ fantasies, in the stories
they invent, the scenarios they enact when playing with
other boys, and the Žctional fare they prefer (books and
TV) involve danger, conict, destruction, heroic actions,
and trials of physical strength. Girls’ fantasy and play
themes tend to be oriented around domestic or romantic
scripts, portraying characters who are involved in social
relationships and depicting the maintenance or restora-
tion of order and safety.
2. Interaction among boys, more often than among girls,
involves rough-and-tumble play, competition, conict,
ego displays, risk-taking, and striving for dominance.
Girls, by contrast, are more responsive to the inputs of
their interactive partners, more likely to use suggestions
rather than imperative demands, and more likely to
construct collaborative scripts in which the actions of
play characters are reciprocal (see Leaper, 1991, on girls’
collaborative discourse style). This does not imply that
ranging in age
girls do not assert their own objectives, or that their
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interactions are conict-free, only that they seek their
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 2000, 24 (4), 398–406
individual goals in the context of also striving to maintain
group harmony (see Sheldon, 1992).
3. Girls’ and boys’ friendships are qualitatively different,
girls’ friendships being more intimate in the sense that
friends share information about the details of their lives
and concerns, whereas boys typically know less about
their friends’ lives and base their friendships on shared
activities. The break-up of girls’ friendships is more
emotionally intense than for boys’ friendships.
By age 6, too, boys typically play in larger groups.
Benenson, Apostolaris, and Parnass (1997) showed, in a study
of same-sex six-child groups, that between the ages of 4 and 6,
boys greatly increased the time they spent in coordinated group
activities, so that by the age of 6, they were spending 74% of
their time in such activities. No such increase occurred for
girls, whose coordinated group activities dropped below 20%
of their time at age 6. And, girls have been found to show more
enjoyment than boys when engaged in dyadic interaction
(Benenson, 1993), whereas this differential is not found for
interaction in larger groups. Girls, too, are found to sustain
longer bouts of interaction in dyads than do boys. In other
words, girls actively seek, prefer, and elaborate dyadic
interactions, whereas boys do not appear to Žnd such
interactions to be especially gratifying, and instead gravitate
toward coordinated activities carried out in larger groups.
There is evidence, too, that boys’ groups are not only larger,
but also stronger in some sense, that is, more cohesive, with
stronger ingroup identiŽcation and stronger boundaries, in the
sense of more strongly excluding both girls and adults (see
Maccoby, 1998, for an elaboration of these processes).
The fact that boys congregate in larger groups has important
implications. When in dyads, children of both sexes are
relatively noncompetitive, and more emotionally supportive
of their interactive partners, than they are when participating in
larger groups (see Benenson, Nicholson, Waire, Roy, &
Simpson, in press), something that was noted many years
ago in interactions among adults (Bales & Borgotta, 1955).
Can it be, then, that the greater competitiveness and lesser
positive intimacy in male-male interaction can be accounted
for by boys’ being more often in larger play groups?Perhaps so,
but the fact that they congregate in larger groups may itself be a
reection of their preference for certain forms of competitive
but coordinated activity that can only be performed in larger
groups. Indeed, boys form coalitions to achieve group goals—
and gain group power thereby—to an extent that girls seldom
do.
The above account suggests that the two sexes are pursuing
different agendas in their same-sex groups. But children in
groups are not always engaged in enacting these differentiated
agendas, and when they are not, male-male and female-female
interactions can be much alike. It should be noted, too, that
researchers have not yet spelled out the developmental time-
line for these aspects of gender differentiation. Thus, although
there is reason to have a good deal of conŽdence in their
occurrence, it is not yet clear how they wax and wane, and
whether there are privileged sequences such that some
processes need to occur before others can come into play.
The ethological perspective
Ethology originally referred to the studyDownloaded
of animal behaviour,
from jbd.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 9, 2016
and a guiding perspective in ethological research was an
403
evolutionary one. The principle of natural selection was
invoked to explain species-wide adaptive behaviours, such that
each animal species was equipped to survive in its particular
environmental niche. As the perspective began to be applied to
human behaviour, it was of great interest to trace similarities
between humans and nonhuman primates, their closest
relatives on the evolutionary tree. In the 1950s and 1960s,
John Bowlby (1969) drew on the work of Harlow (1961) and
Hinde (1966) to show striking resemblances between the
patterns of attachment behaviour in human infants or toddlers
and what was seen in young monkeys and apes. In the 1970s,
work by Blurton-Jones (1972) and Strayer (1977; Strayer &
Strayer, 1978) focused on patterns of children’s play, social
dominance, aggression, and peer afŽliation, identifying further
parallels with the young of nonhuman primates.
In observing sex differences in behaviours of this kind,
ethologists do not look for generalised ‘‘trait’’ differences, but
rather for the situations under which a difference does or does
not appear, and the form the behaviour takes. It would not be
meaningful to an ethologist, for example, to ask whether male
ungulates are more aggressive than female ungulates. Rather,
they would note that both males and females attack predators,
and do so in the same way: with their hooves. Only males,
however, Žght over territory and mates, and they use their
horns, rather than their hooves, to attack or threaten other
males. In a similar way, in studying human children,
ethologists look for speciŽc behavioural topography, and
speciŽc contexts in which sex differentiation is seen. Striking
parallels between human children and the young of other
primates have indeed been found, and this fact has been
interpreted as pointing to evolved, genetically guided under-
pinnings for certain elements of human behaviour. The
evolutionary history of human development continues to be a
matter of great interest up to the present time (see Geary &
Bjorklund, 2000, for a review). Throughout, thinkers involved
in this work have been concerned with what adaptive purpose
an evolved behaviour pattern might serve.
In what way might an evolutionary perspective be pertinent
to gender development? Most evolutionary adaptations, after
all, are seen as species-wide, occurring in both sexes. However,
in bisexual species, the distinctive roles of the two sexes in
reproduction is thought to have produced different adaptive
behaviours (i.e., different strategies for mate selection, and
differential involvement in the rearing of young). With respect
to these domains, then, the two sexes are seen as distinct
subspecies.
Might evolution have anything to do with gender differ-
entiation that occurs in childhood, before the age when the
activities of mate selection and care of offspring emerge? The
fact that young monkeys and apes separate into same-sex
playgroups, and display some of the same sex-differentiated
playstyles as those seen in human children, strongly suggests
that there is indeed an evolutionary basis for these behaviours.
So does the fact that there appears to be substantial uniformity
in these patterns across human cultures. Geary and Bjorklund
(2000) say: ‘‘From an evolutionary perspective, these sex
differences are predicted to be a reection of and a preparation
for sex differences in adult reproductive activities’’ (p. 60).
Thus, boys’ competitiveness and dominance strivings are seen
as preparation for adult male competition over mates, whereas
girls’ greater social responsiveness and cooperativeness with
other girls can be seen as preparation for participation in the
kin-based social groups of females in which most rearing of
404 MACCOBY / PERSPECTIVES ON GENDER DEVELOPMENT
the young occurs, in nonhuman primates as well as—
presumably—in the hunter-gatherer bands where some under-
pinnings of present-day human characteristics evolved.
In what possible way could sex segregation in childhood
serve an adaptive purpose, from the standpoint of the
subsequent successful reproductive activities as adults? One
hypothesis is: It functions to prevent incest, with its attendant
risks for expression, in offspring, of genetic defects carried on
recessive genes (see Maccoby, 1998, and Wolf, 1995, for
elaboration and evidence). According to this account, humans
are predisposed to lose sexual interest in anyone with whom
they have been closely associated in childhood, such as siblings
and other close relatives. Thus, paradoxical though it may
seem, cross-sex avoidance in childhood can be seen as a means
of fostering or safeguarding future heterosexual attraction.
It is more difŽcult to see how some of the other sex-
differentiated patterns we have noted might contribute to
individual reproductive success and viability of an individual’s
offspring. Rather, it would seem timely to expand the
ecological perspective to include group success, group viability.
Among chimpanzees, and in the human societies closest to the
way our ancestors probably lived (Collier & Risaldo, 1981),
males form coalitions to engage in cooperative group hunting
and group warfare,2 enterprises not directly related to
individual reproductive success, but relevant to survival of
the troupe. Some of the processes seen in boys’ groups, then,
may have the function of regulating hostility and competition
among group members in the interests of allowing cooperative
group enterprises to emerge.
The psychobiological perspective
The ethological perspective largely describes instinctive ele-
ments in a species’ behavioural repertoire (i.e., behavioural
dispositions assumed to be governed directly by evolved
genetic programmes). From this perspective, individual life
experience and environmental contexts have little inuence,
other than to provide the innate environmental triggers
required to ‘‘release’’ an instinctive behaviour. In fact,
however, there are many aspects of the environment, other
than innate releasers, that function jointly with genetic factors
to inuence behavioural development. Many years of research
have revealed that the way genetic instructions are carried out
depends on environmental inputs at every stage of develop-
ment from conception to maturity.
The modern psychobiological view is that genes (G) and
environment (E) have a bidirectional, reciprocal relationship,
and cannot properly be understood as separate components
whose effects can be independently estimated and then
compared or summed (Gottlieb, Wahlsten, and Lickliter,
1998). G E interactions are widespread, and recent work has
begun to Žll in the gap between genes and behavioural
outcomes, by showing how both environment (e.g., conditions
of rearing) and an allele of a given gene can affect a speciŽc
intervening biochemical process, which then inuences beha-
vioural outcomes (Anisman, Zaharia, Meany, & Merali, 1998;
Suomi, in press; and see Maccoby, 2000, for a summary). The
role of environment, as it interacts with genetic predispositions,
is much more complex than simply providing a releaser for an
2 sex differences are robust and consistent across cultures and
For information on male hunting and warfare in chimpanzees, see: Boesch
and Boesch, 1989; McGrew, Marchant, and Nishida, 1996;
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from jbd.sagepub.com
Wallis, Matama, and Goddall, 1994.
instinctive response. In both rodents and primates, it has been
shown that animals coming from different genetic strains will
manifest their different predispositions only under certain early
rearing conditions (i.e., being deprived of contact with
maternal animals or peers—see Hood & Cairns, 1989; Suomi,
1997). And for some songbirds, a young male will not acquire
the species-speciŽc male courting song unless he is reared in
the company of older females, who ‘‘train’’ him by responding
selectively to the elements of song that females of the species
Žnd most compelling (West & King, in press).
Conditions of rearing matter, too, in how different the two
sexes become. Wallen (1996) has summarised a series of
studies with rhesus monkeys, showing that males display
elevated levels of threat/aggression toward other animals if they
were earlier raised with only limited access to peers, whereas
such limited access increases the amount of submissive, not
aggressive, behaviour in females. For males, the amount of
rough play is also affected by the social conditions of rearing,
although for females, the level of such play remains low
regardless of conditions of rearing. When females are
prenatally exposed to androgens (late in gestation, or over an
extended period), they subsequently show elevated levels of
rough play, although there is no such effect for males. Clearly,
both biology and conditions of rearing are important, but
differently for the two sexes. Wallen notes that it is the sex-
dimorphic behaviours most strongly affected by prenatal
hormones in a given sex that show the least effects of rearing
conditions for that sex. And he concludes: ‘‘These studies
demonstrate that the expression of consistent juvenile beha-
vioral sex differences results from hormonally induced predis-
positions to engage in speciŽc patterns of juvenile behavior
whose expression is shaped by the speciŽc social environment
experienced by the developing monkey’’ (Wallen, 1996,
p. 364).
Humans are very different from birds, mice, and monkeys,
but nevertheless there are useful parallels here. We see that
whatever differential predispositions boys and girls may have, it
is likely that the way they are enacted will depend greatly on the
social conditions provided by the adults and peers with whom
they interact. Societies differ with respect to how much time
children of each sex spend with adults, with peers of their own
sex, and with peers or siblings of the other sex. They also differ
with respect to how much autonomy peer groups have at what
developmental periods. These cultural variations may be
expected to produce variations in the degree and kind of sex
differentiation that appears as children grow up in different
societies.
Integrating perspectives
The above account is meant to show that there is a good case
for including the ethological and psychobiological perspectives
in any attempt to understand gender differentiation in child-
hood. These perspectives are not meant to replace the
socialisation and cognitive perspectives, only to enrich them
by expanding our view of how biological and experiential and
cognitive factors work together when it comes to the enactment
of gender.
The two biological perspectives are especially useful in
helping us to understand any characteristics where between-
and Stanford,
even across species. However, there is considerable variation
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within each sex and among cultural groups in the nature of
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 2000, 24 (4), 398–406
gendered behaviour displayed and the contexts in which it
appears. Although some boys, for example, establish a network
of good male friends, and participate actively in male group
activities, others are loners or peripheral ‘‘hangers-on’’ to these
groups, and still others are the victims of teasing and
humiliation by other boys. Some children join peer groups
that are basically prosocial, others associated mainly with
same-sex peers who engage in risky, antisocial behaviour.
Among girls, too, there is variation in how fully they participate
in ‘‘girl culture’’, and in how much interest they have in less
‘‘feminine’’ activities such as team sports. There is evidence
that these individual differences reect developed differences
in competencies or vulnerabilities acquired at earlier periods of
development—differences which in their turn undoubtedly
reect both within-sex genetic variability and individual
socialisation histories. Thus, the socialisation and cognitive
perspectives should be especially pertinent to the under-
standing of such within-sex variation.
In the last century, there have been substantial changes in
gender roles and the relationships between the sexes, changes
that have occurred much too rapidly to be explained in genetic
terms. These changes underscore how large the social factors
are in such matters as the relative dominance and power of the
two sexes, and make it clear that these matters are indeed open
to change and not built in to human nature as a result of our
species evolution. The above review has suggested that male
power in society stems in no small degree from male groups
and male alliances, despite the internal conicts and competi-
tion that characterise male interaction. The paradox is this: We
have seen that girls and women have especially strong
interactive skills that support collaboration and cooperation
in their close relationships. Yet, women’s social groupings do
not appear to yield power in out-of-home contexts to the extent
that men’s do. Perhaps it will be possible to gain insight into
this issue with more focused developmental research on the
way power is exercised within same-sex groups and between
the sexes.
The fuller incorporation of the ethological and psychobio-
logical perspectives on gender into our existing frameworks
should enrich the research agenda of students of social
development. More detailed observation of children in groups
is called for, with more attention to the agendas that children of
the two sexes seem motivated to enact, and more careful
delineation of how gender-related patterns change with age. Of
especial interest are the changes that occur in gender
enactment during the transition into adolescence. Useful cues
for how such work can be carried out comes from pioneers in
neighbouring disciplines (e.g., the sociologists Maltz &Borker,
1982 and Barrie Thorne, 1986; and sociolinguist Penelope
Eckert, 1996, 2000).
Developmental psychology is in the process of building a
coherent social psychology of childhood. Considerable atten-
tion has been focused on individual children as members of
groups—their acceptance or rejection by peers, their group
entry skills—and the causes and consequences of individual
variation in these things. In addition, there has been some work
on the nature of groups, apart from the individuals who make
them up. In their comprehensive review, Rubin, Bukowski, and
Parker (1998) distinguish group processes from the interac-
tions that occur within dyadic relationships, noting that groups
can have properties that individuals and dyads cannot have
(e.g., hierarchies, density of relationships, norms). Studies of
Downloaded from jbd.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA
‘‘crowds’’ and ‘‘cliques’’ (e.g., Brown, 1990) underscore the
405
importance of shared norms in the inuence peer groups have
on their members, and Kinderman (1993) has shown that a
group can have its own identity over and above the identity of
its members, that is, a group norm persists throughout a school
year despite considerable turnover in the membership of the
group. It is time for gender to take a more central place than it
has occupied so far in such work, with more consistent
attention to the gender composition of dyads and groups. Only
with this knowledge in hand will we be able to understand the
role of peers as gender-socialisation agents, and the way in
which children build shared gender cognitions that can serve
either to amplify or dampen the gender differentiation of roles
and status.
Manuscript received June 2000
Revised manuscript received June 2000
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