We have seen that young children’s emotions and actions are affected by many factors, including brain maturation, culture, and peers. Now we focus on another primary influence on young children: their caregivers. Parents are crucial, and alternate caregivers become pivotal as well.

Many researchers have studied the effects of parenting strategies and emotions. Of course, genes and cultures differ, and that shapes children. Beyond that, however, some parental practices lead to psychopathology while others encourage children to become outgoing, caring adults (Deater-Deckard, 2013).

Although thousands of researchers have traced the effects of parenting on child development, the work of one person, 50 years ago, continues to be influential. In her original research, Diana Baumrind (1967, 1971) studied 100 preschool children, all from California, almost all middle-class European Americans. (The cohort and cultural limitations of this sample were not obvious at the time.)

Baumrind found that parents differed on four important dimensions:

On the basis of these dimensions, Baumrind identified three parenting styles (summarized in Table 10.1).

Other researchers describe a fourth style, called neglectful/uninvolved parenting, which may be confused with permissive but is quite different. The similarity is that neither permissive nor neglectful parents use physical punishment. However, neglectful parents are oblivious to their children’s behavior; they seem not to care. By contrast, permissive parents care very much: They defend their children, arrange play dates, and sacrifice to buy coveted toys.

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The following long-term effects of parenting styles have been reported, not only in the United States but in many other nations as well (Baumrind, 2005; Baumrind et al., 2010; Chan & Koo, 2011; Huver et al., 2010; Rothrauff et al., 2009; Deater-Deckard, 2013).

Baumrind’s classification schema is often criticized. Problems include the following:

We now know that a child’s temperament powerfully affects caregivers. Caring for a child is an interactive process, and good caregivers treat each child as an individual who needs personalized care. That may make outsiders misinterpret the parental practices they see.

For example, fearful children require reassurance while impulsive ones need strong guidelines. Parents of such children may, to outsiders, seem permissive or authoritarian. Of course, some parents are too lax or too rigid, but every child needs some protection and guidance; Some more than others. Overprotection and hypervigilance are both a cause and consequence of childhood anxiety (McShane & Hastings, 2009; Deater-Deckard, 2013), but the right balance depends on the particular child, as differential susceptibility makes clear.

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The significance of context is obvious when children of various ethnic groups are compared because parents in various cultures have heartfelt, and sometimes opposite, child-rearing strategies. One explanation is genetic: Certain alleles may be more common in some ethnic groups, which may affect child temperament and thus make a certain style of parenting more effective. However, a much more plausible reason for cultural differences is that caregivers anticipate the social context in which the child must function.

U.S. parents of Chinese, Caribbean, or African heritage are often stricter than those of European backgrounds, yet their children seem to develop better than if their parents were easygoing (Parke & Buriel, 2006; Ng et al., 2014). Latino parents are sometimes thought to be too intrusive, other times too permissive—but their children seem to be happier than the children of European American parents who behave the same way (Garc’a & Garcia, 2009; Ispa et al., 2004).

Does culture erase the effects of each of the four styles of parenting? No. However, the outcome of any parenting style is affected by the child’s temperament, the parent’s personality, and the social context. This later factor may be particularly important for minority children growing up in a majority culture (Henry, 2011).

In a detailed study of 1,477 instances in which Mexican American mothers of 4-year-olds tried to get their children to do something they were not doing, most of the time the mothers simply uttered a command and the children complied (Livas-Dlott et al., 2010). This simple strategy, with the mother asserting authority and the children obeying without question, might be considered authoritarian.

Almost never, however, did the mothers use physical punishment or even harsh threats when the children did not immediately do as they were told—which happened 14 percent of the time. For example,

Hailey [the 4-year-old] decided to look for another doll and started digging through her toys, throwing them behind her as she dug. Maricruz [the mother] told Hailey she should not throw her toys. Hailey continued to throw toys, and Maricruz said her name to remind her to stop. Hailey continued her misbehavior, and her mother repeated “Hailey” once more. When Hailey continued, Maricruz raised her voice but calmly directed, “Hailey, look at me.” Hailey continued but then looked at Maricruz as she explained, “You don’t throw toys; you could hurt someone.” Finally, Hailey complied and stopped.

[Livas-Dlott et al., 2010, p. 572]

Note that the mother’s first three efforts failed, and then a look accompanied by an explanation (albeit inaccurate in that setting, as no one could be hurt) succeeded. The researchers explain that these Mexican American families did not fit any of Baumrind’s categories; respect for adult authority did not mean a cold mother–child relationship. Instead, the relationship shows evident carino (caring) (Livas-Dlott et al., 2010).

Warmth and caring may be the crucial aspect of parenting style in every ethnic group. Other research also finds that parental affection and warmth allow children to develop self-respect and to become compassionate adults, and this can occur in any of the three common parenting styles within any culture (Deater-Deckard, 2013; Eisenberg et al., 2013).

Given a multicultural and multicontextual perspective, developmentalists hesitate to be too specific in recommending any particular parenting style. That does not mean that all families function equally well—far from it. Signs of emotional distress, including a child’s anxiety, aggression, and inability to play with others, indicate that the family may not be the safe haven of support and guidance that it should be. Ineffective, abusive, and neglectful parents are one cause of child distress, but not the only one. It is a mistake to assume that the parents are to blame whenever the child is troubled.

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Biology determines whether a baby is male or female except in very rare cases when genes do not function normally. As you remember from Chapter 4, at about 8 weeks after conception, the SRY gene directs growth of external reproductive organs, and then male hormones exert subtle control over the brain, body, and later behavior. Without that gene, the fetus develops female organs, which produce female hormones that also affect the brain and behavior.

Sometimes the sex hormones are inactive prenatally and the child does not develop like the typical boy or girl (Hines, 2013). That is rare; most children are male or female in all three ways: chromosomes, genitals, and hormones. That is their nature, but obviously nurture affects sexual development lifelong.

During early childhood, patterns of behavior and preferences related to gender become important to children and apparent to adults. Before age 2, children apply gender labels (Mrs., Mr., lady, man) consistently. By age 4, children are convinced that certain toys (such as dolls or trucks) and roles (not just Daddy or Mommy, but also nurse, teacher, police officer, soldier) are “best suited” for one sex or the other.

Sexual stereotypes often become obvious and rigid between ages 3 and 6. Dynamic-systems theory suggests that concepts of male and female behavior are affected by many developmental aspects of biology and culture, changing as humans grow older (Martin & Ruble, 2010).

Many scientists distinguish sex differences, which are biological differences between males and females, from gender differences, which are culturally prescribed roles and behaviors. In theory, this distinction seems straightforward, but, as with every nature–nurture distinction, the interaction between sex and gender makes it hard to separate the two. Scientists need to “treat culture and biology not as separate influences but as interacting components of nature and nurture” (Eagly & Wood, 2013, p. 349).

Young children are often confused about the origin of male-female differences. One little girl said she would grow a penis when she got older, and one little boy offered to buy his mother one. Ignorance about biology was demonstrated by a 3-year-old who went with his father to see a neighbor’s newborn kittens. Returning home, the child told his mother that there were three girl kittens and two boy kittens. “How do you know?” she asked. “Daddy picked them up and read what was written on their tummies,” he replied.

Many preschool children do not realize that their own biological sex is permanent. In one preschool, the children themselves decided that one wash-up basin was for boys and the other for girls, a decision that reflects young children’s insistence on gender distinctions. One girl started to use the boys’ basin.

Boy: This is for the boys.
Girl:
Stop it. I’m not a girl and a boy, so I’m here.
Boy:
What?
Girl:
I’m a boy and also a girl.
Boy:
You, now, are you today a boy?
Girl:
Yes.
Boy:
And tomorrow what will you be?
Girl:
A girl. Tomorrow I’ll be a girl. Today I’ll be a boy.
Boy:
And after tomorrow?
Girl:
I’ll be a girl.
[Ehrlich & Blum-Kulka, 2014, p.31]

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As already mentioned, girls tend to play with other girls and boys with other boys. Despite their parents’ and teachers’ wishes, children say, “No girls [or boys] allowed.” Most older children consider ethnic discrimination immoral, but they accept some sex discrimination (Møller & Tenenbaum, 2011). Why?

A dynamic-systems approach reminds us that attitudes, roles, and even the biology of gender differences change from one developmental period to the next. Theories about how and why this occurs suggest explanations (Martin & Ruble, 2010; Leaper, 2013). Consider the five broad theories first described in Chapter 2.

Freud (1938/1995) called the period from about ages 3 to 6 the phallic stage, named after the phallus, the Greek word for penis. At about 3 or 4 years of age, said Freud, boys become aware of their male sexual organ. They masturbate, fear castration, and develop sexual feelings toward their mother.

These feelings make every young boy jealous of his father—so jealous, according to Freud, that he wants to replace his dad. Freud called this the Oedipus complex, after Oedipus, son of a king in Greek mythology. Abandoned as an infant and raised in a distant kingdom, Oedipus returned to his birthplace and, without realizing it, killed his father and married his mother. When he discovered the horror, he blinded himself.

Freud believed that this ancient story dramatizes the overwhelming emotions that all boys feel about their parents—both love and hate. Every male feels guilty about his unconscious incestuous and murderous impulses. In self-defense, he develops a powerful conscience called the superego, which is quick to judge and punish.

That marks the beginning of morality, according to psychoanalytic theory. This theory contends that a boy’s fascination with superheroes, guns, kung fu, and the like arises from his unconscious impulse to kill his father. Further, an adult man’s homosexuality, homophobia, or obsession with guns, prostitutes, and hell arise from problems at the phallic stage.

Freud offered several descriptions of the moral development of girls. One centers on the Electra complex (also named after a figure in classical mythology). The Electra complex is similar to the Oedipus complex in that the little girl wants to eliminate the same-sex parent (her mother) and become intimate with the other-sex parent (her father). That may also lead girls to develop a superego.

According to psychoanalytic theory, at the phallic stage, children cope with guilt and fear through identification that is, they try to become like the same-sex parent. Consequently, young boys copy their fathers’ mannerisms, opinions, and actions, and girls copy their mothers’. Both sexes exaggerate the male or female role, which is why 5-year-olds have such sexist ideas.

Most psychologists have rejected Freud’s theory regarding sex and gender. They favor one or another of many other theories to explain the young child’s sex and gender awareness.

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Behaviorists believe that virtually all roles, values, and morals are learned. To behaviorists, gender distinctions are the product of ongoing reinforcement and punishment, as well as social learning. Parents, peers, and teachers all reward behavior that is “gender appropriate” more than behavior that is “gender inappropriate” (Berenbaum et al., 2008).

For example, “adults compliment a girl when she wears a dress but not when she wears pants” (Ruble et al., 2006, p. 897), and a boy who asks for both a train and a doll for his birthday is likely to get the train. Boys are rewarded for boyish requests, not for girlish ones. Indeed, the parental push toward traditional gender behavior in play and chores is among the most robust findings of decades of research on this topic (Eagly & Wood, 2013).

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Social learning is considered an extension of behaviorism. According to that theory, people model themselves after people they perceive to be nurturing, powerful, and yet similar to themselves. For young children, those people are usually their parents.

As it happens, adults are the most sex-typed of their entire lives when they are raising young children. If an employed woman ever leaves her job to become a housewife, it is when she has a baby. Fathers behave differently than mothers with young children, who learn sex roles from their parents. No wonder they are quite sexist (Hallers-Haalboom et al., 2014).

Furthermore, although national policies (e.g., subsidizing preschool) impact gender roles and many fathers are involved caregivers, women in every nation do much more child care, house cleaning, and meal preparation than do men (Hook, 2010). Children follow those examples, unaware that the behavior they see is caused partly by their very existence: Before children are born, many couples share domestic work, but baby care often changes that.

Cognitive theory offers an alternative explanation for the strong gender identity that becomes apparent at about age 5 (Kohlberg et al., 1983). Remember that cognitive theorists focus on how children understand various ideas. A gender schema is the child’s understanding of male–female differences (Martin et al., 2011).

Cognitive theorists point out that young children have many gender-related experiences but not much cognitive depth. They see the world in simple, egocentric terms, as explained in Chapter 9. For this reason, their gender schemas categorize male and female as opposites. Nuances, complexities, exceptions, and gradations about gender (as well as just about everything else) are beyond them.

As Piaget noted, during the preoperational stage, appearance trumps logic. One group of researchers who advocate the cognitive interpretation noted that “[m]any young children pass through a stage of gender appearance rigidity; girls insist on wearing dresses, often pink and frilly, whereas boys refuse to wear anything with a hint of femininity” (Halim et al., 2014, p. 1091). In the research reported by this group, parents sometimes were quite unisex, in attitude or action, but that did not necessarily sway a preschool girl who wanted a bright pink tutu and a sparkly tiara. The child’s gender schema overcame the child’s experience.

Sociocultural theory stresses the importance of cultural values and customs. Some aspects of a culture are transmitted through the parents, as explained in the discussion of behaviorism, but many more arise from the larger community. This varies from place to place and time to time, as would be expected for any cultural value.

Consider a meta-analysis of international research. In many cultures, men prefer younger, more attractive women as mates, and women seek older, more established men. But this preference changes as cultures change, when nations become more equitable in treatment of men and women (Zentner & Mitura, 2012).

Thus, national culture affects even personal adult choices such as marriage partners. Children are influenced by norms. That is why boys want to be soldiers, or engineers, or football players—ambitions more apparent in some cultures than others.

My 4-year-old daughter said she wanted to be a nurse when she grew up. I replied, “Nurses are wonderful, but why don’t you become a doctor?” She looked at me as if I were stupid: “Oh Mommy, the girls are nurses and the boys are doctors.” She was right: I knew possibilities, but I forgot her personal experience.

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Humanism stresses the hierarchy of needs, beginning with survival, then safety, then love and belonging. The final two needs—respect and self-actualization—are not considered priorities for people until the earlier three have been satisfied.

Ideally, babies have all their basic needs met, and toddlers learn to feel safe, which makes love and belonging crucial during early childhood. Children increasingly strive for admiration from their peers. Therefore, the girls seek to be one of the girls and the boys to be one of the boys.

In a study of slightly older children, participants wanted to be part of same-sex groups, not because they disliked the other sex, but because that satisfied their need to belong (Zosuls et al., 2011). As we have already seen, children increasingly prefer to play with children of their own sex because humans are social beings who want to be validated for who they are. By age 6, they are astute “gender detectives” who scan their environment for differences between boys and girls, not always accurately, as in this example:

On her first day of school, Mia sits at the lunch table eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She notices that a few boys are eating peanut butter and jelly, but not one girl is. When her father picks her up from school, Mia runs up to him and exclaims, “Peanut butter and jelly is for boys! I want a turkey sandwich tomorrow.”

[Quoted in Miller et al., 2013, p. 307]

Humanism would interpret this as evidence that Mia’s need to belong to the girls in her class overruled her earlier basic need, which was satisfied with peanut butter and jelly.

Evolutionary theory holds that male–female sexual passion is one of humankind’s basic drives, because all creatures have two essential urges—to survive and to reproduce. For this reason, males and females try to look attractive to the other sex—walking, talking, and laughing in gendered ways. If girls see their mothers wearing make-up and high heels, they want to do likewise.

According to evolutionary theory, the species’ need to reproduce is part of everyone’s genetic heritage, which makes young boys and girls copy adult behavior that is sexually alluring. For example, one 6-year-old girl, when she was taking a bath and her father came into the bathroom, put her hands on her chest to cover her nipples. Children begin to model themselves after adult men and women, so that they will be ready after puberty to mate and a new generation will be born, as evolution requires.

Thus, according to this theory, over millennia of human history, genes, chromosomes, and hormones have evolved to allow the species to survive. Genes dictate that boys are more active (rough-and-tumble play) and girls more domestic (playing house) because that prepares them for adulthood, when fathers defend against predators and mothers care for the home and children: To deny that is to deny nature.

Each of the major developmental theories strives to explain the ideas that young children express and the roles they follow. No consensus has been reached. Regarding sex or gender, those who contend that nature is more important than nurture, or that nurture is more important than nature, tend to design, cite, and believe studies that endorse their perspective. Only recently has a true interactionist perspective (that is a perspective that emphasizes that nature affects nurture and vice versa) on gender been endorsed (Eagly & Wood, 2013).

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These theories raise important questions: What roles should parents and other caregivers teach? Should every child learn to combine the best of both sexes (called androgyny), thereby causing gender stereotypes to crumble as children become more mature, much as a belief in Santa and the Tooth Fairy disappears? Or should male–female distinctions be encouraged as essential for human reproduction and family life?

Answers vary among developmentalists as well as among parents and cultures. Generally, children become more stereotyped in the gender behaviors they endorse, a tendency some adults encourage and others do not. A few children rebel. They are called transgender, or gender dysphoric, or non-conforming, with each label controversial because of the implications for the child and the family (Drescher, 2014). During most of childhood, such children often hide their feelings to prevent being rejected by peers. This is particularly true during the preschool years, when peers and parents usually expect every child to follow gender norms (Cotton, 2014).

Determining how to raise children who are happy to be themselves but not prejudiced against those of the other sex or against those who are gender non-conforming is one challenge that all caregivers face.