We're in the midst of studying human development in my psych course. We've talked about prenatal development, what happens at birth and the moments of childhood that may have major effects on you...including some theories on cognitive development and personality. I decided one thing to really focus some discussion was on how we develop our gender identity.

When I was majoring in psychology in university, I was required as a senior to write a thesis. It had to be an extensive review of materials along with one's own experiement or study on the topic. I decided to look at toys, play and gender. Here's the exact topic: The Development of Gender Identity: Sex-Typing, Self-Concept and Advertising. I wrote approximately 100 pages total (including references and the like). Amazed myself to be honest...and it's located in a library at my university (which by the way is quite cool to look up online and see!).

What I studied were a lot of toy commercials, how toys are given 'gender' tags and how kids play when they are ages 3 - 7. First I asked teenagers to say whether a group of toys were masculine, feminine or gender neutral. No surprises here I have to say. Then I analayzed toy commercials. Lots of them. During a time when most college students did NOT have a VCR...so up early on Saturdays to watch cartoons. Not the happiest mornings. And guess what..."boy toy" (BT) and "girl toy" (GT) commercials are very different. BT commercials tend to display primary colours. The music is more staccoto and fast paced. The kids do not play together cooperatively but instead either play alone or competitively with lots of action. GT commercials have pastel colours typically. One hears soft twinkly music (comes across as 'happy'). And the girls typically are playing with someone else in a cooperative way or are showing off the toy to someone else (very little action involved).

Now....can you guess how the observations of kids went? Yup, girls tend to play more cooperatively or show things off to others...little action. Boys play more competitively and more actively.

So - what makes us this way? Is it what we see? Is it how we are taught to act? They've shown that if you put a girl in a blue blanket after she is born, then adults will play more 'roughly' with her thinking she's a boy. But if a boy is put in a pink blanket, then they'll tend to be cuddled and gently handled. Perhaps we are primed from such an early age. Cause ya know what? Girls are actually more hearty at birth...but you'd never know it.

So one question I asked kids was - How do we learn about what it means to be masculine or feminine as an infant, child and teenager? Who does it? How do they do it? Do our influences change over time? And it got them all thinking...how did I become who I am now?