Evaluation of learning theory explanation of gender

Cramer and Skidd (1992) found that pre-school aged boys and girls made reference to stereotypes of gender appropriate behaviours. This suggests that children are encouraged to act in masculine or feminine ways from a very early age. This can be seen in the way people talk to young children, decorate their rooms and dress them.

Punishment is also considered to have an influence over our behaviour. For instance Langlois and Downs (1980) showed that fathers were likely to disapprove of sons playing with ‘girls toys’ and more likely to be punished.  Sroufe et at (1983) found that children who did not conform to gender stereotypes were less popular with their peers.

However Lytton and Romney (1991) found that while parents did reinforce sex-typed behaviour in their children they also found that there were many similarities in the way that boys and girls are socialised and concluded that differences in behaviour were unlikely to be solely caused by reinforcement.

Children seem to show toy preferences very young and will typically imitate same sex models by the age of 2.  Reinforcement and modelling is unlikely to be able to explain this as generally the younger a behaviour occurs the more likely it is to have a biological cause.