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What are big boys made of?’ – independence, aggression, competitiveness, leadership, task-orientation, outward orientation, assertiveness, innovation, self-discipline, stoicism, activity, objectivity, analytic-mindedness, courage, unsentimentality, rationality, confidence, and emotional control.

‘What are big girls made of? What are big girls made of?’ – Dependence, passivity, fragility, low pain tolerance, non-aggression, non-competitiveness, inner orientation, interpersonal orientation, empathy, sensitivity, nurturance, subjectivity, intuitiveness, yieldingness, receptivity, inability to risk, emotional liability, supportiveness.

These quotations are from two feminists, Jane Bardwick and Elizabeth Douvan, who investigated the way Americans expected men and women to behave.

How true are these stereotypes? Can the two sexes be fitted into sex-typing so easily and, if they can, are the characteristics of each sex due to inherited psychological sex differences or are they due to learned behaviour?

We all know that little boys and little girls are different. They look different, they behave differently, they belong to ‘opposite’ sexes. But how exact is our knowledge, how much is it based on myths and on perceptions of what each sex should look like and how it should behave?

If small children were dressed similarly and had similar hairstyles (as they do increasingly), it would be almost impossible to tell if the child was a boy or a girl, without looking at its genitals. The body shape and other physical attributes of all children are very similar until they reach puberty. Up to the time of puberty the average heights, for each year of age, of boys and girls are quite close, as are their weights and the shape of their bodies.

Although boys and girls may have a similar physical appearance (apart from their genitals) most people believe that children of the two sexes have a different inherited psychological make-up, which makes them behave differently. How true is this? ‘What makes a man a man?’

A very considerable amount of research has gone into attempts to define sex differences. These have been summarized by Eleanor Maccoby and Carol Jacklin in their excellent book The Psychology of Sex Differences.

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To some extent the ease with which he adjusts depends on the security and confidence he has obtained during his childhood years, from his parents and other people. To some extent it depends on the attitude of his parents to his quest for his unique identity. If his parents are autocratic or authoritarian, they will oppose any attempt the youth makes to express his own views and to make his own decisions. This reaction may be because one parent (usually the father) had a difficult adolescence and has suppressed his own awareness of his turbulence at that time. He has retreated into a belief that he always knows best, and that his values are the only ones which his child must adopt. In a rigid society, this approach is possible, but in our pluralistic, mobile society it can create grave problems, particularly when the adolescent compares his lot with that of his friends, whose parents treat their children more as equals. The comparison may lead to deep anxieties and stresses.

The reverse is also true. If the parents either ignore the adolescent’s behaviour, or offer only minimal guidance, anxiety and guilt can result, as the adolescent is unsure whether or not he is behaving in a way of which his parents would approve. The most satisfactory way in which parents can behave to enable the adolescent to find his identity is for them to be able to discuss issues about the youth’s behaviour, openly and easily. In this way the adolescent can find if his decisions meet with the approval of his parents and if they do not, why not.

If the parents act in an authoritarian way, the adolescent may cease to seek his own identity, modeling himself completely on his father. In this event he may find, later, that he has a confused identity, and is less well able to relate to others. The alternative is for the adolescent to rebel, and to reject all that his parents hold as conventionally proper. If he chooses this course, he may also be hindered in forming his identity, or he may be so confused that his identity goes through multiple changes until he finally finds the one with which he is comfortable.

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Puberty starts in a complex way and merges complexly into adolescence, which is made even more complex because the terms ‘puberty’ and ‘adolescence’ are difficult to define. The Oxford English Dictionary defines puberty as ‘the state or condition of having become functionally capable of procreating offspring’. This definition has certain defects, as menstruation marks puberty in girls, but in the first year or so after menstruation has started most girls are incapable of becoming pregnant. Puberty in boys is marked by the ability to ejaculate, but in the first months the quality of sperms ejaculated is poor and the quantity small, so that a boy’s ability to procreate is limited.

Perhaps a better definition of puberty, for our purposes, is that it is a period of hormonal secretions, particularly of sex hormones, which lead to increasing bodily (including genital) differentiation of males and females, and which culminates in each individual’s ability to reproduce. In males, it means that orgasms are associated with ejaculation of good-quality sperms; in females, it means that menstruation (and later ovulation) occurs.

The definition of adolescence also causes problems, because it has no definite beginning or end. The Oxford English Dictionary says it is ‘the period between childhood and maturity extending from 14 to 25 in males and 12 to 21 in females’, which may make a large number of young men rather angry! It is a period of emotional turmoil, during which society begins to recognize the sexual capacity and social independence of the person, who starts mentally scripting his or her sexual drama, through fantasy and actions.

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Firstly, parents behave similarly to children of both sexes; and it assumes secondly, that a child’s idea of copying is the same as an adult’s. We know that when a child is given a complex sentence, it simplifies it. Perhaps a child may simplify the way it copies a model. Equally, it may be that a child sees and absorbs both sex models, but because of its increasing awareness of things about it and its attempts to classify them into things like it and things unlike it, it selects those things it feels appropriate for its own sex.

This implies that the child must have a rudimentary idea that there are two sexes. It could obtain this idea from the way parents (and other significant people) treat it.

In most ways, parents do not treat their children very differently. They show the same warmth to children of each sex, and reward or praise each to the same extent. In some ways they make a distinction: boys receive more punishment than girls, in part because they are less obedient, and in part because our upbringing inhibits us from inflicting physical pain on girls. But there is no difference in non-physical discipline: both boys and girls are threatened with the parent’s withdrawal of love if the child is naughty.

In a few ways, parents base their behaviour to a boy or to a girl on their conception of what the child of a particular sex should be. They encourage the child to do what is ‘natural’ for that sex, and discourage it from doing what is ‘unnatural’. They pay particular attention to training children in what they believe are the ‘natural’ strengths and weaknesses of each sex. Boys are encouraged to be competitive and are known to be more aggressive, so parents direct a boy child to be competitive and to be aggressive (but they control this). They direct a boy away from doing ’sissy’ things, encouraging a boy to do ‘boyish’ things and girls to do ‘feminine’ things.

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The different attitudes and different behaviour towards boy-children and girl-children seem to be common to all societies, from those which are classified as primitive to those classified as culturally civilized. In the wide variety of human societies, the behaviour of parents and other adults towards boy-children and girl-children can, and does, vary considerably, but in all societies studied a distinctly different behaviour was shown towards boys and towards girls. The way people behave to a child and the different expectations they demand of the child, depending upon its sex, ‘imprints’ a distinct pattern of behaviour upon it so that it reacts in a distinctly masculine or feminine way. Once the child’s brain is conditioned in this way, it is difficult to reverse it, unless the society in which the child is reared normally expects such a reversal of sexual identity. Some primitive tribes, notably some North American Indian tribes, and some in the South Pacific, do in fact induce a change in sexual identity in children who do not apparently conform to the expected pattern of male behaviour.

A child’s masculine or feminine behaviour, depending on its sex, has two components. The first is its sex-typing or its gender-role. This is the way a person behaves to others to demonstrate he or she is a male or a female. The second is even more important. This is the person’s own awareness that he or she is a male or a female. This is the person’s gender-identity. Until a child has developed a gender-identity it is confused about its sexuality, and about its gender-role.

In Western societies, a complete reversal of gender-identity can be made with relative ease before the age of 4, but after this time the change is only possible in highly motivated individuals who have had doubts about their real sex induced by the doubting attitude of their parents, or who are exceptionally insistent upon the change, such as transsexuals.

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