CONCLUSION OF THEORIES
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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