When we were in class the other day and were asked about stereotypes that correspond to each gender everyone was quick to list several of them.  One that really stood out to me was that women have a maternal instinct.  People assume that women are born with an instinct to become not just mothers, but good mothers.  This, however, is not true.  There was a study done in the 1950s by a psychologist named Harry Harlow who wanted to see if maternal instinct existed.   His experiment went like this: a female baby monkey is taken away and isolated from other monkeys to see if after reintroducing her she is able to be a good mother.  The monkey after the first experiment became pregnant and was an abusive and negligent mother.  The second time Harlow did the experiment he used two surrogate mothers, a cone that was covered in wire and one that was covered in cloth.  The surrogate mother was supposed to provide a bit of company for the monkey, but it still didn’t show any mothering tendencies.  This monkey also was an abusive and negligent mother.  This experiment doesn’t prove without a reasonable doubt that maternal instinct doesn’t work, but it does raise interesting questions.  We are not that far away from monkeys and obviously it would be completely unethical to take a female infant and isolate it, so this is about as close as we are going to get to testing maternal instinct.

An interesting question is when do we realize what gender is, whether for our self or others?  It occurs in four stages that usually take place between birth and age six.  The first stage is prior to age two and there is little to no gender knowledge, even though infants at 7 months are able to distinguish between males and females.  In stage two, during the ages or two and three gender labeling, the ability to use gender words to describe males and females, takes place.  They usually are physical characteristics, such as saying that is a girl because she’s wearing a dress and he is a boy because he has short hair.  Stage three is between the ages of three and six and shows the development of gender knowledge and some gender constancy.  Gender constancy is when we realize that we are a male or female permanently and we don’t change genders just because we change clothes or hairstyles.  The fourth and last stage takes place by age six and results in the understanding of gender constancy.  Hopefully this helps explain a little bit of gender and how we realize what it is.

 

Elizabeth Greschak