The last lesson

In our very last lesson of the year, we talked about parenting and gender. First we started with parenting and talked about discipline and said that there are three ways: assertion of parental power, withdrawal of love and induction. Then we talked about the parenting styles and said that based on the level of warmth and control, they can be neglectful, indulgent, authoritarian or authoritative. We said that authoritative is the most beneficial for children.



Later we started talking about gender. We discussed why the terms “gender” and “sex” can be seen different and said that gender is more cultural and sex is biological. We added that there are some gender roles in which boys and girls are enforced to do some specific things.



Then we talked about the development of gender and the theories of gender differences.
Development:
1) Gender identity (age 2)
2) Gender stability (age 4) - there is recognition that one’s gender is a permanent feature.
3) Gender constancy (age 5) - there is recognition that one’s gender remains constant despite physical change.

Theories of gender differences:
1) Evolutionary theories:
Males and females have different types of mating strategies.
While talking about this topic in class we said that people want to be with people who have good genes and resources and later learned about the George Clooney effect. I thought it was very interesting.



2) Social Cognitive Theory
3) Gender Schema Theory

Lastly we talked about individual sex schemes. According to femininity and masculinity we can say that a person is masculine, feminine, undifferentiated or androgynous. We talked about the Bem Sex Role Inventory and I was very curious and I wanted to see my score and I scored the highest on feminine. You can use this link to see your score too:

http://garote.bdmonkeys.net/bsri.html