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Child Observation Paper

Decent Essays

Lastly, I observed a newly identified 9-year-old boy named Addie, who used to be a girl named Adeline. I was Adeline’s nanny, so it was to no surprise that I was invited to her birthday party. I took this opportunity to observe, however, when I arrived, I was thrown off by Adeline’s new appearance. Adeline, who was now went by Addie, cut her hair short, and was wearing boy’s baggy jeans with a monster truck shirt. Addie raced up to his room to show me what his parents got him for his birthday, and I followed him in shock. When I entered his room, I saw newly painted blue walls with sports posters, and toy cars scattered on his carpet. I was taken back by the masculinity of his bedroom. He showed me his new light up sword, but his parents told …show more content…

Gender is an individual’s cognitive reference to themselves as male or female, whereas sex is their sexual anatomy, made up from their genes (Anderson, 2015). Children develop gender schemas through observations of others, looking at different characteristics and roles each gender takes on, while also learning through their own culture (Rathus, 2006). Bem did not believe in clear gender roles, she stated that, “an individual could display characteristics of both males and females, making them androgynous” (Anderson, 2015). Within her theory, individuals can be gender schematic or gender aschematic. Gender schematic individuals see the world through a lens that is strictly black and white. They have a set view on how a males and females should act and they do not deviate from their perceptions, instead they align with their “categorized schemas” (Anderson, 2015). If an individual is classified as being gender aschematic, then an environment is not strictly defining roles or characteristics of males and females, then children will have a broader schema because they are not being influenced to develop ideas of which traits belong to which gender (Rathus,

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