Chapter Seven
From Infancy to Old Age:
Development Across
the Lifespan
From Infancy to Old Age:
Development Across the Lifespan
• “At age 12 I was among the first of my friends to begin to
menstruate and to wear a bra. I felt a mixture of pride
and embarrassment. For all of my life I had been a
chubby, introspective child, but a growth spurt of a few
inches, along with my developing breasts, transformed
me one summer into a surprisingly slim and shapely
child-woman. The funny thing was that on one level I
had always known this would happen. Yet it was as if a
fairy godmother had visited me. I felt turned on, but I
was mostly turned on to myself and the narcissistic
pleasure of finding I was attractive to boys.”
– From Our Bodies, Ourselves
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Infancy
Infancy
• Infant Gender Differences
– Similarities are the rule for most behaviors
– However, boys are more active (d=.29)
– Temperament
• Girls score higher on inhibitory control (d=-.41)
• Girls score higher on perceptual sensitivity (d=-.38)
• No gender differences in negative affect or mood
• Adults’ Treatment of Infants
– Parents generally treat boys and girls similarly
• But, boys are handled more roughly and boys generally
receive more positive responses for playing with malestereotyped toys
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Childhood
Childhood
• Gender Learning
– Gender identity (2 y)
– Labeling boys and girls (3 y)
– Associate certain occupations with men
or women (6 y)
– Preschoolers are gender essentialists
• Childhood Gender Differences
– Several reliable gender differences
• Toy and game preference
• Aggressive behavior
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Childhood (cont’d.)
• Socialization: the process by which society conveys to
the individual its expectations for his or her behavior,
values, and beliefs
– Gender-role socialization begins in the family
•
•
•
•
Parents generally treat boys and girls similarly, but…
They encourage sex-stereotyped activities in their children
They convey gender schemas to their children
They talk differently with daughters vs. sons, though much of
gender teaching in parents’ talk is subtle, implicit
• They play differently with daughters vs. sons
• Parents with traditional gender-role attitudes have different
expectations for boys and girls
– Parental gender-role socialization varies across different ethnic
groups in the US
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Childhood (cont’d.)
• Socialization (continued)
– As children grow older, schools, the media, and peers
become increasingly important sources of gender
socialization
– Schools often transmit stereotypes
• Teachers pay more attention to boys
• Teachers praise girls for decorous conduct and boys for good
academic performance
• When teachers receive gender-equity training, they respond
with more equitable teaching
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Childhood (cont’d.)
• Socialization (continued)
– The media
• Picture books: girls are now main character as often as
boys are; fathers are largely invisible
• Seventeen magazine only slightly influenced by
women’s movement
• Video games: patterns of extreme gender stereotyping,
including violence against women, played more by boys
– Effects on children’s gender-role attitudes
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Childhood (cont’d.)
• Peers and the Gender Segregation Effect
– Eleanor Maccoby (1998)
• Gendered patterns of behavior are not solely the result of
socialization by forces such as parents and the media
– Children seek out same-gender peer groups, which differ in
terms of activities
» Boys: rough play, risk, dominance
» Girls: self-disclosure, reduce conflict
• Much of childhood gender segregation results from biological
or psychological forces within the child
• Few gender differences when children play alone
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Childhood (cont’d.)
• School
– Girls make adjustment to school better than boys
– Girls are more likely to do their homework, earn better
grades, have more positive interactions with teachers
• Tomboys
– Two-thirds of girls were tomboys in childhood
– Starts around age 5, ends around age 12, at the
dawn of adolescence
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Adolescence
Adolescence
• Gender Intensification: increased pressures for genderrole conformity beginning in early adolescence
– Girls become more identified with and spend more times with
their mothers, boys do the same with fathers
• Friendship and Dating
– Same-gender friendships as in adulthood
– Dating relationships serve a developmental function: learn about
self, sexuality
– Heterosexual, gendered scripts, involving power differentials
between boy and girl
• Girls valued for appearance, boys for achievements
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Adolescence (cont’d.)
• Sexual Harassment
– AAUW national survey
• 79% of boys and 83% of girls experienced peer sexual
harassment
• Includes sexual touching, forced kissing, spreading sexual
rumors
• Girls are more likely than boys to feel self-conscious,
embarrassed, less confident, and change behavior
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Adolescence (cont’d.)
• Weight Worries
– Adolescent girls have more negative body esteem
than adolescent boys
– Normative discontent
– The role of the media
– Ethnic group differences
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Adolescence (cont’d.)
• The Search for Identity and a Future
– Erik Erikson (1950)
– Females define selves in interpersonal terms,
developing interpersonal and autonomous identities,
whereas boys mainly develop an autonomous identity
– Adolescent girls vary considerably among themselves
in what components they believe will shape their
identities
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Emerging Adulthood
Emerging Adulthood
• Emerging Adulthood: a suspended state of not being a
teenager but not yet being an adult, extending through
early 20s
• Women and Work: see chapter 9
• Heterosexual Marriage
– 92% of American women marry
– Average age of first marriage: 25 y
• Marriage is better for men than for women, but good for
both
– Quality of marriage is most important
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Emerging Adulthood (cont’d.)
• Motherhood
– Parenthood associated with psychological distress
– Motherhood mandate: the cultural belief that all
women should have children, that is, be mothers
– Mother Wars
• Most women gain satisfaction from motherhood, but the
degree of satisfaction depends on contextual factors
– Intensive mothering and impossible ideals
– Voluntary childlessness (or child-free) in women
• Higher in autonomy and achievement orientation
– Psychology’s history of mother-blaming
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Emerging Adulthood (cont’d.)
• Divorce
– 50% of all marriages end in divorce
– 70-75% of divorced women remarry
• Ethnic group differences
– Research on psychological effects of divorce is mixed
– Research on economic effects of divorce
• Divorced women and their children are new underclass
• Divorced men experience a 42% increase in standard of
living, whereas women experience a 73% decrease
– Role strain and role overload
– Divorce is harder on Black women
• Less likely to get child support, more likely to live in poverty
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Emerging Adulthood (cont’d.)
• Single Women
– 21% of American women are single, never married
• Ethnic group differences
– Advantages of being single:
• Freedom
• Sense of self-sufficiency and competence
– Disadvantages
• Loneliness and exclusion from social structures
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Middle Age
Middle Age
• Empty Nest or Prime of Life?
– Empty nest syndrome: depression that middle-aged
people supposedly feel when their children are grown
and have left home, leaving an empty nest
– Lillian B. Rubin (1979)
• Although some women are momentarily sad, lonely, or
frightened, they weren’t depressed
• Predominant feeling is relief
– Prime of Life
• 70% of 60-65 year old women describe current lives as better
than when they were younger
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Old Age
Old Age
• Double standard of aging: cultural norms by
which men’s status increases with age but
women’s decreases
• Physical Health
– Although women live longer than men, they have
more chronic illnesses
– Or do they just report them more?
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Old Age (cont’d.)
• Retirement
– Most studies based on all-male samples
– Women are more likely to retire because of spouse’s retirement
– Income concerns
• Gender Ratios
– More and more lopsided with advancing age
• 60-69 years  115 women: 100 men
• 80-89 years  180:100
• 90 + years  294:100
– Many elderly women live alone
• Ethnic group differences: living with extended family
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Old Age (cont’d.)
• Widowhood
– Women are more likely to be widowed than men are
– Opportunities for remarriage are limited because of
lopsided gender ratio
– In 1st year following spouse’s death, widows show
increased depression, but then level off and rebound
– Two problems common among widows
• Loneliness
• Financial strain
– Death of spouse is harder on men than it is on
women in terms of depression, illness, and death
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