Gender Development

by Judith E. Owen Blakemore, Sheri A. Berenbaum, Lynn S. Liben

This text offers a unique developmental focus on gender. Gender development is examined from infancy through adolescence, integrating biological, socialization, and cognitive perspectives. The book’s current empirical focus is complemented by a lively and readable style that includes anecdotes about children’s everyday experiences. The book’s accessibility is further enhanced with the use of bold face to highlight key terms when first introduced along with a complete glossary of these terms. All three of the authors are respected researchers in divergent areas of children’s gender role development and each of them teaches a course on the topic. The book’s primary focus is on gender role behaviors – how they develop and the roles biological and experiential factors play in their development. The first section of the text introduces the field and outlines its history. Part 2 focuses on the differences between the sexes, including the biology of sex and the latest research on behavioral sex differences, including motor and cognitive behaviors and personality and social behaviors. Contemporary theoretical perspectives on gender development – biological, social and environmental, and cognitive approaches – are explored in Part 3 along with the research supporting these models. The social agents of gender development, including children themselves, family, peers, the media, and schools are addressed in the final part. Cutting-edge and comprehensive, this is the perfect text for those who have been searching for an advanced undergraduate and/or graduate book for courses in gender development, the psychology of sex roles and/or gender and/or women or men, taught in departments of psychology, human development, and educational psychology. Although chapters have been designed to be read sequentially, a full author citation is included the first time a reference is used within an individual chapter rather than only the first time it is used in the book, making it easy to assign chapters in a variety of orders. This referencing system will also appeal to scholars interested in using the book as a resource to review a particular content area.

Genres: Nonfiction

536 pages, Paperback

First published October 9, 2008

Reviews

[Darnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Normally I don't review textbooks I read as reference, but this one has received an odd amount of attention: multiple ratings but almost no longer reviews. It has an unusually low rating for a book I found to be well-researched and comprehensive (if anything, too comprehensive).

It would be tempting to build a narrative around that because gender development is a controversial issue. However, the low ratings could easily be students forced to read it or readers who found it too dry. So I'll simply state that in my view, this was a very even-handed approach not pushing any particular angle. If it has any ideological commitment, it's to stating the results of the largest meta-analysis on every single issue.

The result is a text that should be unobjectionable, but could potentially anger people on various sides of multiple debates. The overriding thesis is that gender development is messy. I found this direct approach valuable, particularly in the earlier sections. Latter sections of the book waned for me, as the conclusions of chapters focused on socialization were a repeated, "This aspect of society has some effect" - not particularly surprising, but there's some value in reviewing all the evidence on the subject.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a wonderfully comprehensive text on different aspects of gender development.