after all, but they still have one. Marshall explained that gender, indeterminate at birth, is formed and fixed later by a process of socialization that guides the child in adopting a male or female identity. According to Marshall and her colleagues, a child learns what it means to be a boy or a girl between the ages of two and seven. In those early years the child develops a “gender schema”—a set of ideas about appropriate roles, attitudes, and preferences for males and females. The best prospects for influencing the child’s gender schema are in these early malleable years: these years are
...more
