"We know that children police or control their peers' gender development" but how do we know and where is the literature that supports this view.

The opening 'quote' is paraphrased from the introduction of many articles that examine the role of peers in older children's development or the role that a different source plays in children's gender development, for example, parents, the media, toys, books, etc.

This blog post provides an overview of the literature that examines the role that peers take in reinforcing gender stereotypes and norms within early childhood settings. It aims to provide information for anyone who is interested in reducing the impact of gender stereotypes on children's experiences as well as providing additional support the poster I presented at EECERA 2022.

Bronfenbrenner's ecological model of development sets out the different groups of people who influence a child's development, as well as the level of influence each of those groups have on the child.

Within the model, the closer a group of people are to the child, the greater the level of influence they can exert on the child. As you can see from the model, the closest people to a child, those with the greatest level of influence, are their parents, siblings, peers and teachers. It is this third group - peers - that my research focus' on.

Young children are exposed to gender stereotypes and norms from birth onwards and these experiences become engrained within their habitus or unconscious beliefs which they accept without question. For many children, pre-school is the first time they spend regular periods of time, away from their family, with a group of children who are similar in age (3 - 4 years old).

This is the same age where, developmentally, children start to develop in-group preferences, meaning that they start to identify others who are similar to them and who they prefer to spend time with and play with. The outcome of this can be observed in most pre-schools and nurseries where children can be seen to spend most of their play time with their same gender peers.

One effect of the increased time spent with similar aged peers, is that children are exposed to their peers gender beliefs which can either reinforce or challenge their own ideas. Where these new experiences challenge a child's own beliefs, a child may start to adjust the gender beliefs that they hold in order to be accepted within their pre-school community (Paechter, 2007).

When I started the literature search for my PhD I was very frustrated that I couldn't find any literature which focused specifically on how pre-school children reinforce gender stereotypes with their peers.  Eventually, after changing my search parameters to include literature from 19070 onwards, I finally found a grand total of 3 articles.

Lamb & Roopnarine (1979) set out nine techniques that pre-school children use to encourage their peers to behave in an "appropriate" manner for their gender.  These nine were added to by Lamby, Easterbrooks & Holden (1980) with a further three, and finally Roopnarine (1984) added two additional techniques .

Since the early 1980's, whilst there has been research exploring the role of older children in influencing their peers gender ideas, there has been no specific research into pre-school children and whether they still use these techniques, or whether the techniques that children use depend on their age or gender.

The poster presented at EECERA 2022 focused on four of the methods that I observed pre-school children using during my data collection. These are:

I will explore these methods in detail in future blog posts, so please check back.

This list includes the references from the poster exhibited at EECERA 2022.