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Gender Development

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

• Price: $69.95
• Binding: Hardback
• Pages: 536
• Published by: Psychology Press
• Publication Date: 9th October 2008
• ISBN: 978-0-8058-4170-1

About the Book

This new 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 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.

Reviews

"This is a terrific text! The book fills a gap in the literature and does so beautifully...It was a real pleasure to read. I will require this text for my courses on gender role attitudes and behavior." -Rebecca S. Bigler, University of Texas at Austin

"I believe that the...book will significantly contribute to the field of child development and gender role development. This is a field that has grown much in the past decades and an updated text on this topic will be very useful...I would certainly adopt it for my course on gender role development." -Yvonne Caldera, Texas Tech University

Table of Contents

1.Introduction. 2. History of the Study of Gender Development. 3. Biological Foundations of Sex and Gender. 4. Motor Development and Cognition. 5. Personality and Social Behaviors. 6. Biological Approaches to Gender Development. 7. Social Approaches to Gender Development. 8. Cognitive Approaches to Gender Development. 9. The Cognitive Self as an Agent of Gender Development. 10. The Family as an Agent of Gender Development. 11. The Peer Group as an Agent of Gender Development. 12. The Media as an Agent of Gender Development. 13. The School as an Agent of Gender Development. Epilogue.

About the Author(s)

Judith Elaine Blakemore is Professor of Psychology and Department Chair at Indiana University – Purdue University in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She received her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Northern Illinois University. She has conducted research on the topic of children’s gender development since the mid 1970s, specializing in boys’ and girls’ interactions with infants, children’s interests in gender-related toys and attitudes about gender norm violations. Her most recent work centers on gender socialization by parents. Professor Blakemore teaches undergraduate courses in developmental psychology and the psychology of gender, including a course on the gender development of children.

Sheri A. Berenbaum is Professor of Psychology and Pediatrics and a member of the Neuroscience Institute at The Pennsylvania State University. She received her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, and completed postdoctoral training in behavioral genetics at the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on genetic and neuroendocrine influences on the development of human cognition and social behavior. She is particularly interested in prenatal sex hormone effects on gender development, and how these effects are mediated directly by the brain and indirectly through the social environment; she also applies her research to the treatment of children with disorders of sex development. Professor Berenbaum has received support from NIH for her research and for an interdisciplinary research network on Psychosexual Differentiation. She teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses, including gender development.

Lynn S. Liben is Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Human Development & Family Studies, and Education at The Pennsylvania State University – University Park where she formerly served as the Head of the Psychology Department and as the Director of the Child Study Center. Professor Liben has also

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