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ONLY GIRLS WEAR BARRETTES

by Judith Rich Harris

A recent issue of Child Development recounts a true story about a boy named Jeremy who decided to put barrettes in his hair and wear them to nursery school. Jeremy's parents evidently thought that was fine, but not his classmates. One boy kept teasing Jeremy by calling him a girl. To prove that he was not a girl, Jeremy finally pulled down his pants "The boy was not impressed," reported the researcher. "He simply said, `Everybody has a penis. Only girls wear barrettes."'

Jeremy's classmate was wrong in fact but right in theory: Gender identity--the understanding that one is a boy or a girl-- doesn't come like a label attached to the genitals. Nor is it something parents can give their child. Psychologist Milton Diamond believes it comes from children comparing themselves to their peers and deciding "I am the same" as one kind and "I am different" from the other. On the basis of how they feel inside--what their interests are, how they want to behave--they put themselves into a gender category, the one in which they are then socialized.

Not everyone agrees. Sociologist Barrie Thorne, who has studied playground behavior, argues that because girls and boys interact in many social contexts--at home, in classrooms, in play groups--behavioral differences must somehow be transmitted to them by the adult culture. She describes an incident in which a boy named Don was unfairly punished by a playground aide. His classmates--girls and boys alike--came together in his support.

Thorne has a point: Boys and girls don't really have separate cultures. Boys and girls of the same age and ethnicity who live in the same neighborhood and attend the same school are participants in the same children's culture. As a result, they have the same ideas about how boys and girls should behave, and about how men and women should behave.

How we categorize ourselves depends on where we are and who is with us. Even a very young child can categorize herself either as a kid or as a girl. If the age category is salient, the gender category automatically becomes less so. When a grownup is being conspicuously grown-upish, like the playground aide, it brings age categories to the fore, and gender recedes into the background.

Interaction between girls and boys doesn't prevent them from categorizing themselves and their classmates as girls or boys, but a total lack of interaction does. When only one group is present, self-categorization shifts toward me and away from us. With no boys around, girls don't act so girlish.

Researchers observed two groups of 12year-old girls playing dodgeball: middle-class African American girls at a private Chicago school, and Hopi Indian girls on an Arizona reservation. When no boys were present, both groups played competitively, and some played very well. But as soon as boys entered the game, the girls' playing changed dramatically. The Hopi girls stood with their legs crossed and arms folded, looking shy and unathletic. The African American girls chatted with each other and teased the other players. When researchers asked the girls why they thought the boys always won, they said the boys cheated. But the boys just played harder. They won even though, at this age, the average boy is noticeably smaller than the average girl.

Where children of both sexes attend school together--especially where they gather on the playground in dichotomous groups--gender categories are highly salient, and sexism reigns. Parents may sincerely believe that boys and girls are essentially alike--that a little girl is a little boy minus penis and testicles--but children know better.

Oddly enough, children in modern egalitarian societies may be more stereotypically girlish and boyish than their ancestors. Among the few surviving hunter-gatherer bands are the Efe, who dwell in the Ituri forest of what used to be Zaire. One researcher describes Efe life: "Mau, an adolescent forager boy, sits with his brother's 15-month-old daughter draped across his lap, lulled to sleep by the music of a finger piano. Mau reaches over to stir his pot of sombe as a group of young boys and girls play `shoot the fruit' using child-size bows and arrows .... As he scans the camp, he notices a group of women preparing for a fishing trip, while others lounge. smoking tobacco along with the men."

Because there are seldom enough children to form separate play groups, Efe boys and girls play together. Consequently, the salient social categories are kids and grownups. Boys and girls behave pretty much alike. Even among adults, gender boundaries are less sharply defined than you might expect. In contrast, a neighboring tribe, the Lese, whose farming lifestyle allows for greater population density, have a society highly differentiated by sex. The exaggerated sex differences among children in our own society may indeed be a creation of our culture: It was the invention of agriculture, only 10,000 years ago, that made it possible for us to provide children with so many potential playmates.

A bit of advice to parents who want to rear androgynous children: Join a nomadic hunter-gatherer group. Or move to a place where there are just enough kids to form one play group and not quite enough to form two.