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Gender Constancy Judgments in Children with Gender Identity Disorder: Evidence for a Developmental Lag

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Abstract

Gender constancy judgments in children referredfor problems in their gender identity development (N =206) and controls (N = 95) were compared. On Slaby andFrey's (1975) gender constancy interview, the gender-referred children performed more poorlythan the controls at three stage levels: genderidentity, gender stability, and gender consistency. Onthe Boy-Girl Identity Task, a second measure of gender constancy (Emmerich et al., 1977), thegender-referred children also performed more poorly.Gender-referred children who had not attained genderconsistency engaged in significantly less same-sex-typed play on a free-play task than thegender-referred children who had, but there were nogender consistency effects for the controls. Two othermeasures of sex-typed behavior were unrelated to genderconsistency. In the gender-referred group alone, childrenwho “failed” the gender identity or genderstability stages were more likely to draw anopposite-sex person first on the Draw-a-Person test andto evince more affective gender confusion on the GenderIdentity Interview (Zucker et al., 1993) than childrenwho had “passed.” It is concluded thatchildren referred for problems in their gender identitydevelopment have a developmental lag in gender constancyacquisition. Possible reasons for the lag arediscussed.

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  1. Kenneth J. Zucker
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  2. Susan J. Bradley
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  3. Myra Kuksis
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  4. Karen Pecore
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  5. Andrea Birkenfeld-Adams
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  6. Robert W. Doering
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  7. Janet N. Mitchell
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Zucker, K.J., Bradley, S.J., Kuksis, M. et al. Gender Constancy Judgments in Children with Gender Identity Disorder: Evidence for a Developmental Lag. Arch Sex Behav 28, 475–502 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1018713115866

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