Children's Sex Role Knowledge and Behavior: An Ethnographic Study of First Graders in the Rural South

Abstract

Abstract This ethnographic report examines the extent to which two classrooms of rural southern first graders shared common sex-role beliefs within an institutional setting that emphasized conflicting gender-specific expectations: traditional and egalitarian. Data collected suggest that (a) the children shared certain expectations and attitudes typical of the traditional sex-role system in the United States; (b) the children were tolerant of and, in some cases, supportive of cross-sex typed behaviors; (c) the children applied their knowledge of traditional sex-role norms to their expectations of adults; and (d) the boys and girls in these groups drew from the range of behaviors—masculine, feminine, and neutral—with few restrictions by gender indentity.