| Abstract: | A growing child forms part of a network of relationships that affect the course of his or her development. Understanding individual development requires us to come to terms both with successive levels of social complexity (individual characteristics, interactions, relationships, groups) and with the dialectical relations between them and between each of them and the sociocultural structure (values, beliefs, etc.). Gender differences occur not only in the frequency of occurrence of particular types of interactions, but also in the two-way influences between individual characteristics and relationships. In a study of preschool children, gender differences were found in the structure of the mother/child relationship and in the relations between the mothedchild relationship and child (temperament) and maternal (mood) characteristics. Such differences probably result from gender stereotypes held by the mother and may have important consequences. Most attempts to understand the genesis of gender differences involve assessing the influence of biological vs. social factors. It is necessary also to analyze the ways in which very small mean differences in biological propensities become exaggerated and distorted in social stereotypes by the dialectical relations between successive levels of social complexity and the ways in which these then feed back on individual development. |
