Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This qualitative study explored the gender schemata of a select cohort of 13 gifted adolescent males. It revealed these adolescents as having an androgynous sex-role identity. However, the findings identified among the adolescents three distinct constructions of androgyny. The data also pointed out some of the intrapsychic problems encountered by the boys in their sex-role identity development—most notably anxieties about femininity and women stemming from demands placed upon the boys by their awakening sexualities. Finally, the study examined the role of their intellectual giftedness in the negotiation of their sex-role identities. Most of the adolescents employed a sophisticated critical rationalism to construct their gender schemata. However, several of the subjects acknowledged the limits of this rationalism to achieve a complete understanding of these complex issues and expressed an awareness of an asynchrony between their emotional and intellectual development.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Allgood-Merten

Stockard

(1991). Sex role identity and self-esteem: A comparison of children and adolescents. Sex Roles, 25, 129–139.

Archer

S. L.

(1989). Gender differences in identity development: Issues of process, domain and timing. Journal of Adolescence, 12, 117–138.

Basseches

(1984). Dialectical thinking and adult development. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Bern

S. L.

(1974). The measurement of psychological androgyny. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 42, 155–162.

Bern

S. L.

Martyna

Watson

(1978). Sex typing and androgyny: Further explorations of the expressive domain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34, 1016–1023.

Bernard

H. R.

(1988). Research methods in cultural anthropology. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Block

J. H.

(1984). Sex role identity and development. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Boswell

(1980) Christianity, social tolerance, and homosexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Burks

B. S.

Jensen

D. W.

Terman

L. M.

(1930). The promise of youth: Follow-up studies of a thousand gifted children. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

10.

Chodorow

N. J.

(1989). Feminism and psychoanalytic theory. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

11.

Constantinople

(1973). Masculinity-femininity: An exception to the famous dictum?. Psychological Bulletin, 80, 389–407.

12.

Erickson

(1984). What makes school ethnography “ethnographic”?. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 15(1), 55–61

13.

Glaser

B. G.

Strauss

A. L.

(1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Chicago: Aldine.

14.

Gray

(1992). Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. New York: HarperCollins.

15.

Hill

J. P.

Lynch

M. E.

(1983). The intensification of gender-related expectations during adolescence. In Brooks-Gunn

Peterson

A. C.

(Eds.), Girls at puberty (pp. 201–288). New York: Plenum.

16.

Horney

(1967). The dread of woman. In Kelman

(Ed.), Feminine psychology (pp. 131–146). New York: Norton.

17.

Hudson

Jacot

(1991). The way men think. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

18.

Labouvie-Vief

(1992). A neo-Piagetian perspective on adult cognitive development. In Sternberg

R. J.

(Ed.), Intellectual development (pp. 197–227). New York: Cambridge University Press.

19.

Leroux

J. A.

(1988). Voices from the classroom: Academic and social self-concepts of gifted adolescents. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 11(3), 3–18

20.

Lewin

(1984). “Rather worse than folly?” Psychology measures femininity and masculinity: Vol. 1: From Terman and Miles to the Guilfords. In Lewin

(Ed.), In the shadow of the past: Psychology portrays the sexes (pp. 156–178). New York: Columbia University Press.

21.

Lincoln

Y. S.

Guba

E. G.

(1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

22.

Maslow

A. H.

(1968). Toward a psychology of being. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

23.

Massad

(1981). Sex role identity and adjustment during adolescence. Child Development, 52, 1290–1298.

24.

McCracken

(1988). The long interview. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

25.

Olszewski-Kubilius

Kulieke

M. J.

(1989). Personality dimensions of gifted adolescents. In VanTassel-Baska

J. L.

Olszewski-Kubilius

(Eds.), Patterns of influence on gifted learners: The home, the self, and the school New York: Teachers College Press.

26.

Pedhazur

E. J.

Tetenbaum

T. J.

(1979). Bern Sex-Role Inventory: A theoretical and methodological crituque. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 996–1016.

27.

Pipher

(1994). Reviving Ophelia. New York: Ballatine.

28.

Steele

R. S.

(1982). Freud and Jung. London: Routledge.

29.

Winnicott

D. W.

(1965). The maturational processes and the facilitating environment. New York: International Universities Press.

Perceptions of Masculinity,Femininity,and Androgyny among a Select Cohort of Gifted Adolescent Males

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References