The psychoanalytic perspective highlights the importance of early childhood experience in gender development, but the emphasis on psychosexual dynamics within the family has not received empirical support.

A dominant debate in current research on gender development concerns the relative importance of social and cognitive factors.

Mischel’s social learning approach suggested that children’s gender development is a product of their social experiences. This theoretical approach focuses on reinforcement of gender-typed behaviour by parents and peers, and on children’s observation of gender stereotypes in the world around them.

Bandura’s social-cognitive theory is a more recent version of social learning approaches that highlights the active role of children in their observational learning.

Kohlberg’s cognitive-developmental theory proposed a developmental sequence of stages in children’s concept of gender. Children’s appreciation of the unchanging permanence or ‘constancy’ of gender was thought to underlie their tendency to seek out and adhere to gender role information.

Martin’s and Halverson’s gender schema approach suggests that children form cognitive schemas about gender as soon as they discover their own sex. These schemas drive gender development, guiding children’s attention and memory in such a way that they focus on and remember gender-typed information much more than counter stereotypical information.