Such girls are also better at visual-spatial tasks than other girls. However, environmental factors are also influential in boys and girls developing nontraditional gender-based abilities and interests. Cognitive factors in children 's understanding of gender and gender stereotypes may contribute to their acquisition of gender roles. Two cognitive approaches to gender typing have looked at when children acquire different types of gender information and how such information modifies their gender-role activities and …show more content…
These findings suggest that the link between the acquisition of gender concepts and behavior varies depending on gender understanding and kind of behavior. Families actively play a role in gender-role socialization by the ways in which they organize the environment for the child. Boys and girls are dressed differently, receive different toys to play with, and sleep in bedrooms that are furnished differently. As predicted by cognitive social learning theory, parental characteristics influence gender typing in terms of the role models that are available for the child to imitate. Parental power has a great impact on sex typing in boys, but not in girls; femininity in girls is related to the father 's masculinity, his approval of the mother as a role model, and his reinforcement of participation in feminine activities. Influences such as books and television affect gender-role typing. Children who have manly or cross gender features are more likely to have greater self-esteem than those who have traditionally feminine characteristics. Children are more likely to react when their friends/classmates show signs that something is for girls or for boys. Their friends or other classmates often tease the children that display these cross gender