Gender constancy judgments in children with gender identity disorder: Evidence for a developmental lag

Gender constancy judgments in children referred for problems in their gende r identity development (N = 206) and controls (N = 95) were compared. On Sl aby and Frey's (1975) gender constancy interview the gender-referred childr en performed more poorly than the controls at three stage levels: gender id entity gender stability, and gender consistency. On the Boy-Girl Identity T ask, a second measure of gender constancy (Emmerich et al., 1977), the gend er-referred children also performed more poorly. Gender-referred children w ho had not attained gender consistency engaged in significantly less same-s ex-typed play on a free-play task than the gender-referred children who had , but there were no gender consistency effects for the controls. Two other measures of sex-typed behavior were unrelated to gender consistency. In the gender-referred group alone, children who "failed" the gender identity or gender stability stages were more likely to draw an opposite-sex person fir st on the Draw-a-Person test and to evince more affective gender confusion on the Gender Identity Interview (Zucker et al., 1993) than children who ha d "passed." It is concluded that children referred for problems in their ge nder identity development have a developmental lag in gender constancy acqu isition. Possible reasons for the lag are discussed.