The Influence Of Gender Identity

Gender identity has been a delicate issue when it comes to determining if a person's gender is set at birth or develops and changes as a person ages. A person’s gender is not as simple as being classified as either male or female. There’s a considerable amount of external factors that can influence someone's identity. Although society has a major role in gender identity, sex assignment at birth is not final; furthermore, a person's gender can be influenced by psychological, physiological differences and undergoing changes to the human body.
A common misconception many people believe is that sex and gender are the same or go hand in hand with one another. These are two completely separate ideas that need to be defined. Ann-Maree Nobelius, a
Heather A. Priess, a Professor of psychology with a focus on developmental psychology, writes in her article Adolescent Gender-Role Identity and Mental Health: Gender Intensification Revisited, "Parents were more likely to encourage independence, achievement, self-confidence, and competitiveness in sons than daughters, and more expressivity, warmth, and courtesy for others in daughters compared with sons." This speaks to the effect of someone's upbringing; furthermore, this is a crucial part of developing gender, and a parent will have a large role in developing a child's own identity. Not only this, but more and more children are beginning to question their identity. Robin Henig, an accomplished freelance writer with multiple science publications in various magazines, wrote in her article "How Science is Helping Us Understand Gender", "She’s questioning her gender identity, rather than just accepting her hobbies and wardrobe choices as those of a tomboy, because we’re talking so much about transgender issues these days." The fact that these issues are brought up more openly allow children to express how they're actually feeling rather than conform to gender roles within society. This does not only affect the children, but parents as well since they can be more accepting of child's choice of gender identity. The topic is not only limited to male and female genders but
Typically, XX chromosomes designate females and XY designate males, which both of these will develop into socially acceptable genders of the assigned chromosomes. Although this is mostly correct, there are some variations to the rule in which a person will differ from the assigned chromosomes and have physiological differences that will affect gender identity development. Eliza Dragowski, an assistant professor psychology, writes in a report titled Childhood Gender Identity… Disorder? Developmental, Cultural, and Diagnostic Concerns, "The second path points to anatomical brain differences. It is supported by postmortem examinations of brains of male-to-female transsexuals, which show a typical female-sized portion of the central subdivision of the bed nucleus of the stria terminal, a brain area vital in sexual behavior." This proves brain similarities between males and females, which can lead to them becoming transsexuals later in life. Their brain affects how they develop their own gender identity. Furthermore, genetic differences influence a developing identity, "review of the most recent research indicates the presence of various genetic variations that do not cause changes in reproductive anatomical structures but may produce gender-variant identities” (Dragowski). A variation of these genes will have a significant effect on gender since its part of their