When Do Gay Kids Start "Acting Gay"?
In early childhood, in some cases. A hefty pile of research shows that
boys as young as 3 years old who break from traditional gender roles
have a high likelihood of becoming gay adults. Predictive behaviors
include playing with Barbie dolls, shying away from roughhousing, and
taking an interest in makeup and women's clothing. (Read the Explainer's
take on why boys prefer to play with sticks while girls go for dolls
here.) The relationship isn't one-to-one, however, and it's certainly
not the case that all boys who love Barbie dolls will later identify as
gay. The correlation is much weaker in the other direction: A
disproportionate number of boys who don't conform to gender stereotypes
turn out to be gay men, but lots of gay men played with G.I. Joe as boys
and quarterbacked the high-school football team. Neither does the
relationship appear to be as strong among girls. Tomboys aren't as
likely to become lesbian adults
.
Psychiatrist Richard Green
conducted the leading study in this field in the 1970s and '80s. He
followed 44 boys who defied traditional gender roles from early
childhood to adulthood. Thirty of them became gay or bisexual adults
while just one child from a 34-member gender-conforming control group
turned out to be gay. The subjects who strayed the most from
conventionally boyish behavior were the most likely to be gay. Green's
study has since been repeated by other researchers with similar
outcomes. (Studies on females show that only around one-quarter of
gender nonconforming girls grow up to be lesbians.)
.
There is
no magical age at which children adopt stereotypically gay behavior and
keep it into adulthood. The beginnings of gender nonconformity are hard
to pinpoint, and a person's tendency toward masculine behavior may rise
and fall through childhood. Some mothers tell psychologists that they
sensed their little boy was gay during infancy. They claim the child
behaved differently than male siblings when picked up, showing a
stronger interest in nuzzling. (These stories, however, may just be
hindsight bias.) Gender nonconforming boys also tend to adopt more
traditional gender roles in middle and high school, often as an attempt
to cover up their sexual identity.
.
Some researchers think
gender nonconforming children use their toys to rehearse for a gay
adulthood. Little girls play with Barbies, high heels, and makeup
because they're practicing the role of wife. Gay 3-year-old boys can't
verbalize their desire to be with a man when they grow up—although many
such children exhibit crushlike behavior toward adult men—but they may
be trying to learn the behavior that will later attract a male partner.
Psychiatrists also point out that these boys don't typically play with
baby dolls or mimic maternal behaviors the way many little girls do.
These attempts to explain the basis of gender nonconforming behavior,
however, are somewhat speculative.
shearing some information with we4you Group and
Explainer thanks Gregory Lehne of the Johns Hopkins University School
of Medicine and Ritch Savin-Williams of Cornell University.
from Masood rajpoot Bhatti
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