Children's Reasoning about Gender Norm Violations in the U.S. and Korea

To examine how children and young adults in two cultures think about gender norms, participants evaluated preferences that were inconsistent with gender norms. Participants were 53 children ages 5 years, 49 children ages 7 years, and 49 children ages 9 years, as well as 49 young adults, from Korea and the U.S. Both Koreans and Americans reasoned about violations of gender norms primarily as matters of personal choice in both public and private, with some conventional concerns in public settings. In both cultures, participants rejected the idea that an authority could have jurisdiction over gender-norm related choices, and both groups suggested that being unable to express those preferences in public has a negative impact on individuals.