Copyright © The British Psychological Society Reproduction in any form (including the internet) is prohibited without prior permission from the Society ‘It’s a boy because he’s painting a picture’: Age differences in children’s conventional and unconventional gender schemas Harriet R. Tenenbaum 1 *, Darryl B. Hill 2 , Nadia Joseph 1 and Erin Roche 1 1 Kingston University, Kingston, Surrey, UK 2 College of Staten Island, City University of New York, New York, USA Two studies investigated the development of children’s gender knowledge using a procedure designed to tap into children’s unconventional gender beliefs. Study 1 revealed a developmental progression with 34 3- to 4-year-old children providing more unconventional reasons than conventional reasons to explain the gender of a series of drawings. By contrast, 39 5- to 6-year-old and 42 7- to 8-year-old children provided more conventional than unconventional reasons. Study 2 found that a second sample of 42 3- to 4-year-old children mastered a close-ended assessment of gender stereotyping, while they relied on unconventional and conventional reasoning equally when explaining the gender of a series of drawings displaying conventional cues only. This research supports the model that children’s conventional gender schemas do not develop before their unconventional gender schemas. According to gender schema theory, people’s theories about gender allow them to simplify a large body of knowledge and to apply this knowledge easily to themselves and to others (Bem, 1982, 1993; Martin & Halverson, 1983, 1987). When assessing the gender (i.e. the cultural manifestations associated with sex) of others, we rely on cues. Some of these cues are culturally created gender cues such as ‘pink is for girls’ and ‘blue is for boys’ (Picariello, Greenberg, & Pillemer, 1990). Some of the cues, however, are biological, such as the obvious secondary sex characteristics readily observed in public: facial hair, breasts, body shape, as well as clothing and hairstyles. For children trying to gender their peers, this process can be challenging because of the lack of obvious secondary sex characteristics; thus, they must rely on other observable characteristics including hairstyles, clothing, behaviour, and friend preferences. But how and when do children acquire this ability? To begin to answer this question, the present study investigated the development of children’s physical gender schemas in drawings. *Correspondence should be addressed to Dr Harriet R. Tenenbaum, Psychology Research Unit, Kingston University, Penrhyn Road, Kingston-upon-Thames, Kingston, KT1 2EE, UK (e-mail: h.tenenbaum@kingston.ac.uk). The British Psychological Society 137 British Journal of Psychology (2010), 101, 137–154 q 2010 The British Psychological Society www.bpsjournals.co.uk DOI:10.1348/000712609X433122