Gender role abnormalities in boys: An analysis of clinical ratings

Abstract

In response to the need for more systematic descriptions of clinical impressions of effeminate boys, particularly at this time of changing social sex-role stereo types, extensive clinical ratings were made on a series of 29 boys, aged 5–13, and their families who had been referred to a project dealing with gender disturbance. Principal component analysis of these ratings indicated 4 orthogonal factors: Factor I, specific effeminate behaviors; Factor II, normalcy of family environment and childhood adjustment; Factor III, family overprotectiveness and associated fearfulness in the child; and Factor IV, social unresponsiveness and aversiveness in the children. Independently of the data analysis, subgroups were formed and t tests between the groups were computed for factor scores. Children judged as noneffeminate or midly effeminate were less effeminate (p<.001), came from more stereo typically normal families (p<.05), and tended to be less overprotected (p<.10) than highly effeminate children. Effeminate children between ages 5 and 7 tended to be more effeminate (p<. 10) and less overprotected (p< 10) than effeminate children between ages 8 and 10. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for clinical assessment of extreme effeminacy, their relationship to previous findings, and their contribution to understanding the meaning of clinical referral for problems of effeminacy.