Do children have essentialist beliefs about gender?

Researcher Kathleen Corriveau said [emphasis mine]:

"We asked questions about moral violations. When children form opinions, some things are moral—you shouldn’t hit people, you shouldn’t steal—and others are conventional: you shouldn’t wear socks on your hands. Our question was, how are children judging religious violations—as moral or conventional? We asked children about people who were part of their religious group who were doing some sort of violation—like, “You’re Jewish and you’re eating pork”—and [then asked] about someone that’s not Jewish and is eating pork.

What we’re finding—and this is hopeful—is when the person they’re making a judgment [about] is a member of their religious group, they’re viewing it more as a moral violation; it’s really bad. But if that same violation is by someone that’s not a member of their religious group, they’re more accepting. In some locations, children treat religion as a highly essentialized category, like gender, [but] in other locations, children treat it like a preference for a baseball team—not a big deal."

— Polarized Parents Are Raising Ideologically Divided Kids. How Do We Stop the Cycle? Boston University’s Kathleen Corriveau, who studies why children believe what they do, says social exposure may be the key to ending the transmission of polarized beliefs. Kathleen Corriveau, interviewed by Rich Barlow, The Brink (Boston University), August 4, 2026

She was talking about her previous "five-year study—spanning 18 countries from the US and Australia to nations in Europe, Asia, and Africa—that probed how religious beliefs in particular shape attitudes" of children ages 4–12, as Rich Barlow explained. (Separately, she has a new research project in the Developing Belief Network, "a global collaborative studying the development of religious awareness.")

My initial reaction is to wonder whether, in some locations, children treat gender as essentialized; elsewhere, as less essentialized?

One could simply repeat the research to investigate that question, but, in today's propagandized climate, the researchers would be accused of "gender ideology" simply for asking children a "leading question" of whether man and woman might not be predetermined, fixed categories. Of course, there is no such thing as gender ideology; it's just something that far-right people accuse you of when you point out basic facts, like other people's beliefs and practices around gender. The far-right promotes the appearance of gender homogeneity, claiming that homogeneity is natural and diversity is ideology. This pressures people out of even asking questions about diversity.

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