This paper is an examination of current research into the young child’s developing understanding of gender. If we are to comprehend the infant’s earliest gender-related categorical discriminations, the tacit knowledge displayed by the barely verbal child, and the acceleration of sex typing as gender labels for boys and girls are acquired, we might do well to break out of our conventional ways of thinking about cognition in infants and young children. Investigating metaphorical associations in gender schematic processing is a step toward this goal. The child’s cognitive construction of gender schema is important, but we think that the attitudes, values, and the affective valence attached to gender knowledge are also an important part of the information from which children build their gender schemata. We argue that the child’s construction of gender must be studied in a social context and, while emphasizing cognition, we must not lose sight of the whole child.