Gendered Glass Self in 11 Countries: Children’s Attitude Perception Mediates Parent-Child Association in Math Attitude

• In Event: 151 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 17. Parental Investment: Influencing Education Around the World

Abstract

Math attitude is central in explaining the entrance and persistence in science and engineering career. While the link between attitude and achievement is well-established, the role of parents is mostly absent in previous cross-national studies. Also, these studies assume that sons and daughter are looking at the same glass self, i.e. there is no gender difference in children’s perception of parent attitude. This study addresses these two gaps by examining the association of math attitude between parents and children in 11 countries, and the extent to which this association can be explained by children’s perception of parental math attitude. Results show that daughters’ attitude are significantly affected by their parents’ one in all countries, while significant association is observed for sons in 8 out of 11 countries. For both daughters and sons, the perception of parents’ math attitude is a strong mediator of the association in all countries. Nevertheless, the perception effect is smaller for daughters than for sons. This result provides some initial evidence that girls have biased assessment of their parents’ math attitude, and further elaborates the gender status belief theory proposed by Ridgeway (2012).

Author

• Koit Hung, The University of Texas at Austin