Do parents find children’s gender biases concerning?

• In Event: The role of parents and environments in shaping the children's gendered attitudes and cognition

Abstract

Children exhibit gender biases from a young age. Toddlers associate dolls with girls and trucks with boys (Todd et al., 2018); preschool-age children prefer same-gender playmates and engage in gender-based social exclusion (Martin et al., 1999); and kindergarteners associate brilliance with boys more so than with girls (Bian et al., 2017). Although research shows that parents’ socialization practices are associated with children’s gender biases (e.g., Tenenbaum & Leaper, 2002), we know very little about how parents think about their children’s gender biases—and whether they find such biases acceptable. If parents do not find gender biases concerning, they may intentionally or unintentionally encourage the development of gender biases and certainly would not take steps to reduce gender biases in their children. Examining parents’ current beliefs about children’s gender biases is critical for crafting interventions that can help reduce the transmission of gender biases from parents to children as well as help parents directly address children’s gender biases.

In a preregistered study, we recruited parents of 3- to 10-year-old children (N=635). Parents reported how concerned they would be about their child expressing gender biases. To broaden representation of the sample beyond what is typically captured in research on parents in our field, we selectively recruited based on parent gender (51.97% mothers, 48.03% fathers) and political affiliation (55.75% Democrats, 32.6% Republicans, and 11.2% another or no political party). Parents responded to scenarios such as: “Imagine your child thought that boys are smarter than girls. How concerning would that be for you?” Parents responded on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from “not at all concerning” to “extremely concerning.” Scenarios (N=10) reflected three domains in which children express gender biases: play (e.g., trucks are for boys), ability (e.g., girls are better at reading), and affiliation (e.g., preferring own-gender social partners). Across trials, we varied whether items advantaged girls (e.g., girls are more cooperative) or boys (e.g., boys are better leaders).

We evaluated whether the advantaged gender, parent gender, or child gender influenced parents’ concern about children’s gender biases. Across all items, mothers were more concerned than fathers about children’s gender biases (p<.001); parents were more concerned about their children expressing gender biases that advantaged boys than those that advantaged girls (p<.001); and parents were marginally more concerned about their daughters expressing biases than their sons expressing biases (p=.08). Finally, there was a significant three-way interaction between parent gender, child gender, and advantaged gender (p=0.005). This interaction indicated that fathers were particularly unconcerned about children’s gender biases when their sons expressed biases advantaging boys (see Figure 1). These findings highlight that interventions could be particularly important to target fathers’ concern about boys’ gender biases.

Discussion will focus on: (1) how fathers’ lack of concern could affect children’s gender stereotypes and perpetuate gender biases over generations; (2) how low levels of concern can have downstream negative consequences; and (3) how helping unconcerned parents recognize the consequences of stereotypes could increase their motivation to attenuate children’s biases.

Authors

• Kristin Shutts, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Katharine Scott, Northwestern University

• Kylett Jones

• Amelia Dow

• Patricia G. Devine, University of Wissonsin