The role of parents and environments in shaping the children's gendered attitudes and cognition

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Parents are one vital source of gender socialization. Here, we compare the effects of parents to other environmental influences on the development of children’s gendered attitudes and cognition. In the first two papers, the authors show that parents’ behavior (Paper 1) and beliefs (Paper 2) directly affect children’s awareness of gender differentials in society (Paper 1) and predict boys’ aggressive cognition (Paper 2). In Paper 3, however, the authors find that parents may be less influential compared to local levels of gender inequality in shaping children’s objectification of girls. All three papers employ a diversity of methods and sampling practices to explore socialization effects. Paper 1 uses a large cross-national dataset of racially diverse children to explore how variation in parent socialization influences their children’s gender attitudes and behaviors . Paper 2 is a threat experiment with adolescent boys, where post-pubertal boys demonstrate the same masculinity threat effects as adult men, driven in part by pressures from parents. Paper 3 samples children from across the U.S. and, using zip-code-level indices of income inequality, finds that children’s neighborhood income inequality predicts their emerging patterns of gender-based objectification. In Paper 4, the authors explore how parents’ concern (or lack of concern) about their children’s gender biases could perpetuate or attenuate children’s gender biases. Together, these projects leverage a range of methods to explore the environmental influences underlying children’s gender cognition, thus facilitating a deeper understanding of the antecedents, consequences, and intervention pathways of problematic gender beliefs in development.

Sub Unit

• Sex, Gender

Chairs

• Adam Stanaland, New York University

• Rachel Leshin, New York University

Individual Presentations

• Parent socialization of gender attitudes among ethnically and geographically diverse young children - Presenting Author: Stats Atwood; May Ling Halim, California State University - Long Beach; Alisha Osornio; Kristin J.M.B. Pauker, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa; Yarrow C Dunham, Yale University; Kristina R Olson, Princeton University; Sarah Elizabeth Gaither, Duke Univeristy

• Parent masculinity beliefs predict adolescent boys’ aggressive cognition under threat - Presenting Author: Adam Stanaland, New York University; Sarah Elizabeth Gaither, Duke Univeristy; Anna Gassman-Pines, Duke Univeristy

• Local levels of gender inequality, not parents’ ideology, predict children’s gender-based objectification - Presenting Author: Rachel Leshin, New York University; Marjorie Rhodes, New York University

• Do parents find children’s gender biases concerning? - Presenting Author: Kristin Shutts, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Katharine Scott, Northwestern University; Kylett Jones; Amelia Dow; Patricia G. Devine, University of Wissonsin