How Does Parent Gender Impact the Socialization of Safety Values in Sons and Daughters?

• In Event: Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Parents play an important role in the socialization of safety values in their children (O’Neal & Plumert, 2014). While mothers respond differently to sons and daughters when discussing how to successfully engage in a dangerous task (Morrongiello & Dawber, 2000; O’Neal, Plumert, & Peterson, 2016), little is known about fathers in this context. Here, we examine how parent and child gender influence socialization of safety values.

As part of an ongoing study, 36 parent-child dyads, with 8- to 10- year-old children (18 females, 27 mothers), jointly discussed and rated a set of 12 photographs depicting a gender-matched, similarly-aged child engaged in various physical activities (e.g., reaching over a hot burner to pick up a pan). Their task was to decide together the safety of each activity using a four-point Likert scale from very safe to very unsafe.

We coded conversations to examine how the interaction unfolded and the reasoning used to arrive at decisions about the safety of the activities. Of particular interest was who provided the initial rating, disagreements about safety, dangerous features and potential outcomes used to support ratings, and the final rating.

Measures of interest were analyzed using linear and logistic mixed-effects regressions with fixed effects of parent and child gender, a random intercept of dyad, and a covariate of child age. There was a significant Parent x Child Gender interaction for who provided the first rating, z = 1.96, p = .04. Mothers were 1.90 times more likely to provide the first rating with daughters than sons, whereas fathers were 3.49 times more likely to so do with sons than daughters. Another significant Parent x Child Gender interaction emerged for rating disagreements (Figure 1), z = -2.70, p = .01. Mothers and sons were 1.75 times more likely to disagree when compared to daughters, whereas fathers and daughters were 2.27 times more likely to disagree with one another compared to sons. Neither parent nor child gender emerged as a significant predictor of references to dangerous features or potential outcomes. However, there was a significant main effect of parent gender for the final safety rating, t (31) = -2.13, p = .04, such that dyads with fathers rated the activities as being safer compared to dyads with mothers.

Parent gender had the most impact on how these conversations unfolded. Allowing children to provide the first rating is critical for understanding a child’s current level of understanding, yet parents in same-gender dyads provided the first rating more often than opposite-gender dyads. Disagreements serve as a useful mechanism in parents’ efforts to socialize safety values, but again same-gender dyads did not engage in disagreements as often as opposite-gender dyads. While there were no gender differences in the rationales that parents and children used to support their ratings, dads may be underplaying riskiness relative to moms. Data collection for the current study was halted due to COVID-19. However, with data collection again underway, we believe this work will provide important insight into how parent and child gender impact socialization.

Authors

• Elizabeth E O'Neal, University of Iowa
  Presenting Author

• Hanxi Tang, University of Iowa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jessica K Flathau, University of Iowa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jodie Plumert, University of Iowa
  Non-Presenting Author