Gender-role attitudes in middle childhood: in what ways do parents influence their children?

Abstract

In 191 Sydney families comprising both parents and two children aged eight to 12, children's gender-role attitudes were examined as a function of children's and parents' demographic variables, gender-role-related childrearing practices, and performance of gender-related household tasks. Children's gender-role attitudes were associated with both parents' education, religiosity, and political allegiances, as well as with parental encouragement of children's cross-sex interests, tolerance of children's cross-sex behaviours, and a nontraditional division of household tasks. Hierarchical multiple regressions demonstrated that gender-role-related childrearing practices and parental gender-role-attitude scores (and, to a lesser extent, household-task performance) added significant variance to the prediction of children's gender-role-attitude scores beyond the influence of demographic variables. The results were discussed with reference to the multiple pathways by which parents influence their children.