Generational Role Choices Among Children in Four Cultures

Abstract

In a previous publication, we reported that on the whole, young children in four cultures predictably made same-sex role choices (e.g., girls preferring daughter to son). But contrary to prediction, we found that children in two patricentric societies (patrilineal descent, etc.) made fewer same-sex role choices than did those from two societies without gender-biased social principles (bilateral descent, etc.) This surprising finding, which constituted an acknowledged puzzle for interpretation, prompted the current reanalysis of the dataset. Our new analysis has led to two conclusions: (a) children from the two patricentric societies, besides scoring lower on same-sex role choices, also scored a good deal lower on cognitive-performance tests, so they were generally poor test-takers; and (b) children in one of the patricentric societies—though not in any of the other samples—expressed a strong preference for higher-generation roles (i.e., mother and father). Discussion centers on plausible interpretations of these new-found results.