Perceptions of Child Rearing and Adolescent Sex Role Development

Abstract

A total of 185 adolescent males and females from grades 6, 8, 10 and 12 completed the Bem Sex Role Inventory and the Children's Report of Parental Behavior Inventory in a study aimed at relating perceptions of child rearing to sex role development. As expected, perceiving the parents as warm and accepting was associated with androgynous and feminine sex roles. Perceiving the parents as more rigidly controlling was associated with a feminine sex role. It was speculated that perceiving the parents as accepting allows the adolescent to explore a variety of aspects of self-development, including cross sex-typed behavior, and that perceiving the parents as controlling is related to a dependency oriented sex role. Grade level and gender differences in perceptions of mother's and father's child rearing generally supported predictions that parents would be seen as more accepting by younger than older adolescents and that females would view their parents as more accepting but also as more controlling than would males. The results illustrate the utility of relating perceptions of child rearing to aspects of adolescent development and provide validity data for the CRPBI.