Sex Role Expectations in Children's Vocational Aspirations and Perceptions of Occupations

Abstract

To study sex role expectations, 120 boys and girls from three age groups—preschool, second grade, and fifth grade—in two socioeconomic levels were asked to name their vocational aspirations and to choose whether a man, woman, or both could do the work in 30 occupations depicted in a slide-tape series. Results indicated that sex typing was present in the way their aspirations conformed to traditional sex roles, with a significant relationship (p < .001) between sex typing of aspirations and sex of the respondents. Significant differences in responses to the occupational slides were found on the variables of sex (p < .01), grade level (p < .001), and socioeconomic level (p < .05), with greater sex typing indicated by boys than girls, by preschool children than by older children, and by lower to lower-middle class children than by middle to upper-middle class children. The study revealed a disparity between many children's perceptions of occupations as ones in which both sexes could work and their own personalized, sex-typed aspirations.