The Social Construction of Parental Gender Preferences

Abstract

Parents play a critical role in shaping gender-related outcomes for their children, from the moment of birth or adoption and often even before. Parental beliefs, preferences, assumptions, and actions have been analyzed by social scientists and practitioners in a variety of disciplines, especially psychology, sociology, education, and communications, as well as interdisciplinary fields like gender and sexuality studies, childhood studies, and family studies. This multidisciplinary literature documents tendencies toward gender differentiated parenting from infancy through adolescence, with a wide range of specific topics such as vocalization to infants, the selection of toys and activities, the assignment of chores, the way emotional expression is managed, and the kinds of educational fields encouraged. The literature documents how parental preferences and actions in these arenas and many more can contribute to the social construction of gendered outcomes during childhood, encouraging boys and girls to develop different skills, interests, and capacities, with particularly limiting expectations sometimes evident for boys. Scholars and practitioners have also addressed the implications of parental gendering for children’s adult lives in terms of gender differentiation and gender inequalities. Within this broader general tendency toward parents preferring and crafting gender differentiated outcomes, the literature also reveals change over time in some aspects of parental preferences and actions, including recently increased attention to parental responses to transgender children, as well as variation across subgroups of parents and children. Particularly important subgroup variations are between mothers and fathers, and across groups defined by intersecting inequalities of race, class, sexuality, and nation. In addition, researchers have documented various factors that shape parental preferences, ranging from public policy and expert advice to everyday accountability to friends, relatives, and strangers. Even within the literature focused on the role of parents, attention is focused on the importance of many other sources of influence on gendered outcomes among children, ranging from biology to teachers, peers, siblings, media, government policies, and the active agency of children themselves. An intersecting but less centrally reviewed set of literatures within economics and demography also documents differential preference for and investment in sons and daughters; though not the central focus of this article, some sources that offer an overview of key patterns in those literatures are included throughout.