In infancy and early childhood, parents encourage a diverse
array of gender-specific play activities and behaviors. As early as the first few months of life—
before children can express their own preferences—parents create different environments for
boys and girls. Bedrooms are decorated with distinct colors and themes. Parents give their
sons toys that stress action and competition (such as guns, cars, tools, and footballs), while
giving their daughters toys that emphasize nurturance, cooperation, and physical attractiveness
(dolls, tea sets, jump ropes, and jewelry) (Leaper, 1994).
Parents also actively reinforce independence in boys and closeness and dependency in girls.
For example, parents react more positively when a son plays with cars and trucks, demands attention,
runs and climbs, or tries to take toys from others. In contrast, when interacting with daughters,
they more often direct play activities, provide help, encourage participation in household
tasks, engage in conversation, make supportive statements (approval, praise, and agreement), and
refer to emotions (Fagot & Hagan, 1991; Kuebli, Butler, & Fivush, 1995). Furthermore, mothers
more often label emotions when talking to girls. In doing so, they seem to teach daughters to “tune
in” to others’ feelings. In contrast, when talking to boys, mothers more often explain emotions,
noting causes and consequences—an approach that emphasizes why it is important to control the
expression of emotion (Cervantes & Callanan, 1998; Fivush, 1989). Gender-typed play contexts
amplify this differential communication. For example, when playing housekeeping, mothers
engage in high rates of supportive, emotional talk with girls (Leaper, 2000).
As these findings suggest, language is a powerful indirect means for teaching children
about gender stereotypes and gender roles. Earlier in this chapter, we saw that most young
children hold rigid beliefs about gender. Although their strict views are due in part to cognitive
limitations, children also draw on relevant social experiences to construct these views.
Like ethnic biases discussed in Chapter 11 (see page 463), young children’s gender biases often
bear little resemblance to those of their parents (Tenenbaum & Leaper, 2002). But as seen in
the From Research to Practice box on pages 532–533, even parents who believe strongly in
gender equality—without being consciously aware of what they are doing—use language that
highlights gender distinctions and informs children about traditional gender roles.
Early in development, then, parents provide a rich array of experiences—through play materials
and social interaction—that encourage assertiveness, exploration, engagement
with the physical world, and emotional control in boys and imitation,
reliance on others, and emotional sensitivity in girls.At the same time, these experiences
provide young children with a rich array of cues for constructing a view
of the world that emphasizes stereotypical gender distinctions.
Ø Middle Childhood and Adolescence. As children’s skills expand during the
school years, issues of achievement become more salient to parents. Observations
of mothers and fathers interacting with their youngsters in teaching situations
reveal that parents continue to demand greater independence from boys. For example,
when a child requests help, parents are more likely to ignore or refuse to
respond to a son but to help a daughter right away. The way parents provide help
to children of each sex differs, too.With sons, they usually behave in a more mastery-
oriented fashion, setting higher standards and pointing out important features
of the task—particularly during gender-typed activities.When researchers observed
parents teaching their 11- and 13-year-olds a physics task, fathers tended to use more cognitively demanding speech—explanations, high-level questions, and scientific
vocabulary—with sons than with daughters (Tenenbaum & Leaper, 2003). And while their
child explored interactive science exhibits at a children’s museum, both mothers and fathers
offered many more scientific explanations to boys than to girls (see Figure 13.7 on page 534)
(Crowley et al., 2001).
Consistent with their interaction patterns, parents hold gender-differentiated perceptions of
and expectations for children’s competencies in various school subjects. In longitudinal
research on sixth graders, Janis Jacobs and Jacqueline Eccles (1992) found that mothers rated
sons as more competent than daughters at math, regardless of their child’s actual performance.
Mothers’ gender-typed judgments, in turn, influenced children’s self-perceptions of
math ability, the effort children devoted to math, and their later math performance (Eccles et
al., 2000).When the participants were followed up two years after high school graduation and
again at age 24 to 25, mothers’ early perceptions no longer predicted sons’ outcomes. But they
continued to predict daughters’ self-perceptions and also their career choices. Young women
whose mothers had regarded them as highly capable at math were far more likely to choose a
physical science career (Bleeker & Jacobs, 2004). Yet mothers rarely made such optimistic judgments, with long-term negative implications for girls’ achievement. Indeed, women’s
progress in entering such fields as engineering, mathematics, and physics has been slow. In the
United States, only 11 percent of engineers and 10 percent of physicists are women.Women’s
representation is somewhat better in Canada, at 23 and 30 percent (Statistics Canada, 2003d;
U.S. Census Bureau, 2004b).
Parents’ differential treatment of boys and girls extends to the freedom granted children in
their everyday lives. Parents use more directive speech (imperatives and specific suggestions)
with girls than with boys (Leaper, Anderson, & Sanders, 1998). Furthermore, when insisting
that children meet their daily responsibilities, mothers of sons more often pair control with
autonomy granting. That is, they tend to ask boys to make decisions (“When do you think
would be a good time for you to do your music practice?”), whereas for girls, they tend to
decide (“Do your practicing right after dinner”) (Pomerantz & Ruble, 1998b). Although
school-age children interpret parental control without autonomy granting as well-intentioned
guidance, they also say it makes them feel incompetent (Pomerantz & Ruble, 1998a).