Sex-role development in young children: Relationships to behavioral and attitudinal measures of parental gender schemas

Parental influence on their children's sex-role development was examined by assessing strength of parental sex-role stereotyping and comparing the results with similar data gathered previously from their children. Parents' gender-schema flexibility was measured by a computer task which required judgements of the gender-appropriateness of sex-typed occupations under both immediate- and delayed-response conditions. Three paper-and-pencil questionnaires measured parents' sex-typed attributes, beliefs, and socialization practices. Evidence was obtained for the value of using an immediate-response requirement in future research. Parents gave significantly more sex-stereotyped responses in the immediate- rather than the delayed-response mode. Parental socialization practices were found to have the most links with their children's strength of sex-typing. Measures which distinguished between parental preference for their child's choice of same-sex items and disapproval of their child's choice of opposite-sex items were particularly sensitive.