Sex role in children

The purpose of this thesis was to see how sexist beliefs in childhood relate to
indexes of children's personal and social adjustment. We developed an instrument to
study the sexist beliefs that children have regarding work, parenting, dating, and other
aspects of gender roles. We predicted (and found) that having these sexist beliefs
affected the sexes differently. For girls sexist beliefs were associated with reduced global
self-worth and body satisfaction; and increased depression. For boys, sexist beliefs were
associated with increased global self-worth, narcissism, externalizing behaviors, and
competence in sports; and decreased depression and prosocial behavior.

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.

To test the hypothesis that children know that certain toys are
appropriate for their own sex before they indicate preferences for
these toys, 128 boys and girls, aged two through five, were shown
pictures of masculine, faninine, and neutral toys. First, subjects
indicated their personal preferences (preference test). Second,
subjects indicated which itans were more appropriate for their sex
(stereotype test). There was no evidence for the hypothesis. In fact,
children--especially boys--displayed considerable sex-typed behavior in
their toy preferences at an earlier age than they expressed awareness
of which toys are appropriate for their own sex. This suggested that
early sex-typed preferences result from something other than children's
attempts to emulate same-sex stereotypes. A second hypothesis was that
boys would show greater rejection of cross-sex toys than girls. This
hypothesis also was rejected. Boys and girls showed equal rejection of
cross-sex toys, but boys more frequently chose same-sex toys than girls
did.

This study tested Bem's (1996) "Exotic Becomes Erotic" theory of sexual orientation. Participants were 182 4th- through 8 th-graders. In accord with Bem's theory, sex-typing (i.e., sex-typed traits, interests, and playmate preferences) and goodness-of-fit with one's gender predicted heterosexual identity. However, goodness-of-fit did not mediate relations of sex-typing to heterosexual identity; instead, sex-typing mediated the relation of felt similarity to heterosexual identity. Implications for alternative models are discussed.