Structre of Father’s and Mother’s Gender-role Expectation and Their Children’s Flexibility of Gender-role Cognition

Abstract

　　The purpose of this study was to investigate (1) the structure of parents' gender-role expectation for their children, (2) the difference between mother's and father's gender-role expectation, and (3) the relation between parents' gender-role expectation and their children's flexibility of gender-role cognition.

　　Subjects were 70 preschool children and their parents. Parents were asked to evaluate the importance of forty-eight traits (ten masculine ones, ten feminine ones, and twenty-eight humane ones) for their children. Children were shown ten pictures of toys (three ones liked generally by boys, three ones by girls, and four ones by boys and girls), and asked to choose among the toys which three one they preferred (toy preference) and to classify them into a toy for boys, for girls, and for both boys and girls. The number of toys classified into the one for both boys and girls was defined as the flexibility score of gender-role cognition.

　　The followings are the main results obtained in the present study. First, parents' gender-role expectation consisted of masuculinity factor, humanity one, and femininity one. Second, fathers' expectation was higher than mothers'. Finally, girls with inconsistent parents, that is, one parent had high expectation and the other parent had low expectation, tended to have high flexibility of gender-role cognition.