Parents’ Judgments about the Desirability of Toys for Their Children: Associations with Gender Role Attitudes, Gender-typing of Toys, and Demographics

Autor(en)

Marlene Kollmayer, Marie-Therese Schultes, Barbara Schober, Tanja Hodosi, Christiane Spiel

Abstrakt

Parental toy selection and responses to toy play are important factors in children's gender socialization. Reinforcing play with same-gender-typed toys guides children's activities and limits their action repertoires in accordance with gender stereotypes. A survey of 324 Austrian parents of three- to six-year-old children was conducted to investigate parents' judgments about the desirability of different types of toys for their children and how these judgements relate to parents' gender-typing of toys, gender role attitudes, and demographics (age, education, gender). Results show that parents rated same-gender-typed and gender-neutral toys as more desirable for their children than cross-gender-typed toys. The traditionalism of parents' gender role attitudes was not associated with their desirability judgments of same-gender-typed toys, but was negatively related to their desirability judgments of cross-gender-typed toys. This indicates that egalitarian parents permit a greater range of interests and behaviors in their children than traditional parents do. Younger parents, parents with lower educational levels, and fathers reported more traditional gender role attitudes than did older parents, parents with higher educational levels, and mothers. However, no differences based on age, educational level or gender were found in parents' judgments of toy desirability. The present study demonstrates that parents' judgments about the desirability of toys for their children do not accurately reflect their gender role attitudes. This finding highlights the importance of simultaneously investigating different aspects of parents' gender-related attitudes in order to gain a better understanding of parental transmission of gender stereotypes.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Arbeits-, Wirtschafts- und Sozialpsychologie

Externe Organisation(en)

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Journal

Sex Roles

Band

79

Seiten

329-341

Anzahl der Seiten

13

ISSN

0360-0025

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-017-0882-4

Publikationsdatum

09-2018

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

501021 Sozialpsychologie

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Developmental and Educational Psychology, Social Psychology, Gender studies

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/f27e01fa-663d-4fc0-ac12-893ad49ef094