Gender Stratification and Parental Stimulation of Children: Exploring Differences in Maternal and Paternal Practices

Parents’ engagement in playing and learning is important for children’s development. Insufficient engagement of parents in such activities, however, has been reported in low- and middle-income countries. Additionally, there is evidence documenting that the extent of paternal stimulation is often much lower than that of maternal stimulation. The underlying reasons for such a difference, including those linked to levels of gender stratification or inequality within a society, have yet to be fully explored. Employing a cross-sectional analysis of a sample of 47 low- and middle-income countries with data between 2011 and 2016, the paper investigates the extent to which predictors linked to gender stratification theory influence the extent of parental stimulation with children in the home, and differences in maternal and paternal engagement. The analysis included seven country-level variables that are related to gender stratification in society as well as one country-level control variable (gross domestic product [GDP] per capita). Parental stimulation was measured in terms of the percentage of children aged 24–59 months whose mother or father engaged in certain activities such as singing or reading with them in the past 3 days. The analysis revealed that in all 47 countries, young children were more likely to receive stimulating care from their mothers than their fathers. On average, 34.7% of young children received four or more stimulating activities from their mothers compared to only 14.1% from their fathers. The results also showed that gender stratification in a society, especially within the economic, political, and reproductive autonomy domains, influences the proportion of children whose mothers/fathers were engaged in stimulating activities. Such factors, however, do not necessarily determine both parents’ behaviors in the direction expected by gender stratification theory.