Abstract
Factor analysis of 18 Likert-type items dealing with gender stereotypes about family roles was conducted and yielded two measures: one focused on marital roles and one focussed on child rearing. Respondents were parents of children in the third and fourth grades of a large industrialized city in the Midwest. The sample included 364 families equally divided between middle and lower class with 23% African American and 77% European American. For both scales, more stereotyped scores were obtained by parents who were lower in social status, less educated, full-time homemakers, African Americans, and fathers. Parents' scores related to a separate measure of children's stereotypes and the marital-role attitudes related to actual roles reported by family members. Daughters whose parents obtained less stereotyped scores had a more internal locus of control, showed a trend toward more independent coping skills, and—in the middle class—obtained higher scores on achievement tests.
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This research was supported by Grant No. 91-1437-91 from the William T. Grant Foundation.
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Hoffman, L.W., Kloska, D.D. Parents' gender-based attitudes toward marital roles and child rearing: Development and validation of new measures. Sex Roles 32, 273–295 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01544598
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01544598