Understanding gender differences in children's risk taking and injury: A comparison of mothers' and fathers' reactions to sons and daughters misbehaving in ways that lead to injury

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Abstract

This study compared reactions of mothers and fathers to the risk taking behavior of sons and daughters. Mother–father pairs (N = 52) imagined their 2-year-old boy or girl behaving in risky ways in common home situations that could, and did, result in injury. Emotional and parenting reactions to the behaviors were assessed before and after injury. Results revealed few differences between mothers' and fathers' reactions but reactions varied for sons versus daughters. Parent reactions to risk taking by sons focused on discipline but reactions to the same behaviors by daughters focused on safety. Mothers, in particular, reacted to sons with anger and daughters with disappointment and surprise. Parents attributed risk taking to personality for sons but situational factors for daughters, and judged daughters could be taught to comply with safety rules more than sons. Overall, results suggest that parents socialize boys and girls differently regarding risk taking.

Introduction

Despite substantial gains in reducing some types of unintentional injuries, injury remains the leading cause of death for children in the U.S. and most other industrialized nations (Canadian Institute of Child Health, 2000, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC), 2009, World Health Organization (WHO), 2008). In fact, injuries account for more deaths in the United States than the next 20 leading causes of child mortality ((NCIPC), 2009), and mortality rates highlight only part of the problem. It has been estimated, for example, that as many as 25% of children experience a medically-attended injury in the U.S. annually (Scheidt et al., 1994, Weiss et al., 1997), and other nations report similar statistics (Canadian Institute of Child Health, 2000). Thus, injuries pose a substantial health threat for children.

Epidemiological studies reveal that the nature and scope of injuries varies with a number of factors, including a child's age and sex. Injuries typically increase with age throughout the school years and into adolescence (Scheidt et al., 1994). For young pre-school children, most injuries occur in the home, whereas at older ages injuries more often occur outside the home and frequently when with peers (Morrongiello and Dawber, 2004, Shannon et al., 1992). Sex differences in injury risk have been found as early as 3–4 years of age and for virtually every type of injury (Canadian Institute of Child Health, 2000, Rivara et al., 1989), with boys engaging in more risk taking (Coppens and Gentry, 1991, Ginsburg and Miller, 1982, Morrongiello and Rennie, 1998, Rosen and Peterson, 1990) and experiencing more injuries than girls (Canadian Institute of Child Health, 2000, Singh and Yu, 1996). Interestingly, even when boys and girls engage in the same activities, boys do so in more hazardous ways than girls (Rivara, Bergman, LoGerfo, & Weiss, 1982) or more quickly than girls (Morrongiello & Dawber, 1998), making it more difficult for supervisors to intervene and prevent injury to boys than girls unless they are constantly monitoring them (Morrongiello et al., 2004a, Morrongiello et al., 2004b). For example, Morrongiello and Dawber (1998) found that 2 and 3 year-old boys and girls were equally likely to approach potential hazards, but boys were more likely than girls to interact immediately with the hazard, whereas girls more often paused to look at or point out hazards to the parent nearby. Also, boys were more likely than girls to ignore the parent's attempt to redirect them away from an injury hazard. A variety of sources of evidence, therefore, indicate that boys are more likely than girls to engage in activities and behaviors that elevate risk of injury.

Biological and behavioral explanations for sex differences in risk taking and injury have been suggested. For example, differences in pre- and peri- natal exposure to various hormones have been linked to sex differences in human risk taking (Resnick et al., 1993, Udry, 1994, Vermeersch et al., 2008). Similarly, boys and girls differ in a variety of behavioral characteristics that have been found to elevate risk of injury (see Schwebel & Gaines, 2007 for extensive review), including: Impulsivity (Manheimer & Mellinger, 1967), activity level (Eaton & Yu, 1989), low inhibitory control (Morrongiello et al., 2006, Schwebel, 2004a), sensation seeking (Morrongiello and Lasenby, 2006, Morrongiello et al., 2004b), and oppositionality (Morrongiello et al., 2004a, Rowe et al., 2004, Schwebel et al., 2002).

Differences in gender socialization of risk taking have also been examined, but to a limited extent and few studies have considered fathers' safety socialization practices. In a study of elementary-school children, mothers were found to respond to risky playground behaviors differently depending on the sex of the child, even though all the children did the same behaviors. Specifically, mothers were more encouraging of risk taking by sons than daughters and they were slower to intervene once the risk behavior escalated to one that posed even greater risk of injury (Morrongiello & Dawber, 2000). Mothers also verbalized more about vulnerability for injury and stated more cautions about injury to daughters than sons. In a study of mothers' reactions to children (6 to 10 years) behaving at home in ways that could result in injury, behavior by sons evoked disciplinary reactions whereas the same behavior by daughters evoked communications about safety and injury risk (Morrongiello & Hogg, 2004). Hence, the general pattern of results suggests mothers are more encouraging of risk taking by sons than daughters and they communicate more about injury risk to daughters than sons.

Although the role of fathers in children's injury risk is beginning to be considered (Schwebel and Brezausek, 2004, Schwebel and Brezausek, 2007), few studies of safety socialization have included fathers. Fagot, Kronsberg, and MacGregor (1985) presented mothers and fathers with photographs of pre-school age boys and girls posed to do various risky activities in natural settings (e.g., sitting on a curb, climbing, standing on a stone wall) and had them rate the level of risk in each photo and the amount of intervention they would implement. Results revealed no differences in ratings for boys versus girls and similarities between mothers' and fathers' injury-risk judgments, but differences in extent of intervention, with fathers less likely than mothers to stop a child's risky behavior. Thus, these results suggest that fathers may be more tolerant of young children's risk behaviors than mothers. One serious limitation of this study, however, is that parents were not reacting to their own child's behavior. How parents react to other children may not accurately reflect their tolerance for risky play by their own children. To address this issue, Morrongiello and Dawber, (1999) explored parental reactions to their own young (3-years-old) child's risky play outdoors on a playground. Results revealed no differences between the reactions of mothers and fathers, but both directed predominantly demands for independence and encouragement of risk taking to sons and statements about caution and safety to daughters. Although these findings suggest that mothers and fathers react similarly to one another, the authors note that this pattern of results may be limited to the playground context. Mothers may have been as tolerant of risk taking as fathers because a playground situation is one in which parents expect children to be physically active and energetic and, therefore, their tolerance for injury-risk behaviors may be elevated if these are deemed to be play activities and appropriate to the context.

We reasoned, therefore, that comparing mothers' and fathers' reactions to their own child's risky behavior at home might provide a more stringent test of whether mothers and fathers differ in reaction to their own young child's injury-risk behaviors. In the present study, therefore, we compared the reactions of mothers and fathers to their sons and daughters when the child engaged in behaviors at home that could, and sometimes did, result in injury. Comparing the reactions of mothers and fathers to sons and daughters was expected to reveal if safety concerns and behavioral expectations varied depending on the child's and/or parent's sex. Examining attributions for the child's behavior and suggested strategies to prevent the risk behavior was expected to provide insight into the bases for any differential reactions by parents based on the child's sex. Similarly, parental perceptions of two behavioral attributes that have been linked to injury risk in some studies were also taken. Past research suggests that activity level or surgency (i.e., the tendency to engage in intense activities or behaviors) is a risk factor for child injury (Bijur et al., 1986, Nyman, 1987), whereas inhibitory control (i.e., the ability to inhibit behavioral impulses or desired actions) is a protective factor associated with fewer injuries (Morrongiello et al., 2008, Morrongiello et al., 2006, Schwebel, 2004). In the present study therefore, we explored if parental beliefs about these child attributes related to the extent to which they focused on safety when reacting to their child's behaviors, and if these relations varied as a function of child and/or parent sex. Emotional reactions by parents to children's risk taking has received little attention in the literature but can be an important aspect of socialization because the expression of emotions is a form of role modeling that teaches children how to interpret experiences (Dunsmore & Halberstadt, 1997). Morrongiello and Hogg (2004) found that mothers react predominantly with anger to sons' and disappointment to daughters' risk taking and injury. The present study extended this research to examine how fathers react emotionally to their child's risk taking and injury experiences.

Section snippets

Participants

The sample comprised 52 mother–father pairs, including 29 having a son between 24 and 36 months of age (M = 30.30 months, SD = 4.18 months) and 23 having a daughter in the same age range (M = 28.50 months, SD = 3.93 months). All were Caucasian, one-child, English-speaking families in which no one had ever been hospitalized for injury. The participants were randomly selected from a database of 13,000 families, all of whom had been recruited from the local community at the time the child was

Results

For all analyses, multivariate outliers were removed based on Studentized residuals and Cook's Distance statistics. When the assumption of sphericity was violated, Greenhouse–Geisser adjustments to the degrees of freedom were used to provide more conservative tests of effects.

Discussion

Despite the fact that boys engage in more risk taking and experience significantly more injuries than girls, research examining parent socialization of risk taking is sparse, and most studies have limited their focus to mothers. The results of the present study provide some unique insights into mothers' and fathers' reactions to children's injury-risk behaviors at home, and how these reactions differ for sons as compared to daughters and change in reaction to injury. With the exception of

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by grants to the first author from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The authors extend their thanks to the parents who participated in this research, Trevor MacIssac for help with data collection, and to Mike Corbett for assistance with data analysis.

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