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Caregivers’ Socialization of Gender Roles in a Children’s Museum Michael Abrahamy, Elizabeth Blake Finkelson, Connie Lydon, Kathleen Murray Literature has shown that parents are the primary source of gender role socialization. Through modeling, play, and other familial interactions, children internalize parental messages regarding gender. Given these findings, this study explores the question of whether, in play settings where children have a choice of occupational costumes to wear, caregivers will reinforce societal gender stereotyping of occupations by urging their children to try on costumes that are gender congruent or gender neutral. While past research has indicated that caregivers exhibit more gender role stereotypes to boys than girls, our findings suggest that there is no significant difference in the amount of gender opposite occupational costumes given to boys and girls. It was also argued that male caregivers would be more traditional in displaying gender role stereotypes through the offering of occupational costumes than female caregivers and the statistical data supports this conclusion. Implications of the effects of gender role stereotypes are also discussed.

INTRODUCTION Through the process of gender role socialization, children learn from a very early age what it means to be a boy or a girl in our society. They learn their gender roles and develop a sense of gendered self from social and environmental cues such as the behaviors, ideas, attitudes and beliefs that surround them each day. A potentially important context for the construction and the socialization of gender is the family, where parents are major socializing agents (Leaper 2002). It is widely held that parents play a significant role in "shaping" a child's gender role behavior. According to Snow, Jackson, & Maccoby (1983), parents socialize boys and girls differently, though it may be unintentional. Parents form their children's ideas of what it means to be masculine or feminine through both overt and covert socialization. This socialization of gender roles is in accordance with the social-learning theory, which explains the acquisition of behavior through reinforcement and modeling (Lytton & Romney, 1991). The parents will be the first and perhaps most significant sources of such reinforcement and the people from whom children Perspectives in Psychology

will obtain much of their behavior. As Witt points out, developing children internalize the subtle messages that parents send regarding what is acceptable for each gender. (Arliss, 1991, as cited in Witt, 1999). Socialization begins at birth and children's internalization of parental messages about gender is not far behind. Many studies cited by Fagot, Leinbach, & O'Boyle (1992) attest to the presence of gender labeling, stereotyping, and sex-typed behavior in very young children and verify that both parents influence these early displays of gender typed behavior. The year between a child's second and third birthdays has been identified as the period during which sex stereotypes for toys, clothing, tools, household objects, games, and work are acquired (Huston, 1983). During this time, children are not only aware of adult gender role differences, but also of their own sexual identity, discovering that they themselves are either male or female (Thompson, 1975). From birth, parents treat sons and daughters differently, dressing infants in gender specific outfits, painting their rooms in gender-specific colors, giving them gender differentiated toys, and expectSpring 2003

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ing different behaviors from boys and girls (Thorne, 1993). It appears that parents also treat boys and girls differently with regard to how strongly they enforce gender roles. In a study examining parents' gender typing of toys, Campenni (1999) found that, in general, feminine toys were stereotyped more than masculine toys. For example, people are more likely to say that a boy should not play with a Barbie doll, but that it is acceptable for a girl to play with a GI Joe doll. Campenni(1999) also found that parents tended to choose masculine and neutral toys more often than feminine toys for their sons, but for their daughters chose neutral toys more often than feminine or masculine ones. Some studies suggest that it is not only the sex of the child that is salient in gender role socialization, but also the characteristics of the parent. It appears that males tend to be more traditional in their enforcement of gender-roles than females (Kulik, 2002). Snow et al. (1983) found that fathers use toys to socialize their male and female children differently by giving them gender specific toys. Women, however, often have less traditional attitudes toward gender roles than men and are more likely to use behavioral modeling as a means of gender socialization. Gender role stereotypes are also found to be at the core of gender segregation of occupations. As Gatten et al. (1999) observe, a number of studies (Shepard & Hess, 1975; Shinar, 1975; Panek, Rush & Greenawalt, 1977; Freedman, Podsakoff, & Mackenzie, 1993; St. Pierre, Herendeen, Moore &Nagle 1994) have examined occupational gender stereotyping, all concluding that gender stereotypes of occupations do exist. In fact, some of the clearest sex differences in adolescence and adulthood seem to occur in domains such as occupational choice and interest (Lytton & Romney, 1991), where job selection by males and females corresponds with beliefs about appropriate gender role behaviors Although there is extensive research on gender specific stereotyping of toys and parents' influence on their children's conception of gender, no observational study has yet examined how caregivers shape the gender stereotypes of children through their selection of gender typed occupational costumes for imaginary play. The present study was undertaken in an attempt to help fill that void. We are exploring the general question of whether, in play settings where children have a choice of occupationPerspectives in Psychology

al costumes to wear, caregivers will reinforce societal gender stereotyping of occupations by urging their children to try on costumes which are gender congruent or gender neutral. Specifically, we make the following hypotheses: caregivers will choose masculine and neutral occupational costumes more often than feminine occupational costumes for boys, but will choose feminine, neutral, and masculine occupational costumes for girls, thus displaying more gender specific stereotyping for boys than girls between the ages of 3-6 years old. We also hypothesize that male caregivers will reinforce gender stereotypes more than female caregivers by choosing fewer gender opposite occupational costumes for both boys and girls.

METHODS The Please Touch Museum (PTM), located in Center City Philadelphia, is a child-oriented museum open to the public seven days a week. The PTM encourages children to interact with exhibits that provide hands-on learning experiences through creative and imaginative play. The museum is designed for children who range in age from infancy to seven years old. The children are usually accompanied by adults who guide them through the different activities. Our data was collected exclusively on weekends at the "Me on TV" exhibit in the PTM. The "Me on TV" is a 25 square foot interactive exhibit that gives children the opportunity to see themselves on television. In a newsroom setting, "Unique costumes and a variety of stage props help to set the scene as children use cameras and monitors to capture their pretend play on live TV"(PTM Brochure). The set up consists of a video camera in the center of the room, which focuses on a reporter's desk in front of a backdrop of Philadelphia and a weatherboard. To the right of the camera is a green screen that allows children to appear in front of various backgrounds and locations that can be changed at the push of a button. There are three monitors that the children can use to see themselves. To the right of the green screen is the rack of costumes that can be used for dress up in front of the cameras. To test our hypotheses we first conducted a pictorial survey on the occupational costumes available to the children in the " Me on TV " exhibit to Spring 2003

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determine the gender specificity of each costume. Before we conducted our survey we excluded three costumes in order to establish that every costume was equal in style and ease of wear. A sample of 49 college students were given pictures of each costume and asked to place them into piles of masculine, feminine, and neutral according to their perception of the gender of the costume. Costumes that were placed in one of the three gender categories at least 70% of the time were used in the study. Furthermore, the gender categories in which the 70% fell determined whether it would be used as masculine, neutral, or feminine in the study. In order to ensure reliability, we conducted two pilot studies to establish inter-observer agreement. In the first study we observed one subject and had an inter-observer agreement of 75%. After collecting this data we determined that there was a difference of opinion in what constituted "giving" a costume to the child. Having established this criteria we conducted our second pilot study consisting of two subjects in which we obtained an inter observer agreement of 100%. We used focal sampling (Martin & Bateson, 1986) of caregivers in the " Me on TV " exhibit. When the observer was sure that at least one of each type of costume was available for use, the first parent who took a costume off the rack for his/her child became the focal subject. We watched the caregiver until they handed the costume to the child, at which point we recorded the sex of the child, the costume Figure 1: Results of Occupational Costume Selection by Male Caregivers

offered to the child, and the sex of the parent. This process continued until we had observed 10 male caregiver-boy, 10 male caregiver-girl, 10 female caregiver-boy and 10 female caregiver-girl pairs. In situations where there was a caregiver who presented a costume to more than one child, only the first child was noted as data.

RESULTS Analysis Techniques of Gender Socialization To analyze our data we used non-parametric tests of significance due to our small sample size, possible " litter effects" from collecting data at only one site (Martin & Bateson, 1986), and our inability to meet the high number of observations required to run a parametric analysis (Siegel & Levine, 1956). Gender Socialization According to Gender of Caregiver To test whether the number of caregivers who will choose gender opposite costumes for boys is the same as the number of caregivers who will choose gender opposite costumes for girls, we used a two way chi-square. This test yielded a chi-square (X2) value of 1.111. The chi square value of 1.111 is well below the critical value of 3.84 required for significance at the .05 level of significance. The probability that the random variable is greater than chi-square was 0.2918, with df=1 (degree of freeFigure 2: Results of Occupational Costume Selection by Female Caregivers 6

Male Caregiver/ Girl

1

Female Caregiver/ Girl

2 1

Type of Costume

Firefighter

Nurse

0 Veterinarian

Postal Service

Doctor

Construction Worker

0

Firefighter

0.5

Female Caregiver/ Boy

3

Nurse

2 1.5

4

Veterinarian

Male Caregiver/ Boy

Postal Service

3 2.5

5

Doctor

3.5

Number of Time Given

Number of Times Given

4

Construction Worker

4.5

Type of Costume

*A total number of 40 caregivers were observed composed of the following: 10 male caregivers to boy, 10 male caregivers to girl, 10 female caregivers to boy, and 10 female caregivers to girl. Perspectives in Psychology Spring 2003 Ψ 21

dom). Thus, in spite of visual differences, there were no statistically significant differences found between caregivers offering of gender opposite costumes to boys and girls. Gender Socialization According to Gender of Child To test whether the number of male caregivers who will choose gender opposite costumes for their children is the same as the number of female caregivers who will choose gender opposite costumes for their children, we used a two way chisquare. This test yielded a chi-square (X2) value of 4.444. The probability that the random variable is greater than chi-square was 0.0350, and df=1. This result indicates a statistically significant difference between gender socialization of children by male caregivers compared to female caregivers. Female caregivers had a higher tendency than males to go against gender norms and provide their child with a gender opposite occupational costume.

DISCUSSION Overall, we did not find that our sample of caregivers socialized boys and girls differently by their costume choice. This was a surprising finding as most of the literature supports the conclusion that parents do socialize boys and girls differently. There are several possible reasons that our data differs from this previous research. First, our sample size was small, consisting of 40 subjects, which increased the influence each subject had on our data. In addition, we performed our study in one museum that had a patronage made up of mostly white, middle class families as the location itself was in a large economically developed city. Previous research has shown that older persons, unemployed women and members of low socio-economic status groups tend to be more traditional in their enforcement of gender role than employed females, young persons, and members of middle socio-economic groups (Kulik, 2002). Another potential reason for these surprising findings is that our culture is moving slowly toward equality between the sexes. As Idle et al. (1993) suggest, there appears to be a change in parents' perception of what is acceptable gender typing behavior as they begin to realize that gender stereotyping is Perspectives in Psychology

becoming less acceptable in our society. Furthermore, studies of college students and adults indicate a trend toward egalitarian attitudes regarding women's roles. As compared to past studies reporting that adolescents expect mothers of young children to remain in the home full time, our findings indicate a continuing egalitarian trend (Braito & Klundt, 1984). Our second hypothesis was that male caregivers would reinforce gender stereotypes more than female caregivers by choosing fewer gender opposite costumes for both girls and boys. Our statistical data is significant for this hypothesis because no male caregivers gave gender opposite costumes and female caregivers gave gender opposite costumes four times. This finding was not surprising given the extensive research suggesting this trend. Male and female caregivers treat their children differently with regard to gender socialization (Ruble, 1998; Siegal 1987; Kulik, 2002). One of our largest challenges in testing our hypothesis was that male caregivers tended to be less interactive with the costumes than were female caregivers. Male caregivers often gravitated toward the camera and ignored the other attractions such as the costumes, even though they were just as active with their children. Often, while these male caregivers were exploring the technical aspects of the exhibit, female caregivers were interacting with their children by giving suggestions on how to use the weatherboard or in some cases moving toward the costume area. Although these observations may not directly affect our data, they offer some interesting implications as they suggest that males and females do exhibit different behaviors with their children. This, in turn, may " shape" the child's view of gender by demonstrating that men are supposed to work with the technical and more physical tools and women are supposed to dress up and be more creative. As Lindsey & Mize (2001) have found, fathers engage in more physical play and mothers engage in more pretend play. Even more importantly, they found that the type of play that a child engaged in with his parents reflected the type of play he would exhibit with his peers. This research illuminates the importance of our observed difference in socializing behavior between mothers and fathers, as children go on to internalize and exhibit these behaviors. These observations not only presented chalSpring 2003

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Perspectives in Psychology

have found that job related stress increases for women working in male dominated occupations and men in female dominated occupations (Evans & Steptoe, 2002; Yoder & Aniakudo, 1996). In order to make lasting strides in occupational equality the focus should be turned toward children. As some researchers comment, "The role of direct socialization appears to be crucial, then, not only in its own right but also in establishing the foundation upon which later self- socialization is based" (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1987). In addition, many studies have tested whether or not parents' gender schemas affect child development. For example, Martin (2000) argues that gender schemas acquired in childhood are very important as they guide behavior during adolescence and later on in adulthood. Consequently, it is these learned gender schemas that will guide children and restrict or broaden their views of gender roles and their behaviors throughout their lives. Given this finding, it is important to continue looking at the socialization of gender roles in children, and specifically the socialization of gender stereotypes in occupations as a way to better understand how this process affects society.

APPENDIX Figure A: Costume Selection by Gender of Male Caregivers Compared to Female Caregivers 9 8 Number of Times Given

lenges in our data collection, but also posed some interesting ideas for further research on gender socialization. Men seem to use technology more than women in socializing their children. An interesting study could look at what factors cause this and what the possible effects are on the child. Females seem to support pretend play more than males by dressing their children up in costumes and using this as a tool for socializing. In light of both of these observations, additional studies may provide useful information about the causes and effects of these contrasting methods of socialization. For example, a study could look at the specific tools that male caregivers utilize to socialize their children in comparison to the methods female caregivers use. Such a study could focus on parental interactions in the home, observing the amounts of physical versus verbal play exhibited by each sex parent. Perhaps future researchers could observe parent-child interaction within an experimental play setting containing both technical toys like video games and more creative games like dress-up. It would be necessary to have both stereotypically male and female video games and dress up clothes, so that both game options would be attractive to both sexes of children. A study like this would have important implications, as parents could be made aware of the types of behaviors they are modeling as representative of certain gender behaviors. Another implication for future research stems from the fact that our small sample size of 40 subjects and the limited demographic did not adequately represent the United States population. Since Kulik (2002) has found that personal background, as well as gender, contributes to how caregivers display gender stereotypes, it would be interesting to study the effects of race, socioeconomic status, age and other factors that may contribute to parental socialization of gender roles. Our culture is in a transition period where it is striving to attain equality between genders. This desire to change gender role stereotypes, specifically in regard to occupation, is so ubiquitous that it has even affected our language. For example the term "fireman" is slowly changing to the more gender neutral "firefighter"( Liben, Bigler, Krogh, 2002). Most research on women firefighters and male nurses demonstrates that even though their numbers are increasing, they have overcome and continue to face challenges posed by stereotypical ideology. Many

7 6 5

Male Caregiver

4

Female Caregiver

3 2 1 0 Masculine

Feminine

Neutral

Type of Occupational Costume

Figures A and B are additional graphs that were not included in the results section of the paper because they were not statistically analyzed. These two graphs are merely a depiction of the breakup of type of occupational costume from gender specific and gender opposite into masculine, feminine and neutral. Spring 2003

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Figure B: Costume Selection by Gender for Boys Compared to Girls

12 10 8

Caregiver to boy

6

Caregiver to girl

4 2

Ne utr al

Fe m ini ne

0 M as cu line

Number of Times Given

14

Type of Occupational Costume

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