Parenting and Gender Stereotypes (continued)

Our values also influence the particular interests, developed competencies, and self-concepts our children cultivate, and these characteristics are important indicators of career choice. For example, if we show that we place a high value on science ability, then our children are likely to be interested in science, feel confident in their science abilities, and take advanced courses in that subject. Attaching value to an area of study and holding high expectations for performance in that domain is likely to influence a child also to place high value on that performance domain and strive to feel competent at it. Competence in an area leads to a tendency to see the possibility for related careers.

We also affect our children’s career choices by passing along gender stereotypes. The ways in which such stereotypes are relayed to children can be subtle but consistent, sending a clear message about the academic domains at which boys and girls are supposed to excel. Parents tend to help their children with school assignments in gender-stereotypic ways; for example, Dad may help with math homework and Mom with language arts homework. In addition, parents tend to identify their child’s giftedness in gender-stereotypic ways (again, boys are good at math and science, and girls are good at language arts). Indeed, parents’ beliefs about their children’s abilities in areas like math, English, and sports are more influenced by their children’s gender than actual ability.

Ultimately, our beliefs affect our behaviors, which in turn influence children’s development of self-concept, interests, and career goals. Our beliefs affect the way we explain our children’s successes, how we react emotionally to our children’s achievements, the value we place on our children’s accomplishments in certain activities (such as sports, math, or dance), and the activities, toys, and experiences we choose for our children.

A Study at the University of Virginia

These understandings led a group of us at the University of Virginia to investigate the effects of parents’ beliefs about their children’s abilities on the way gifted students viewed themselves in the areas of math, science, humanities (for example, visual art, foreign language, writing, and philosophy), and social sciences.

About 500 5th to 11th grade students and their parents responded to questions about their beliefs of the students’ academic abilities. We found that parents’ beliefs were very much related to their children’s beliefs about their abilities, particularly for math. We also found that both parents and their children viewed the students’ abilities along gender-stereotypic lines.

Specifically, we found that parents viewed their sons as more capable in math and science, and their daughters as more capable in the humanities. Considering the apparent influence that parents and children have on each other’s perceptions of students’ abilities, we expected that children would view themselves in a similar pattern. Instead we found that boys and girls had equally high perceptions of their abilities in all academic areas except for humanities, where girls had more positive perceptions of their abilities than did boys.

What we can learn from this study is that, fortunately, our children are less stereotypic than their parents are when it comes to gender and academic ability. Even though the math and science fields are still dominated by men, the future looks bright because our daughters feel equal to their male classmates in math and science. However, our sons continue to lack confidence in their abilities within the humanities. In addition, the results from this study suggest that parents are still viewing their boys as better in math and science, and their girls as better in humanities, and may be steering their children toward careers according to these gender stereotypes. As a society, we have worked very hard to encourage girls to believe that they may achieve in traditionally male domains, but it appears that we may have left the boys to languish in the belief that they are inferior in the language arts and that drama, poetry, dance, music, and philosophy are female domains.