The strategies of parental approach to the masculine behaviour of girls and feminine behaviour of boys

The concept of gender has a pivotal role in a broad range of attitudes and behavior styles, the expectations of others, as well as the individual's formation and orientation of emotions and ideas of self. The concept found in all cultures has been the subject of a number of studies. It is known that gender develops at early ages and the first impressions formed in the following years become stereotypes. It is of utmost importance to explicate the concept of gender in early childhood, which is the ideal stage to teach behavior, values, attitudes forming the basis of the individual's life. It is also highly essential to depict the current state and question the perception of children and parents with regard to gender in a world where gender roles are constantly recreated and presented to us, media and popular culture shape the lives, choices, responsibilities and even characteristics of children and where both male and female children are exposed to discriminating and oppressive practice, women are positioned inferior. The main objective of this research is to identify the parental approach to the masculine behavior of girls and feminine behavior of boys. The study group in this research consists of parents living in Istanbul with children aged at 60-72 months. The participants are 16 in total –8 mothers and 8 fathers. Of the eight mothers; two of the mothers are primary school graduates, two are secondary school graduates, two have a bachelor's degree and the other two have postgraduate degrees. Among all, one in every two mother has a son whereas the other has a daughter. Similarly, fathers are chosen from primary, secondary, undergraduate and postgraduate graduates evenly. Also, one out of two has a son whereas the other has a daughter. The fact that this study focuses on parents and their perception has made it possible to use basic qualitative research which is one of the qualitative methods. In this study where basic qualitative research is used , in order to gather data that can depict not only the experiences of different individuals in the most ideal form but also the perception of study group, semi-structured interview has been preferred and the data has been collected via parent, child demographic information form and open-ended survey questions. The findings of the study indicate that the choice of occupation, toys, clothes and colors are parallel with cultural stereotypes, and in particular in terms of choice of clothes girls are influenced by popular culture. With regard to the theme of responsibilities, it is identified that mostly women are responsible for domestic chores. When findings about personality traits are analyzed from the standpoint of opposite stereotype judgment, it has been found that on the condition that children have attributed characteristics, parents' contention is consistent with social stereotypes and they state their opinion in accordance with these social stereotypes.