Parental Influence on Children’s Gender Roles and Future Job Aspirations

Gender roles are defined as roles which are related to one’s gender. Children’s gender roles are shaped by many factors such as family, peers, school, etc. and can change based on culture. Parents play a great influence on children’s gender roles and future job aspirations. The aim of the current study was to investigate the influence of parental ambivalent sexism and traditional gender role ideology on children’s traditional gender stereotyped attitudes, non-conforming peer preferences, toy preferences and gender typed aspirations. Seventy-two Turkish-speaking children (31 boys and 41 girls, M=8.90) and their parents (112), including 65 mothers and 47 fathers participated in the study. Children and their parents were recruited from both North Cyprus and Turkey. Results showed that, fathers and mothers had the same amount of scores on benevolent sexism, however fathers’ hostile sexism was higher than mothers’. Hostile sexist fathers’ daughters were more likely to show gender stereotypical beliefs. In non-conforming peer preferences, boys preference for play with masculine girl peers was related with parental ambivalent sexism, parental flexibility and age. In girls however it was related to maternal benevolent sexism and marginally related with fathers’ flexibility. Also, preference for play with feminine toys in boys was related to fathers’ flexibility. There was no significant finding of the influence of parental ambivalent sexism on children’s flexibility in occupation. Limitations and future directions of research are discussed. Keywords: Gender Roles, Parental influence, Peer preferences, Toy preferences, Ambivalent Sexism Theory